The latest ABCs showed Nuts, IPC’s weekly lads mag, selling more than double its weekly rival, Bauer’s Zoo (114,019 to 54,318). The not-so-good news for the publishers was that in 2004, Nuts was selling 290,337 and if that precipitous rate of decline continues, it can only be a matter of time before Nuts, at least in its print form, ceases to be.
So the refresh has to be seen in that light. What is new that might make the difference come the next ABCs?
There’s a new regular column (“Sex advice from a fit lesbian”) from Danni Orsi who gives helpful advice to the likes of Stewart from Taunton who wanted to know, “When I go down on a lady, I’m not exactly sure what I should be doing with my tongue. Can you give me a little guidance?”
A new ‘Would you?’ page featured Dawn French and asked readers to vote, and comment, at www.nuts.co.uk/wouldyou By the time I got to the page, Carol Vorderman had taken Dawn’s place and was getting a very respectable 79.2% ‘yes’ rating (“definitely”, “absolutely”, “yes pls, hot I tell u”, “hell, yeah”). I presume the criteria is women over 40, so I’m going to take a punt and predict who will feature in the coming weeks: JK Rowling, Helen Mirren, Jerry Hall and the Duchess of Cornwall.
‘Pets win prizes’ was three rather staged pics of pets; a sleeping dog with a fag in its mouth and a beer can placed between its paws, a dog slurping a pint and a parrot pecking at a pizza.
‘Question Bucket’ (“We fill our bucket full of ridiculous questions, then a celebrity picks them out at random and must answer whatever they get!”) featured Keith Lemon who was faced with ‘If you were sitting on a beach and looked up to see a shark running across the water at you on its fins, what would you do?’ and ‘When was the last time you pooed yourself?’ and ‘Have you ever trapped one of your nuts in your zipper?’
The ‘Stuff I Like’ had rapper Example telling us his favourites. This one had promise. I could see that it was kind of interesting that his favourite gadget was a BlackBerry Playbook, car was an Audi R8, grooming product was Clinique M Motion, food, Beef Carpaccio, although he was disappointingly allowed to get away with ‘Music: My favourite song is STAY AWAKE by Example!’
Apparently, humour is the watchword of the new Nuts. The new strapline “when you really need something funny” ties into the new promotional campaign, but I’m not sure what it actually means.
There are loads of gags, with lavatorial humour well to the fore. Humour’s a tricky one, because it’s so subjective and often down to age. My kids used to laugh endlessly whenever they heard the word ‘bottom’. It could well be that the target market of 16-24 year old men are rolling in the aisles. I’m 47, and didn’t find much to laugh about.
One humour feature that didn’t rely on funny pics and one liners was the Jim Jefferies (“The world’s most offensive comedian lets rip!”) page. This week, he cast a sideways look at the recent riots. One of his ‘jokes’ linked the shooting of Mark Duggan with the 2005 shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes (“that Brazilian dude on the tube”) and asked why the Brazilian population in London didn’t kick off, because he would have “loved a good carnival”. Sorry, what? The riots are definitely not off-limits humour wise, but it does need to be funny. Jim is certainly very offensive – his sign off was “Right, calm down f**ckers and I’ll see you next week!” - but on this occasion, not very funny.
But, really, how important is humour in lads mags? Because it’s hard to imagine anyone buying the magazine for the humour, or the sport, or the gadgets.
They buy it for the pics of semi-naked girls and there are still loads of them: an 8 page photo shoot of Jessica-Jane Clement (“TV’s hottest lady in a serious state of undress!”), 4 pages of Melissa Debling (“The blonde beauty with amazing boobies!”, Pop Out in Public!, 10 Rude Questions, Bedroom Babe Vote!, new X-Factor judge Tulisa in a bikini and much much more. Girls, girls, girls.
Apparently, the refresh is the culmination of six months’ extensive research and development work. The research indicated that “more than seven out of 10 young men feel that the British media portray young men negatively and the public is equally quick to stereotype them.” The research also showed “there was an appetite for a slightly more premium magazine.”
I’m sure that’s all true, but it’s hard to see how the new look Nuts is going to do much to alter any of those negative stereotypes and I couldn’t see much sign of premium content. The magazine is unremittingly low brow.
I’m afraid the magazine still fails the ‘tube test’ and until it becomes a magazine that seven out of 10 young men wouldn’t feel embarrassed reading in public, it’s hard to see the circulation picking up.
