Magazine Case Study

Magazine Case Study­ Kerrang I am doing a case study on the magazine Kerrang as it will help me decide on my final ideas for my own magazine creation.

Kerrang has been around for over 30 years and is one of the biggest music weekly magazines. It has gained over 387,000 readers since starting in 1981,the magazine was owned by EMAP and decided that the magazine was to come out monthly, it was not until 1987 that it became weekly.

Kerrangs popularity started to fall until Paul Rees took over 2000 taking in new bands such as Slipknot and Limp Bizkit that were fastly becoming very popular with readers, Paul Rees then went on to edit Q magazine and Ashley Bird took over making a decline in popularity again.

The editor role changed many times as some of them moved on to different jobs or they resulted in the decline of the magazine popularity.

The newest and present editor is James McMahon who was anointed editor in 2011 after previously working on NME and GamesMaster Magazines. In 2008 EMAP sold its consumer magazine to Bauer Media Group who also produce Q magazine, MOJO and film magazines such as Empire.

The target audience of the magazine is between 15­24 but the mean age of the reader is around 25 with 56.1% of its readership being between that age group. The main gender that readers this magazine is male with 54.7% but its closely followed by females with around 45.3% reading it. The reader of this magazine is also most likely to spend around £200 on albums a year and would be 5.5 times more likely to go to a rock gig.

The demographic that reads Kerrang is the most is ABC1 with around 51% of their reader being in that bracket, this means that people who read this magazine fit into all three categories : upper middle class, middle class and lower middle class. Also the psychographic for this magazine is mainstreamers which is around 40% of the population and is considered the norm among people. The lifestyle of the reader is to watch films, have the latest technology and also go to gigs with their friends. They would also be very loyal to their favourite bands which means they will want to find out more about them and by buying the magazine they feel like they can support them.

Most readers of the magazine are heavy rock listeners so they have used different styles of media to appeal to their target audience they have included events such as The Kerrang Awards which gives readers a chance to vote for their favourite artists, they are also the official media partner of Download Festival. They also have a TV channel and a radio channel to help attract the audience to the magazine.

The advertisers of the magazine are mainly companies or brands that have links with the rock music genre for example Relentless energy drinks as they are promote the Kerrang Awards which in turns gets the energy drink more recognizable to the readers. They also have links

with the Paco Rabanne fragrance Black XS which helps promote the Live Sound event for Kerrang which again promotes both the brand and the magazine.

The genre of Kerrang magazine is mainly to do with rock music in a wide range for example Pop Rock, Screamo, Alternative Rock, they also tend to focus on upcoming events such as tours to help promote the magazine. The style and design of the magazine fits in well with the target audience as the main features are to do with the bands and by including posters or other free items to help appeal to the audience. They also have created a website for the magazine where the reader can find out the latest news on bands and join an online community where they can talk to each other with similar interests.