Publishing Company Analysis

Bauer: The official website of this publishing company is http://www.bauer.co.uk/, however I found another website (http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/Brands), but on each website they both describe which magazines the publishing company own, however both website say they own different magazines making them unreliable and unable to see which is the real website. The first magazine publisher from the first link (which I will be talking about) produces magazines such as 'Take a Break', 'TV Choice' and 'Bella', those being highly popular in Britain for sources of gossip, real-life stories and TV listings. These types of magazines are very popular with women as they not only gives interesting stories about real life people and celebrities, but also tips of fashion and cooking. This makes it a mainstream as the target audience of the magazines they publish are for a broad audience of women instead of for just a specific group of women. If you look at the brand image of the publishing company then you will notice that it is very neutral and is not very eye catching. This is done specifically so that the magazine is able to associate itself with a much larger target audience if they were to go on and publish a men's magazine. The colour of the magazine's logo is blue, which can be associated with the style of a publishing company that would make men-specific magazines, however this is a contrast to the magazines they actually make as all of them are targeted at women. This can be told straight away by the individual magazine's use of colours in their logo by constantly using bright colours such as pink and red. The publishing company also have a radio sation according to their Wikipedia page, therefore showing the link between different types of media.

IPC Media: The official website for this publishing company is http://www.ipcmedia.com/, and is the only website, that I am aware of, that represents this publishing company. This magazine company publishes many magazines including 'Country Life', 'Cycling Weekly' and 'Look'. Straight away it can be told that the majority of the magazines that this company publish are niche magazines as they target a specific target audience such as people who enjoy the countryside, people who enjoy cycling or people who enjoy fashion. This creates many different target audiences for the many different niche magazines that they publish, generally targeting at a person's hobby or something they enjoy. The brand image is very plain and simple in terms of colours so reflect the generalisation of the different target audiences of the magazines they publish. One thing that is sort of symbolic to the different niche magazines that they produce, that is reflected in the logo, is the different use of font when writing 'IPC', as it symbolises one company having many different things within it including many different magazines targeted at different people. They specifically split their magazines into 4 categories, named Connect (for womens magazines), Inspire (leisure and specialist), SouthBank (women's lifestyle and home interests), and TX (which is portfolio of tv titles). Other types of media that they link with would be producing newspapers and also books wich I found from their Wikipedia page.

BBC Magazines: The official website for BBC's magazine publishing sector of their company is http://www.bbcmagazines.com/. The magazines that this huge company produces include 'Top Of The Pops', 'CBebbies Weekly' and 'Top Gear'. This can be shown straight away from the different genres of magazines I just named that this company is a mainstream company producing niche magazines to target specific audiences. They have many sections when publishing magazines by clearly having magazines that target children, pre-teens, teenagers, adults and educational magazines. This makes their target audience very simular to that of IPC Media as they target many different interests or hobbies that people may have. If you look at the brand image, it is used specifically as they are trying to assosiate the world-renoun company that is the BBC with the magazines, inticing people to buy them as they are assosiated with this famous company. This company shows a huge link between other types of media as BBC is a worldwide company that is known for its TV channel that is shown in many countries and is known as 'BBC Worldwide'. This makes their main channel of media through TV, with their production of magazines a secondary type of media to them. The have many other types of media including many radio stations, 7 in London to be specific, in which they are named BBC Radio 1 to 7. They also have radio sations for specific areas outside London so they are able to access them including Belfast, Bristol and Cardiff. Other types of media they have is their online website that caters to their large target audience as they have specific website for adults and children by having games, etc. The different types of media they represent is endless, including their own Orchestra.

Development Hell: The official website for this publishing comany is http://developmenthell.co.uk/. This company produces only two montly magazines (which is said on the home page of website), named 'The Word' and 'Mixmag'. These magazines both target a specific genre as they are both music magazines. This makes the magazines relatively niche as they are only specific to music loves, however Mixmag may target a specific type of music as they look only at dance and clubbing music where as 'The Word' is not as specific as 'Mixmag' because it features a more broader range of music genres but still may favour a specific genre such as rock music. This ultimately pigeon-holes their target audience into people that enjoy specific types fo music. If you look at the brand image, it is used specifically to assosiate with the message they are trying to get across. This is by making it red to stand out, and also to represent fire and anger which goes with the name of the independant company as it has to word 'Hell' in it to represent the young and vibrant audience that this company targets, with the magazine 'The Word' evidence of this as it is a magazine targeted at dance and clubbing music which is known for being vibrant and unruly, reflecting its target audience. This company also links with another type of media which is through the internet. They created a very popular website called 'Don't Stay In' which they desrible as "The worlds biggest clubbing social network". This goes hand-in-hand with their magazines audience as it is a music-based website that urges you to go clubbing, reflecting the target audience of their magazine 'The Word'. Ultimately, this companies purpose is towards young people who enjoy dance and clubbing music, with their magazine 'Mixmag' as a more broad-ranged magazine not just targetting at dance music which can be told as its name entails giving a mix of different genres.

By Harry Luke Mulvany