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• It was founded in the United States, in 1987. Originally called “Sports Fitness”. Its first issue came out in 1988 featuring Michael Pare, from the television series “The Greatest American Hero”.
• The magazine targets men between the ages of 21-‐40 and features in-‐depth arIcles on fitness, nutri9on and sports, as well as sex 9ps, fashion advice and interviews. It publishes 10 issues per year.
1st issue 1988
• It has become one of the fastest growing 9tles in its category. It doubled its circulaIon from 1997 to 2003, and we can nowadays find it in Russian, Australian and BriIsh formats.
• Men’s Fitness slogan is: “How the Best Man Wins”.
Webpage header
June 1990
We can clearly appreciate the big change in typography, font style, main image and layout the magazine has gone through during the Ime it has been acIve.
November 2014
As Ime passed “Men’s Fitness” kept on giving a greater focus to the aesthe9cs, rather than to the athleIcs, and acquiring a more similar look to nowadays. This we can appreciate in the main images used, as well as in the content of the sell lines. The figures portrayed are progressively more defined and more noIceably sculpted, becoming beWer examples for the target audience and encouraging them to get their aspiraIons up into a similar level. The models feature most of the Ime with the upper part of their bodies uncovered. This is a convenIonal stylis9c feature from the genre. However, the magazine has been loyal to its style in terms of how it displayed its content throughout the whole of its existence. The sell lines speak by themselves to prove this.
June 1991 November 2011 April 2014
• The name of the magazine, always as the masthead, conveys directly its genre: “fitness”, and reveals the target audience’s genre straight away: “Men’s”.
• It is important to menIon that the masthead does not always follow a specific colour code, or a par9cular style. A lot of variaIon has gone on in these aspect throughout the different issues.
July 2013 February 2009
January 2014 June 2013 • This stylis9c varia9on has not only been manifested within the magazine’s masthead, but
also in its sell lines, main image and layout as a whole, unlike other magazines within the genre like “Men’s Health”.
• “Men’s Fitness” features a lot of iconography associated with the genre and with the target audience’s needs and wants: sculpted figures, weights, gymnasiums, tense muscles…
We can see how the representaIon of the female is the sex object type.
• “Men’s Fitness” features all of its front cover text in an upper case, distressed font.
• The use of red has quite a noIceable presence, even in those issues that break up with the habitual colour scheme. It connotes power, strength, passion and sexuality; represenIng in this way the target audience’s aspira9ons as well as the magazine’s content. It is a strong, popular colour within the genre.
• In its front cover, the key element is the main image, it has the greatest importance and draws the greatest aWenIon. It is there to seduce the reader. It is usually a medium shot of a model, having the upper part of the body uncovered. The model used is a man most of the Imes, however there has been a minority of issues featuring a woman as the main image.
“Men’s Fitness” always tends to use a direct mode of address. This is manifested both in the language used and in the main images.
The main image is looking at the reader directly into his eyes. He has a defying sight and an inImidaIng pose, so the look as a whole is not really friendly. It is more of a challenge to the reader: “are you man enough to buy this?”. This type of relaIonship with the reader does encourage him successfully to buy the magazine.
It is very common that the language in the sell lines contains impera9ves and inclusive pronouns as we can see. It sets a more demanding and personal tone and intensifies the appeal to the target audience’s
needs and wants. This accompanied by exclama9ons marks emphasizes the message and puts a final touch to create an intense man-‐to-‐man relaIonship with the reader.
Within the language, the use of some specialised lexis and fitness jargon in the form of abbreviaIons is also very common
ConvenIonally, full colour ar9cles combine a large image with text in a simple, but yet elegant and classy font, to create a more visually appealing look. Some touches of red are popular within the arIcles, for the connotaIons the colour has, and to add a sophis9cated and elegant touch. However all arIcles follow a established colour and font code depending on the context. It is not rare to see sportsmen in the middle of workout along with an interview about them, or the use of illustraIons.
The content of the magazine is enIrely devoted to fitness, featuring arIcles about sports and nutriIon mainly. These usually take the shape of 9ps and advice to the target audience: “Best gyms to…” “4 weeks diet plan to achieve a figure like this”. However, as “Men’s Fitness” uses celebri9es very oaen to appeal to the target audience’s needs and wants, interviews with them talking about how they got to where they are and what advice may themselves give are also popular within the magazine. CelebriIes that feature most commonly are actors and popular-‐sports players (soccer, tennis..), people that the target audience encounters frequently in the media and posses a good enough physical appearance to act as a source of inspira9on and a way of escapism to the reader. The inclusion of tests or quizzes is very rare in this magazine and in the genre as a whole. However free gias, posters and extra incenIves like such for the reader to buy the magazine are a bit more common, specially in the webpage to encourage the subscripIon.
• “Men’s Fitness” targets men between the ages of 21 to 40.
• These men are truly concerned about their figure and want to keep their physical appearance to the highest standard.
• They should be ready to absorb and put in prac9ce all the informaIon the magazine provides them.
• Their disposable income should be medium so they are able to buy any item advised by the magazine to improve their performance. These may not necessarily be cheap.
• They should be ready to enjoy their social life as much as possible and go to see their favourite sports live.
• They take “Men’s Fitness” as the authority in terms of fitness.
“Men’s Fitness” is owned by “American Media, Inc.”, founded in 1936 and currently based in New York city. It is a pioneer in the industry of newspapers and magazines, and the main responsible for “Men’s Fitness” success due to its decades of experience.
“Men’s Fitness” belongs to AMI’s “enthusiast group” along with two other top magazines in their genres: “FLEX” and “Muscle & Fitness”. The group as a whole reaches a powerful 20 million+ men each month. Thanks to AMI’s successful management, “Men’s Fitness” is ranked 2nd in “Askmen” top fitness magazines. “Flex” and “Muscle & Fitness” come 7th and 6th in the same rank.
The company also owns and distributes a number of magazines aimed at audiences with niché interests; women’s acIve lifestyle and entertainment.
“AMI’s Women’s AcIve Lifestyle Group reaches more than 11 million women who are in the prime of life, the midst of success, and at the peak of spending power. No other publisher offers as disIncIve a mix of fitness and empowerment Itles for modern women”.
“With some of the most renowned Itles in the industry, AMI has become the undisputed leader in celebrity journalism. The company’s broad and diverse entertainment group delivers more than 26 million readers via a powerful line-‐up of brands”.
So the benefit for “Men’s Fitness” for belonging to such a experienced and successful media company is huge, since AMI has a great knowledge on what policies and strategies to employ in order to increase sales and expand even more its market share. The stability and success for “Men’s Fitness” is guaranteed.