MAGAZINE ABCs: Tesco swells customer magazines circulation

Tesco Real Food joins Tesco Magazine, which has a circulation of 1,998,767, unchanged year on year. Both are published by Cedar.

The quarterly magazine, launched in March, carries recipes and ideas and is distributed in more than 500 stores. It is designed to communicate the supermarket's passion for food.

Carolyn Bradley, Tesco UK marketing director, said: "[Real Food is] designed for all customers, no matter what their level of skill in the kitchen might be. The magazine is supported by the informative Real Food website tesco.com/food, which features seasonal recipe ideas as well as an archive of over 1000 recipes."

Its arrival means there are now eight free brand-marketing-focused titles in the top 10, up from seven in the second half of 2009. The other two are paid-for TV listings titles TV Choice and What's On TV.

Also making a debut in the top 50 magazines by circulation were John Lewis Edition and Waitrose Kitchen, which replaced Waitrose Food Illustrated.

The John Lewis magazine is bi-monthly and focuses mainly on the retailer's fashion, homewares and technology offering. It registered an average issue ABC of 484,040 copies. Waitrose Kitchen, which published four issues in the first half of the year, registered 339,109 copies. Both magazines are published by John Brown.

Customer publishing trade body APA said the ABCs demonstrated the strength of the sector and drew attention to the industry's digital expansion.

Julia Hutchison, chief operating officer at the APA, said the industry now represents 53% of the total circulation of the top 100 magazines, "which reflects the vital role print still plays in engaging consumers through branded content".

She said: "The robust publishing investment seen here is more than matched in the digital sphere with a huge percentage of these publications forming part of integrated campaigns which incorporate websites, social media, video and more.

"Every customer magazine which features in the top 10 is also now creating cross-media content to further engage its customer base."

 

Top 10 customer publishing magazines
	Title	Jan-Jun	Prd/prd	Yr/yr
		2010	change	change
1	Sky Magazine	7,041,602	-5.1%	-6.7%
2	Sky Sports Magazine	4,200,369	1.8%	0.1%
3	Sky Movies Magazine	3,478,534	2.7%	-0.9%
4	Tesco Magazine	1,998,767	-2.8%	0.0%
5	Asda Magazine	1,947,567	4.7%	-22.8%
6	Sainsbury's Fresh Ideas	1,487,850	-0.8%	-0.8%
7	Tesco Real Food	1,250,000	N/A	N/A
8	Morrisons Magazine	1,030,186	5.7%	10.2%
9	Sense Magazine	882,604	4.4%	7.4%
10	Birds	613,834	-1.4%	-1.9%

This article was first published on mediaweek.co.uk