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How Attitude has adapted & stayed relevant

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A lot can happen to a magazine, and the readership it serves, over the course of 300 issues.

Standing testament to that is Attitude, the gay men's magazine which has been witness to profound change in both publishing and society since Boy George became its first cover star in May 1994. And unlike many of its print counterparts from the 90s, it lives to tell the tale.

Today's stylish 300 th instalment, with Vogue editor Edward Enninful, Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing and Lady Gaga designer Nicola Formichetti gracing three commemorative covers, is a very different proposition to that first issue. As attitudes have changed, so has Attitude.

"I was reading some of the early issues and they read more like Smash Hits did," says Darren Styles, the magazine's publisher. "It was quite pissy and passive-aggressive and in terms of its view of authority was up-and-at-em, as would've been the political need then. At that time, we still had Section 28 which meant you couldn't speak about homosexuality in schools. Civil partnership, equal marriage - that was a distant dream at that point. So it would be anti-establishment and it would be angry, wouldn't it?"

Styles, a career contract publisher who has worked with brands including Hertz, Vauxhall and Spar, became the first gay owner of Attitude in September 2016. Since then, he has been steadily taking the monthly upmarket to suit a readership whose average age is now 38. And that has meant facing up to some home truths, not least when it comes to choosing cover stars.

"There was a period where the archetypal Attitude cover was a hot, young, white, smooth-chested guy in his pants. And you could expect that to sell 25-50% more than an average cover. There was a period where certainly having a non-white face on the cover had a negative impact on sales. You could see that.

"I went back through all of the archive and it wasn't until issue 192 [in 2010] that we had our first out, gay, black man on the cover - Kele Okereke of Bloc Party. And I don't think that's because the magazine was institutionally racist, per se, but I think it's a fact that there weren't many out, gay, black men. There are now, but then that definitely wasn't the case."

As its own outlook has "matured", Attitude has featured a much more diverse range of role models on its covers. Among them: Laith Ashley, its first transgender male cover star, Andrea Petic, the first transgender supermodel and April Ashley, one of the UK's first people to undergo gender reassignment. "People expect us to be much broader in terms of LGB and T now," Styles says. "So in the course of the last year we've had lesbian, bisexual, transgender cover stars, straight allies of course, and all colours of the rainbow. Historically that's not been the case, but the magazine reflects the world we live in now.

"Sometimes you do things that you know are pushing the envelope a bit, that are commercially challenging, and may even make people uncomfortable. But that's the conversation that's going on in our community and we have to reflect that."

Such changes are not only intended to make readers look differently at the magazine, but advertisers too. A title that was once stablemates with Asian Babes under its first owner, Richard Desmond, has been working painstakingly to reposition itself.

"Oh god! It's a world away," says Styles of the early days when purveyors of jock straps, lube and condoms dominated its advertising pages. As recently as six years ago, he says, "there were 10 or 12 pages of ads which were all phone lines, or chat websites, or porn" yielding about £8,000 an issue. "One of the provisos I had when I got involved with the magazine was to say: we have to stop that because if we want to grow up and reflect our maturing readership, and we want people to take us as seriously as we want to be taken, we can't do that, that doesn't work with our advertisers."

Styles says this new pitch to advertisers has also necessitated an editorial rethink. "There used to be a sex issue every year, a porn issue every year, a naked issue every year. And although they sold strongly, they scared all the advertisers away. So you work your nuts off to get what I'd call a high-level brand in, even a high street brand in, and then they'd find their ads were in the naked issue and then they'd be gone again."

Attitude's pages are no longer found wanting for high-end and high street advertisers. Belstaff, Dsquared and Jaguar are among those in the latest issue while Three, the mobile carrier, sponsored its anniversary exhibition at The Hospital Club in London last weekend [17-19 August]. Attitude's circulation is not audited by ABC and it does not declare its figures, but it promotes itself as the UK's best-selling gay magazine and Styles says brands are drawn to an audience that has "good levels of disposable income - £80,000-plus a year household income".

One brand Attitude found a surprising kinship with this summer was Paddy Power, the controversial bookmaker which has built its reputation on the back of politically incorrect stunts. For the World Cup in Russia, where gay people face some of the most oppressive laws in the world, the betting brand hit on the idea of donating £10,000 to LGBT causes every time the host nation scored. By happy coincidence, at the same time Paddy Power was planning that stunt, Styles was in the process of setting up the charitable Attitude Foundation to put something back to the magazine's community. The two unlikely allies struck up a conversation.

"Just before the World Cup, Paddy Power came to us and said: 'Look, there's an opportunity here, but we need a bit of help'. One or two charities turned it down on the basis they were worried there might be reprisals in Russia, notwithstanding the fact that Russia's already a terrible place for LGBT people. Some of them turned it down because it was gambling. Some of them turned it down because it was Paddy Power who have a reputation for being quite feisty in terms of their PR and marketing."

Styles didn't turn it down, but admits he had reservations about working with a brand with such a chequered past. "There had been one or two areas where they'd mis-stepped over their use of language, they'd done jokes about 'getting behind' a certain football team and so on. The undertones there weren't quite right.

"So we said: 'We'll work with you as a partner on the understanding that we see everything that goes out and have the right to veto, because if you're not using the right language that's going to blow back on us as well as you. But if you're gentle about it and approach this in the right way, we think we can have some fun and do really well out of it.'"

And that's exactly what happened. Russia's progression to the quarter-final, including five goals in its first game, raised £170,000 for the Attitude Foundation and earned both brands "phenomenal" crossover appeal, according to Styles. "It allowed us to realise much quicker than we anticipated our dream of being able to put something back."

Charitably or commercially, however, there remain some brands that Attitude will not work with. "There's one tourist board for a country that is very keen to promote itself at every turn as a gay-friendly destination. A bit of pink-washing if you will. So we've resisted that urge. We know there are companies with connections to people that aren't desirable so we'd step away from that. So yeah, absolutely, there are definitely people who we would politely decline and walk away from - if we felt that they were beyond educating or helping if you like.

"If someone shows genuine willing then I guess we've got a bunch of free consultancy that comes with working with us."

Attitude has evolved over the course of its 24 years to become more than a magazine business. Styles says it now has "six, seven, eight" income streams and a "massive" events business, which includes the glitzy annual Attitude Awards. It was there, last year, that Styles was reminded of the "resonance" of his platform when Sam Smith, Tom Daley and Matt Lucas all shared similar stories with him about the important role the magazine had played in their formative years. Today, people discover it digitally. "We can see there are people reading our magazine in countries where it's illegal to be gay. They've got this back-channel that in a digital age reflects the experience Sam and Tom and Matt."

But for Styles, whose first experience of magazines came from "sneaking them away" from his father's newsagent shop, print remains a major part of his plans for the brand. He admits sales are "a shadow" of what they once were but has responded to that challenge by making the magazine more luxurious - not less. For one thing, he's put up the price.

"We asked people what Attitude's price was and the number of people who got it right was tiny, absolutely tiny. People really didn't know and were clearly guessing. So we felt there was a bit more elasticity and that we could afford to make something more beautiful at a higher price point. We're at £5.25 now, and printing on nicer paper and with more paper than we have in years, and we've seen the sales uplift.

"Ultimately that is the future of print. I don't think it's going to be disposable volume; it's going to be luxury niche products."

So will Attitude make it to another 300 issues? Styles' dream is that it will once again be a changed magazine if and when it does.

"When I launched the Attitude Awards, I said I hope with all my heart that one day we don't need to do this. That one day this will appear as ridiculous as running a set of awards for people who are left-handed or wear green jumpers. Ultimately then Attitude becomes a different kind of magazine.

"Then you see some of the stuff that's written in the tabloids now, especially about transgender people. It's ignorant, it's evil and when we talk about using our platform with care, you see people there using a platform in such a way that it can do nothing but engender ignorance and intolerance and hatred and trouble.

"We sadly carry on our own website two or three times a week stories about people who've been beaten in the street or attacked in some way shape or form be they LGB or T. So there's still work to be done, sadly. The need for this magazine will see me out I think. That utopian world where Attitude was a different magazine and the awards weren't necessary isn't here yet, and won't be for a while."

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Never-say-die Attitude: a boundary-pushing magazine 300 issues on

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A lot can happen to a magazine, and the readership it serves, over the course of 300 issues. Standing testament to that is Attitude, the gay men's magazine which has been witness to profound change in both publishing and society since Boy George became its first cover star in May 1994.

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Full Press pack

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Theory

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Basic overview
Attitude (often stylised as attitude) is a British gay lifestyle magazine owned by Stream Publishing Limited. It is sold worldwide as a physical magazine, and as a digital download for the iPad and iPhone via the App Store, and for Android devices via the Android Market. The first issue of attitude appeared in May 1994. A separate Thai edition has been published since March 2011, editions in Belgium and the Netherlands launched in February 2017

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Background to ownership

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Vitality Publishing sells Attitude magazine to new company

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Gay lifestyle magazine Attitude taken on by newly formed publishing and events company Attitude Media. By Mark Sweney

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https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/prince-william-on-the-front-of-attitude-magazine-continues-the-gay-medias-glorification-of-white-cis-a7085686.html

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Media Studies - Clay Shirky's End Of Audience Theory - Simple Guide For Students & Teachers