Over the past two decades, magazines such as FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo have surfed the wave of laddish culture brought to life in the 1990s sitcom, Men Behaving Badly.
But Nuts closed its print edition last year, followed this spring by Loaded, and last week it was announced that the last of the big four, Zoo and FHM, are throwing in the locker-room towel.
Sales of both magazines are around a tenth of what they were in their heyday, when FHM’s circulation reached around 700,000 and Zoo’s hit 260,000. So are men not behaving as badly any more? Or are they just doing it online?
The answer is a bit of both, according to Douglas McCabe, online and print expert at research company Enders Analysis. “Lad magazines were a temporary phenomenon that grew out of a particularly British humour, which is very knowing yet childish,” he says. “The rise of the magazines tells you more about social trends at the time than about media.”
Like the characters Gary and Tony from Men Behaving Badly, the lads’ mags did not evolve. Although the magazines had digital versions – Loaded launched a more upmarket one recently – their traditional publishers did not adapt quickly enough to the new technoverse.
“Free content online destroyed the short-lived paid print model,” says McCabe. “More upmarket men’s magazines – GQ, Men’s Health, Esquire – continue to do well. But these are titles that are cherished as print products, whereas much of the other content – including the photoshoots – have moved online.”
Zoo, Nuts, FHM and Loaded have been replaced by publishing arrivistes such as 65Twenty and its brands, the Lad Bible and the Sport Bible.
The rise of the Lad Bible in particular is extraordinary. If you’re not in its target demographic, you may never have heard of it, yet it is the UK’s 12th most popular website, ahead of Mail Online, and the most popular men’s site.The second most popular men’s site is the Sport Bible, ranked 39th, and then pornhub.com, which is 40th.
Half of all British men aged 18-24 follow the Lad Bible on Facebook, claims 65Twenty. Yet, the website was created just three years ago by then students, Alex Solomou and Arian Kalantari.
Although others are out there, such as Dudepins, a sort of male Pinterest, as well as BuzzFeed and Vice, it seems many who would have bought lads’ mags have moved on to gaming and free sites.
The Lad Bible began life as a website that was not dissimilar to the print publications it has helped to displace. Until recently, it had a sexist slant – Cleavage Thursday was a feature – but, unlike its print counterparts, it has, to some extent, matured. Pictures of women in bikinis still feature, but now the site has a wider mix of articles pushed out across social media outlets like Instagram and Snapchat.
Last week stories ranged from “Here’s why you should never hold in a poo” to an article about Islamic State being hacked by the Anonymous collective.
It combines items suggested by readers and topped with excitable BuzzFeed-style headlines with original pieces, such as boxer David Haye’s account of his comeback. More original content is planned with the appointment of Ian Moore from Vice as content director.
In a world dominated by US startups, 65Twenty is a homegrown success. It is privately owned, has 70 employees and is reportedly making revenues of around £3m. How did it manage it?
Marketing director Mimi Turner, who was involved in the shift away from the site’s sexist banter image, attributes the success to a good understanding of the audience. “Our community brings people together and we try to use our influence for good,” she says. “We saw, when the Paris attacks happened, that the community came together because they wanted to express their horror and shock at what was happening and to find a place where they could voice a response.” That sounds a world away from FHM’s annual “sexiest women” chart.
The fact that porn, which used to be available only in magazines, is readily available on the internet has meant that sites appealing to men have to be different. 65Twenty uses the vast amount of data it gathers to find out what its audience like and dislike. “Maybe because we see that mass of insight, we don’t underestimate them,” says Turner. “We don’t think they want the lowest common denominator. We try to give them the smartest, cleverest, funniest, best content and user experience.”
Turner, who always speaks on behalf of the apparently media-shy Solomou and Kalantari, notes most of the the Lad Bible’s audience were “at junior school” in the heyday of 90s lad culture, so were not really part of it.
McCabe agrees. “Consumption for teen and young adult men has moved online and the nature of the content has diversified,” he says. “On one hand, the Lad Bible is less extreme than some magazine content was 15 years ago, but on the other hand, porn is a much more extreme manifestation of lads’ magazine photoshoots.”
According to Turner, 65Twenty is attracting more women to its brands – one-fifth of 18-24-year-old women follow it on Facebook – and it sees its main rivals as BuzzFeed and Vice.
She adds: “We’re confident that this is a long-term play and that we are still at the beginning.”
