• by Frank Saxe , March 12, 2003

“Sex in the City” star Kim Cattrall may be big, but she will get even bigger – quite literally. Cattrall will be featured on the cover of FHM’s April issue, and will be featured on billboards in several markets nationwide as the title launches its first-ever ad campaign. In the tight men’s marketplace, FHM aims not only to boost its brand but also to increase its newsstand circulation.

“This is the first big, national consumer media campaign for newsstand that we’ve done,” explains Susan Allyn, FHM consumer marketing director. “This is a newsstand driver. I’m not looking to drive subscriptions out of this. That’s why you won’t see an 800 number or website.”

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Emap’s FHM posted a 26% increase in circulation in the second half of 2002. FHM’s total circulation was 1,061,122, up 216,995 compared to the second half of 2001. And while FHM continues to outsell the combined newsstand sales of its category competitors, including Esquire, GQ, and Men’s Journal, Allyn says their aim is increase the number of copies sold at the newsstand, which presently account for 42% of sales. “As we grew, we grew both newsstand and subscriptions but the subscriptions grew at a slightly higher rate. So we are pulling back on that now to push the newsstand ratio up further. I’d like to run at 50-50; that’s the most profitable. 60-40 would be even better, but that’s hard to maintain. It’s the best way to manage so you don’t have an over-reliance on one source or the other.”

The budget for the ad campaign runs in excess of $500,000 and will include both outdoor and radio components. “When you look at our target market, they’re guys, they’re driving, they’re young and they’re out and about, the combination of billboards plus radio was perfect support vehicle for us,” says Allyn.

In a tight economy, before the first billboard was bought Allyn first needed to convince management that there would be a payback. What helped do that was a successful test in Times Square last month, with an FHM billboard featuring its March cover filled with the women of Baywatch. “We started seeing a huge lift in newsstand sales almost immediately after it went up,” says Allyn. “It’s created a lot of buzz. We have people calling in and pleading to buy the billboard from us.” She says they will likely end-up auctioning it off on eBay and giving money to charity. It seems that was proof enough.

Billboards will go up on Viacom Outdoor spaces in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta and Detroit on Monday (3/17). They will include three different creative executions, including the April cover with Kim Cattrall and two other photos of Cattrall from her inside spread. “If anything has ever begged to be a billboard, it’s this,” says Allyn, who has high hopes for sales of the issue. Advertisers were unaware the issue would have a campaign behind it according because the marketing push was not conceived until after the issue was sold. Even so, Allyn says the issue was “heavily over budget” in terms of ad revenues.

The second component to the ad campaign is a radio buy from Infinity Radio, where it will feature 60- and 10-second commercials over a two week period. The spots will air on WFAN New York; KLSX Los Angeles; KITS San Francisco; WSCR Chicago; KYNG Dallas; WBCN Boston; and two stations in Detroit: WXYT and WKRK – stations that run the format gamut of talk to sports to rock. One place the ads won’t be heard is during Howard Stern’s radio show. Explains Allyn, “Howard has been very good to us. Many of our cover girls have showed up there, which is one of the reasons that we focused on Infinity. You would have thought that we would have had the Howard show, but Howard speaks to people who are already our readers. We were trying to reach out beyond that.”