Magazines: Oh Comely - Audience

Our second Magazine Close-Study Product is the niche women's lifestyle publication Oh Comely - which rebranded as simply Oh then closed down completely.

The Oh Comely CSP pages we need to study are available here - you'll need to log in to your Greenford Google account to access them and will also be given colour copies in class. We'll be doing a close-textual analysis of the pages as part of our work on this topic.

This week, we need to study both the target audience for Oh Comely and the audience pleasures that readers get from the magazine. First, let's cover the basics about the magazine.  

Notes from the lesson

Oh Comely magazine is a niche women’s lifestyle publication with a strong feminist perspective. It launched in 2010 and publishes six issues a year. It describes itself:

“Oh Comely is a curious, honest and playful independent magazine. It’s a place to meet strangers, hear their stories and look at life a little differently – where our readers are our writers and our models, too.

“Each issue we pick a theme and see where it takes us. We try something old, something new and something that scares us a bit. Then we present our findings in a beautiful, artbook style, putting new writing, photography and illustration talent at the heart of it.”

[Source: Oh Comely magazine website]

Oh Comely audience

Social Media Reach: 100,000 
Readers Per Issue: 25,000 
Average Age of reader: 27 
Sold through independents, WHSmith and international outlets

Oh Comely offers: “Access to a difficult to reach and highly-targeted niche demographic of creative women who spend money on the things they love.”

“Oh Comely is a powerful mix of words and pictures, stylishly presented and much loved by its readers. It provides an alternative to the ‘pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap’ aesthetic of mainstream magazines for young women, and this is why it has carved a loyal niche of fans. It is a breath of fresh air for a creative audience desperate to find something that speaks to them directly in an accessible, intelligent and interesting voice.”

[Source: ohcomely.co.uk/advertise]

Psychographics

Oh Comely magazine's description of itself would suggest targeting the Reformer and Explorer psychographic groups with an emphasis on creativity, self-discovery and a rejection of consumerism and commercialism.

Audience pleasures

There are many potential audience pleasures for Oh Comely readers. Applying Blumler & Katz’s Uses & Gratifications theory, three in particular would be:

Personal identity: Readers enjoy having their quirky, creative lifestyle and feminist viewpoint endorsed and reflected by the magazine.

Personal relationships: Oh Comely is presented in a particularly personal way. It is the creation of three university friends, the magazine offers background on the contributors and readers are encouraged to ‘get to know’ the editorial team.

Surveillance: Oh Comely deliberately looks to inform its readers about niche stories, events and people.

Oh Comely - Audience blog tasks

Read Meet the Editor - Oh Comely in Media Magazine 65 (p26). You can find this in our Media Magazine archive. This gives you a brilliant introduction to the magazine. Answer the following questions:

1) Summarise the ownership and production of Oh Comely - how did it start and who owns it?

2) What is the print circulation and how many subscribers do they have?

3) How does the editor Alice Snape characterise the typical Oh Comely reader?

4) What are the key aspects of the magazine's design aesthetic discussed by the editor? How might this link to audience pleasures?

5) How does the magazine represent women in terms of its production team and editorial decisions?


Now read the Oh Comely website page on advertising and audience to get a good idea of the demographics and psychographics for the Oh Comely target audience. Answer the following questions:

1) How does Oh Comely introduce itself ('what it's all about')?

2) How do the print circulation/readership statistics for Oh Comely compare to Men's Health?

3) How is Oh Comely distributed to the audience?

4) What do you think the target audience demographics for Oh Comely might be? Some details are provided by the magazine (e.g. average age 27) and you can fill in further gaps using the Media Magazine interview with the editor.

5) What psychographic groups might be attracted to Oh Comely? If you've forgotten this, revise psychographics here!

6) What social class classification would you expect most Oh Comely readers to be? Why?

7) What level of education would you expect for most Oh Comely readers? Why?

8) What audience pleasures are offered by Oh Comely?

9) It has been suggested Oh Comely is a “magazine about people, their quirks and creativity rather than money and what it can buy”. How does the design and advertising content of Oh Comely support this view?

10) Why do you think Oh Comely was able to build a loyal audience of subscribers in the years before it closed down? Think about audience demand, rival magazines and the overall media landscape in the digital age.

Due date on Google Classroom