We're with the brand

Benetton did it first; now, two more international brands have launched their own magazines aimed at the elusive youth market. But, asks Kitty Melrose, are they anything more than glorified brochures?

In 1991, a magazine called Colors – the title created by the Italian fashion house Benetton – was launched. Here was a magazine that gave its creative team editorial freedom, rejected celebrity and featured stark, themed visuals that seemed as far away from selling knitwear as one could get.

More than a decade after its launch, Colors sells about 500,000 copies. Looking at it now, it's hard to figure out how a magazine that nowhere actively promotes the company's products can send such a powerful brand message, but somehow it does. And now other youth-oriented brands are making their mark as media operators.

Over the past year, Levi's and PlayStation 2 (Sony) have launched their own titles. The PS2-backed Pilchard Teeth is a fanzine offering a bite-sized commentary on play. The Levi's-owned Mined at 512 pages is more of a book than a magazine, filled with beautiful imagery and offbeat features. Among their contributors are the fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, the documentary maker Louis Theroux and the film director Mike Figgis.

But those who expect a tightly controlled in-house-type magazine or thinly disguised mainstream title targeting empty-headed consumers to Buy! Our! Product! will be surprised. Levi's recruited journalists and marketers who'd cut their teeth on the style magazine Tank. Its editor is Ekow Eshun, a former editor of Arena. Meanwhile, PlayStation 2 teamed up with the publishers of the satirical magazine The Idler, Tom Hodgkinson and Gavin Pretor-Pinney.

Levi's and PS2 handed them a loose rein when it came to devising the look and content – with one stipulation: to give branding a brief look-in (tiny logos sit discreetly with mastheads). "The initial idea for Mined came out of frustration with advertorials. Levi's simply thought, rather than taking a little part of the media, why not own it yourself?" explains Mined's marketing director, Vicky Stewart.

PlayStation took the same open-minded, subtle approach, embracing Pretor-Pinney's idea to widen the original brief and make it a celebration of play in all its forms. It allows interviews with a pinball wizard to sit happily alongside a piece on Pac-Man. "What they didn't want was a magazine that blatantly pushed their wares," says Pretor-Pinney. "They were happy for us to talk about competitors."

But that was not all. Levi's and PlayStation 2 both wanted to produce publications that were not dominated by advertising, investing in what's termed "pure publishing". "It means our editorial, unlike conventional magazines, is ideas- and inspiration-led rather than PR-gush-led," says Hodgkinson. "We don't need to think about running an editorial to please an advertiser. Or have the problem of mentioning Gucci 200 times to get 20 pages of advertising. There's almost an irony in the sense that being overtly commercial frees you up for being less commercial."

With a publication that doesn't, by their own admission, make a profit (Mined breaks even) and has the reader looking hard to discover who's behind it, why are Sony and Levi's even bothering? Admirable company talk about brand responsibility to "drive innovation", "give a gift back" and "support new, pioneering talent" aside, let's not get too worthy here.

"It has a lot to do with the audience we're chasing," Peter Clare, PlayStation 2's brand director, admits. He means those high-end consumers (marketeers call them "opinion-formers") who have a resistance to traditional advertising. "They see through a big billboard or decoration and aren't impressed by a brand that uses all its strength and money to get in your face," Clare continues.

So, is it working? Despite Mined's £20 price tag, its print run of 6,000 has a 60 per cent sell-through. Pilchard Teeth recently doubled its print run from 25,000 to 50,000 and transferred content to the web. Of course, it's free, but that's not really the point.

Should it have brand managers rushing to bring up the topic of having their own magazine at the next strategy meeting? Stewart responds: "What Benetton, Sony and Levi's are doing is a good indication of what we're going to see in the next 10 to 15 years. To speak to those elusive consumers, it's where the clever money is going."