While debates rage in the press about heroin chic and the anorexic
images touted by fashion magazines, there is one new title that promises
not to feature ’stick insects’ but real girls with ’real life looks and
real life bodies’.
Made Up! is the first fruit of IPC SouthBank’s new product development
team which has been set up to launch new glossy magazines. Maureen Rice
is new product development editor, making sure that the launch of Made
Up! is successful while juggling with six potential new magazine
ideas.
Rice, aged 38, cut her journalistic teeth on the teen magazine market,
writing bubbles for Photo Love, before going on to write for My Guy and
then Smash Hits. She edited Mizz and 19 before settling down to edit
Options for six years.
She is confident that Made Up!, which launched on 26 October, will carve
out a niche in the women’s magazine market. She enthuses: ’It’s a whole
new concept in young women’s magazines. We are hoping to redefine what a
makeover is. It’s a real antidote to glamour. All women want to look
good, but not as narrowly defined as we have been led to believe.’
The new glossy title, with a target readership of women in their teens
to early twenties, features reader makeovers. Along with Q&A pages on
beauty and fashion, the magazine will try to solve problems and bolster
readers’ confidence with a new look through hairstyles, make-up or
clothes.
Girls of any shape who feel in need of a revamp are shown before and
after, with their comments on their need for a change and whether they
feel better for it. Rice stresses that the magazine will allow ’readers
stories and attitudes to play a much bigger part. You can’t take the
personality out of beauty and personality plays a major role in this
magazine’.
Rice would like to hear from PR people, but on her own terms. ’I am
compiling a PR database and really want to hear from people. I want to
have their client contact list for beauty, health and fitness products,
but they should not expect to hear from me for a good few weeks. I don’t
mind an initial approach, but I do mind follow up calls every day.’
She would also welcome a more creative approach from PR people. ’Usually
PR people say ’we have these products, please can you cover them’. They
send proposals which are heavy with client mentions and are more
advertorial than creative. PR hasn’t been developed or explored enough -
beauty PR people have gone further, but they still have a way to go,’
she says.
Rice’s passion is print, and when she’s not cooking up ideas for new
titles, she’s devouring books, magazines and newspapers. She is keen to
break the mould of women’s magazines and has one particular card she
would like to play. ’We need something new. Older than Made Up! and more
of a features-led glossy magazine. I would really like to do that under
the auspices of IPC.’ You read it here first.
Anna Griffiths is media reporter on Campaign.
HIGHLIGHTS
1985 - Features editor, Mizz
1986 - Editor, Mizz
1988 - Editor, 19
1991 - Editor, Options
1997 - Launch editor, Made Up!
