Meet the Client

 Hearst Magazines (UK)

    "Our goal is simple: create premium, purposeful content that helps our audiences and partners strive, thrive and get more out of life."

                                                                                                 -Hearst Mission Statement


    This international company specialises in lifestyle magazines in 300 individual editions and 240 websites which cover a wide demographic and psychographic and claim that they reach a 'quarter of the entire UK population'. They circulate 4 million magazines a month like Esquire, Women's Health, Men's Health and The Cosmopolitan which uniquely target certain groups of society. Magazines such as Men's Health target young men and adults in the range of 20 to 40 years who want to achieve a certain physique or look which society expects of them and believes to be optimal or attractive. This is achieved through celebrity endorsement of products and services like fitness programmes so that the reader is encouraged to buy these products or services to move closer to the way the magazine and society wants them to be. The front covers of Men's Health reinforce ideas of masculinity and strength which the audience are supposed to buy into because their favourite stars look like that and are presented as being the 'perfect' men.


Essentially, Hearst Magazines are all about appealing to a wide range of people through celebrities (or models) and advertised products or tips from celebrities which will help them to fit in with the particular demographic or psychographic which the magazine is conveying. For example, the magazine Women's Health seeks to allow 'successful women to achieve a smarter, fitter, happier lifestyle' through regimes and products they can use, so that they can follow the example of the 'most eminent voices in the industry', thereby fitting in to people who have gone before and say that a certain way of life is best. The way of life shown is normal female stereotypes of being objects and achieving the best body to make themselves desirable and worthy, just like the 'perfect' women they see on the front covers.

Therefore, Hearst Magazines and lifestyle magazines as a whole are about making people fit into their particular social group and feel like they belong there through what they own, what they buy and how they look.



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