Things are far from being absolutely fabulous in the world of Irish glossy magazines. Late last month, when Smurfit Communication's chief executive, Norah Casey, admitted her company had been inflating the circulation figures of three of its flagship titles Woman's Way, Irish Tatler and U by 30 per cent, the highly competitive world of Irish magazine publishing reacted angrily.
Some of it predictably sounded like handbagging, including calls for Ms Casey's resignation. In fact, she later resigned as head of the Periodical Publishers Association of Ireland (PPAI), the magazine industry representative body. (There has also been discontent expressed by those involved in the PPAI).
Others were simply angry: "When something like this happens, there's a very real danger that we'll all be tarred with the same brush," says Michael O'Doherty, publisher of VIP magazine, adding that on the day the story came out the first fax he received was from an advertising agency looking for his circulation figures. "I was delighted to get that fax because it showed that agencies or their clients aren't going to just accept the figures they are told from a publisher from now on. "
His main title, VIP gets its circulation figure of 35,000 from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) - the industry standard. Smurfit unsubscribed to ABC some years ago and since then agencies have had to be content with the publisher's statement of their figures.
"It's completely bizarre for a magazine to trade without independent figures," says Richard Law, managing director of MediaVest, "what's to stop them saying whatever they want".
He wasn't in the least bit surprised to hear of Smurfit's overstatement of its figures. He has been sceptical of the Irish magazine industry since moving from London two years ago to head up the Dublin branch of the global networked media planning agency.
Smurfit has now subscribed to ABC but its first set of figures will not be available until January 2003 and until then advertisers are being asked to again believe a publisher's statement of circulation.
"That would not happen in any other market,"' he says. "In London a magazine without independent figures wouldn't get their toe in an advertising agency door, never mind get pages full of advertising."
Trevor White, publisher of The Dubliner, a glossy monthly magazine, is also subscribing to the ABC for the first time. "It's a straightforward measuring system and we've nothing to hide," he says, adding that he's anticipating the sort of strong figures that will continue to attract advertisers to his year-old title.
Magazines also rely on readership figures when selling to advertisers. These are compiled in the Joint National Readership Research (JNRR) survey which Lansdowne Market Research compiles mostly for the newspaper industry but which also include some magazine titles. "There's a very clear trend emerging for the readership of the long established women's magazines," says Robin Addis, director of Lansdowne. "They are losing readers."
In 2000 the magazine industry queried the accuracy of the Lansdowne research, with Norah Casey in particular saying that it did not reflect her magazine's readerhip. However, as Smurfit's circulation figures have been shown to be so inaccurate, the JNRR is the only common research that links the main magazines.
Looking at the figures for the three Smurfit titles and their competitor Image over the past 10 years, it's not just a loss, it's a haemorrhage. In 1990/91 Image had a readership of 183,000, by 2000/01 that had dropped to 95,000. For Irish Tatler, figures for the same period show a readership fall from 176,000 to 74,000. The reasons are many, not least the direct competition from editorially slick UK women's magazine titles. Also Irish newspapers have also shown themselves keen to lure female readers with magazines and editorial covering women's magazine-type issues.
Despite the competition, new Irish titles come on stream all the time. Next month Michael O'Doherty launches Kiss, a magazine aimed at teenage girls.
"We're also subscribing to the JNRR for the first time for VIP and given the type of magazine it is I feel that each copy is read by seven readers which would give it very strong readership. Whatever the JNRR figures show, at least we'll have two sets of figures to show advertisers and that is important, particularly now."
