Magazine Proposal
Dear Spori publications, I am writing to propose an idea for a magazine that I would love to see published by your company, please see below my intentions and ideas for the promising concept.
Objectives
The type of proposed magazine that I will be introducing is a football magazine called SportStreet. The main idea is to provide informative weekly articles and evaluate the weeks football matches across the 4 professional leagues in England. However, it will mainly focus on the premier league.
Concept
SportStreet’s aim is to be a weekly popular magazine distributed around the UK (mostly England) every Tuesday after the weekends games are over, If there are weekday games, the magazine will be distributed on a Saturday morning. The magazine intends to provide weekly news and gossip on the latest football issues, and to gain large readership numbers of young people aged 12-30. It will also provide interviews of a range of many peoples favourite players. Special issues will be distributed during the January and Summer transfer windows to inform readers on the transfer news. The magazine will have a tips and advice section from the premier leagues top players as well as weekly competitions to engage the audience with excitement to want to win, thus they will be encouraged to buy the magazine each week.
The name of the magazine SportStreet has been decided as a unique and interesting name because it should be grabbing the attention of sport/football fans. The word “Sport” essentially tells buyers the genre of the magazine, and football fans would be lead to understand that the magazine is about football after seeing the rest of the front cover. The word “street” is a carry-on from “sport” insisting that the magazine is a world and “road” of football where it is mainly focused on that topic.
The focus of the first issue is to create a product that draws the attention of a range of different people within the target audience based on different aspects of the issue. For example, including information, advice, interviews, general articles, and gossip. From there, I will be able to narrow it down and include more of the most popular aspects and less of what people don't want to see as much within the magazine.
Some of the qualities of the magazine that will help bring it to fruition are based on the effect of the front cover which often leads shoppers to decide whether or not they will buy that magazine over a different one. For example, this magazine will stick to a colour scheme that reflects the typical sporting colours such as blue, red, and green, which will present an ongoing theme for the weekly issues, it will also include bold mastheads, with effective anchorage texts to make someone want to open the magazine and read it. However, the front cover will not be too busy otherwise it becomes too much for the reader to physically consume before they get bored and stop observing the front cover. Furthermore, the magazine cannot be too full of pages otherwise its cost will be higher, meaning there would be less circulation. However, it must have enough content to satisfy the readers.
Moreover, I will need to find sources of advertisement for this magazine for it to gain awareness. One way of doing this would be to advertise in local newspapers. This would help to grip the attention of regular content readers, however might not be the most effective method as young people tend to not typically read newspapers that often, and this is the target audience that I intend to reach. Television adverts on sports channels might also be a useful method of advertising however it is very expensive for a new magazine. The most useful way of advertisement would be print advertisement, by doing this I can reach a wide range of people within my target audience, that will be lead to buy the magazine based on the advertisement that they see.
Some of the problems that I foresee are important to be aware of because they could prevent the possible level of success for this magazine. The main problem that is an important issue to be aware of, is the number of competitors and similar magazines already on the market. The reason that this is a problem is because they could prevent my own magazine from selling as many copies because the target audience might be a lot more familiar with other magazines of the same genre. Examples of similar magazines include “FourFourTwo” and “Match of The Day”. Additionally, other problems that I can foresee are based around start-up costs, selling prices, and the ability to create weekly issues of good quality.
It would be greatly appreciated for you to consider discussing this plan further as I believe this idea has a great potential and succeed based on its attractive design and direct influence on young people, helping to earn their respect and love for the magazine. With the editing skills of this board, I will be able to reach the primary target audience in the most effective way possible by selling copies in corner shops, supermarkets, and newsagents.
Organisation
For this magazine, I intend to include a great variety of different types of articles. These will include Interviews, Q&A’s, Football gossip, Weekly articles on our opinions of where the top teams are likely to finish, what teams are doing well, player stats, manager stats, quizzes, giveaways, articles on star players, transfer news, and weekly fixture lists. This is so that there is something for every type of reader meaning I can gain more weekly readership figures. The major departments and sections within this magazine will be a weekly interview with a player who made a great impact on the game in the previous week, a competition section, and stats on the upcoming fixtures, meaning many readers will be drawn into wanting to read the magazine as they're going to be able to read what they want to see the most. This does apply for the slightly older people within the target audience.
As mentioned above beforehand, the competition will be close as I will be selling copies alongside similar magazines within the focus of football and the genre of sports in general. Therefore I will have to overcome this by inventing as many different ideas for this weekly product as possible to help encourage shoppers to buy it. Furthermore, by actually selling the magazine weekly I will be able to keep an active business whilst simultaneously earning customer loyalty, meaning that they might prefer to spend their money on the weekly issues rather than monthly issues of other magazines. Likewise, this magazine will be different from other magazines because of its variety of interesting and engaging content which will entice a wide audience within the target audience. For example, many other magazines will not include weekly competitions, opinions from football officials, and as much exclusive news as this will. I intend to make sure that it actually does include this through the use of joining with other businesses who can help boost the content of it.
The audience demographics are centred around the typical football fanatics. For example: White, British, Males. However, all races are regularly interested by the sport. The demographic table might link to who this magazine would appeal to, such as people within category C2,D,E. These are jobs which would typically pay less meaning many young people with less job experience and working time might be involved in this type of employment, and since football is usually associated with middle or working class people, the demographics of target audience suggested suits the magazine perfectly, especially as I am aiming to target the younger readers. My assumptions about this audience, is that they're looking for an affordable product that interests them through the content and style of the magazine making it as good as possible. It should contain real information allowing all readers get what they expect from it such as information on their favourite teams or players.
Based on this, I will try and make the magazine appeal to the target audience through the use of many magazines codes along with eye catching themes and ideas, such as the colour scheme and using a variety of features on the front cover such as puffs, bylines, anchorage text which will all excite the audience, promoting an increase in readership and circulation numbers. I will also ensure that I include advertisement and promotion that will appeal as much as possible to the target audiences needs and interests. Currently, Gillette sponsor Sky Sports for their weekends football, therefore this company might be a good advertiser, especially as their products appeal to men. I will also use advertisers from the big football clubs themselves, advertising football T-shirts and other products that they sell on their websites. The general type of advertisement will be linked with mens products and sports products, as it is men that I am primarily looking to target.
The qualities of my editorial board will be of a very good standard to produce a good quality magazine. The cover will be made through the use of photoshop for the best outcome possible, and will be completed by professionals so that nothing looks out of place or unprofessional. The editorial board will also assist their authors by helping them to write manuscripts in a way that is communicated best to the target audience, for example, the use of informal language.
There are a range of jobs amongst the editors, these include authors who are the writers of the articles and information within the magazine. There are also front cover creators who are the people that design and create the cover of each weekly issue. Their job is to add all the features to a page and create the front cover using their knowledge and skills. Article arrangement and design. These people place the images within articles and decide where they go, as well as editing the actual images. This suggests that each job is responsible for itself however in my opinion, they are flexible and people can complete multiple tasks. One main issue within the editing process, is that weekly issues might not be completed in time for when they need to go on sale, this could be due to lack of working efforts or difficulty creating a certain part. To overcome this I would need lots of editors from the board to be working each week, or I would have to reduce the number of times that a magazine is actually created and sold. For example, instead of a new issue each week, I could make it a fortnightly magazine when necessary.
