The phenomenon that is Supernanny has landed in the world of weekly magazines, but neither Jo Frost nor Channel 4, which screens her hit TV show, has anything to do with it. The star of the new title, Real People, launched for a princely £10m by publishing house ACP-NatMag last Thursday, is Gitte Daniels, aka "Wonder Nanny", who will travel the country turning the children of the magazine's readers from "little horrors into little angels".
Just as Supernanny has her "top 10 rules" (number 2, consistency), so Daniels has her "golden rules" (number 2, be consistent). The programme was among C4's most successful, pulling in audiences of six million and being repackaged for American audiences by ABC. So ACP-NatMag feel pretty pleased at having nabbed the idea for a magazine that they have been planning for the past 18 months, and one that will take on Bauer's Take a Break and That's Life titles and IPC's Chat and Pick Me Up.
Jessica Burley, the chief operating officer for ACP-NatMag, says: "Unlike any other published product, we've appointed a nanny to our staff and we've called her Wonder Nanny. She will go round to various readers' houses and help them with the challenges they have with their children, and report back in the pages of the magazine."
So was the idea from Channel 4? "Yes, it's very popular," says Burley. "You quite often see tips of this sort in our sector - what you don't see is the practical help Wonder Nanny will offer on the ground." Colin Morrison, the chief executive of the company, adds: "This illustrates our thoroughness with the product. You are right, we've been inspired by Supernanny, but no other magazine has gone to this amount of trouble to replicate that kind of thing. And it is a lot of trouble to do."
It almost sounds as if the magazine has bitten off more than it can chew, given that Daniels has to be found a fresh family week-in and week-out, and has to adapt to living in different homes as well as filing her copy. "You have got to find the person and provide the management for the nanny and manage her schedule, and then treat the stuff journalistically," says Morrison.
Burley adds: "It's hard work. She will have to visit 50 families in a year and she has to be a highly flexible individual to spend a few days with each family and come up with an answer."
How did they find such a person? "We went through the normal process you would go through when you hire a nanny and looked at all the kind of credentials you would expect to have," says Burley, who says that the enormous workload for both nanny and editor Vicky Mayer was recognised when the idea was being evaluated. Does Wonder Nanny have any journalistic credentials? "Oh no, she's a proper nanny," says Morrison. "If she'd been a journalist, she would have been a fairly untypical nanny."
Fair comment. Indeed, although Real People is very much an editorial-led product, making its money from cover price rather than advertising, the magazine's journalists aim for invisibility, so as not to diminish the "realness" of the stories. The other big idea in the magazine, priced 60p, is the "Real Steals" feature, where money-off coupons are splashed across page 3, offering cut-price groceries, haircuts and meals out. A reader using any one of these vouchers is getting their 60-page magazine for free. Also, it is not as raunchy as Take a Break and, with prominent health and cookery sections, is less bothered with potential male readers.
In its advertising, created by Clemmow Hornby Inge, Real People has shunned the pop tunes endorsed by its rivals in their advertising, such as Take a Break's YMCA ad and Full House magazine using Madness' hit "Our House". Real People's ads are humorous and feature women with northern accents, to avoid complaints of South-east media bias that have emerged from ACP-NatMag's market research.
The content "will be a mix of love-rats, the sick get well, miracle babies, broken relationships made good," says Burley. "The key message for us with this product is that there will always be a resolution at the end of this story. The classic triumph over tragedy message is what's coming through the pages."
Real People is unlikely to face such daunting challenges in order to be a success. ACP- NatMag is confident that the great thirst for real-life stories is a long way from being slaked. Take a Break is shifting 1.2 million copies a week. Morrison points out that women's weeklies are selling nine million a week (the highest in a decade) and the real-life sector has enjoyed 20 per cent annual growth.
A year after the merger between Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) and Britain's The National Magazine Company, ACP-NatMag has a new title to add to its stable of celebrity magazine Reveal and classic weekly Best.
The company has grown up fast and is no longer in need of much nannying itself. "This gives us three major weekly magazines and something like one million copies [sold] a week," says Morrison. "We have arrived at that point where we are one of the four major weekly publishers in the UK."
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