Fashion Magazine Lucire Understands The Importance Of A Hot Cover

Two days ago I wrote about the importance of connecting companies with worthy causes in order to get the word out.

Lucire, a global fashion magazine, applies a similar principal -- doing what's necessary to advance a greater good. It understands, for example, that in order to successfully showcase and promote new designers, it must first lure in readers. And two of the best ways to do that is by featuring an attractive model or celebrity on the cover and by offering its readers stories about celebrities.   

One reader recently criticized Lucire for placing Nicky Hilton on its cover ("Aren't there decent, hardworking women who have 'earned' their right to publicity from more then just being able to wear expensive clothes that reveal every part of their body or have boyfriends or husbands they can dump every few weeks?"). To which Publisher Jack Yan responded:

"This is unfair. What of all the times Lucire has talked about women who, in your thoughts, are deserving? All those women who are ignored by the mass media whose careers we have essentially created? The designers we have brought into the limelight...because they don't, or didn't, have a marketing budget to get them there?

To answer your... question, yes: there are women who have earned that right, and we profile them more regularly than any other magazine in our category. Including in the very issue you complain so vehemently about.

Giving one of the "spoiled brats" one article in eight years does not seem to be the sort of capital crime you make it out to be....

But think about this: if I put an unknown on the cover, will I get as many buyers? This is not a financial question. For inside the same issue of Lucire were worthy women, whose stories would otherwise get ignored. I would rather have 80,000 people read those stories because Miss Hilton is on the cover, than 40,000 read them because she is not."

By the way, Jack has a brand new blog, The persuader. You'll learn about the inner workings of the fashion industry from someone who is both media savvy and has a strong social conscience.

Additional Info: In a comment to this post, Jack talks about an article on "honour killings" (a misnomer if ever there was one) that will be published in the March issue of Lucire.

Comments

[Jack Yan]

Thank you for quoting me, Andrea: I feel privileged. I should follow up what that reader wrote privately to me: she had met Miss Hilton in person, too, and had a negative opinion of her, so she was not criticizing in isolation. I didn’t feel it right to publish anything she told me in private, so this was missing from her message.
¶ But I do believe (and agree with you) that my job is to get the word out on many of the world’s important issues; and, in fashion and beauty, talk about entrepreneurs who are giving their businesses a strong effort. In next month’s Lucire, for example (I hope this doesn’t sound like an advertisement, but since this is not the same issue that comes out in the US …), we discuss the plight of Palestinian women and the “honour killings” that take place in the occupied territories. Saria Rees-Roberts provides some basic steps on what Israel and the Palestinian Authority can do—which I hope we can push as a member of the media.