LONDON, 13 February 2014: Bauer Media’s consumer brands have delivered strong ABC performances with heat outperforming its rivals both period-on-period and year-on-year.

Its editors and content creators continue to focus on serving audiences with entertainment and inspiration wherever, whenever and however they want it, providing impressive reach and innovative engagement opportunities for commercial partners.

Bauer Media reaches valuable audiences across multiple-platforms, offering a premium environment for advertisers to engage with consumers. The heat brand now has over 7m consumer touch points across radio, magazine, TV, online and mobile.

During the June-December 2013 period Grazia published a new season collector’s issue in response advertiser demand and the brand’s reach was grown through its website Graziadaily, its award-winning tablet edition and by launching on to mobile devices. Grazia’s innovation extended to commercial partnerships such as a summer partnership with Starbucks and Blackberry’s sponsorship of the brand’s annual Fashfactor talent search.

Mother & Baby, the number one parenting brand, relaunched with a brand new fully device-responsive website, suite of apps and eBooks. FHM celebrated its first male cover star in decades and Unilever’s Pot Noodle partnered with the brand for an exclusive six-figure cross-media deal. Empire delivered four exclusive ‘first-look’ Hobbit covers while MOJO celebrated its 20th year.

Yours continues to expand into every aspect of its readers’ lives from events to retirement services to shopping to dating. Online fashion retailer JD Williams signed as headline sponsor for the 2013 Yours Grandparent of the Year Awards, targeting the over 50s market.

Last week saw the launch of The Debrief, a new digital-first brand for constantly connected, influential ABC1 20-something women. The brand delivers a distinct mix of tailored content that mirrors the consumer’s behaviour 24/7 and provides unique new opportunities for native advertising dialogues.

Paul Keenan, Chief Executive, Bauer Media, commented:

“Bauer Media’s powerful portfolio of brands continue to focus on building engagement among valuable audiences by delivering relevant, world-class content through the right channels. This is evidenced in the performance and reach of our multi-platform heat brand and the recent launch of The Debrief, a genuinely different platform for engaging with young women.

Our ongoing commitment to product excellence is reflected in strong ABC performances from heat, which outperforms the celebrity weekly market both period-on-period and year-on-year, Yours which has had another strong period with continued stability, Garden News which delivers significant year-on-year growth and Classic Cars, which thanks to a fresh new look and new editorial franchises shows a growth of +6.05% on last period.

Commercial partners are increasingly looking for multi-platform reach and engagement, they fully understand, value and embrace the connection we have with our passionate communities of consumers. The ground-breaking neuroscience research we carried out across the heat platforms last year helped give advertisers valuable insight into the effectiveness of these cross-platform campaigns.”

CELEBRITY WEEKLIES

heat (w) – 241,328

heat has outperformed the celebrity weekly market both period-on-period (pop) and year-on-year (yoy), demonstrating its unwavering focus on delivering the very best in celebrity news and entertainment every week. The brand continues to grow across its multiple platforms. heat’s digital channels have demonstrated strong performances with heatworld consistently delivering more than 1.5 million UK unique users per month, as well as the social footprint engaging over 650K (Twitter, Facebook, You Tube and Instagram) users. heat’s unique multi-channel strategy is further cemented with heat radio delivering a solid RAJAR result of 714,000 weekly listeners. All of these channels have been brought together for the heat consumer housed within in the heat extra app, now totalling over 90,000 downloads.

Closer (w) – 337,190

Closer continues to be the highest selling full price standalone title in the celebrity weekly market. The magazine has achieved a massive market share of 19% for single issue in JD13 and the brand’s digital offering www.closeronline.co.uk  is showing excellent growth following its re-launch in September 20113 showing triple digit growth, +200% from June to December 2013.

WOMEN’S LIFESTYLE

Yours (f) – 271,025

Yours has had another strong period with yet another market-beating performance and continued stability -1.1% (pop) and -0.4% (yoy). Crucial to its success is a deep emotional connection with its 50+ readers every fortnight. This connection has enabled the Yours brand to continue to expand into every aspect of its readers’ lives from events to retirement services to shopping to dating.

Grazia (w) – 160,019

Grazia continues grow its reach to upscale and influential women across multiple platforms with Grazia Daily showing significant growth year on year. Page views for the website are up +131% and monthly unique users up +13% during 2013. At the heart of Grazia’s success is a deep understanding of its audience, a commitment to keeping the consumer in the know and consistently delivering content whenever, wherever, however she wants it.

FILM

Empire (m) – 145,117

Empire dominates the film market outselling the nearest competitor by over two to one and is the number two in the wider men’s market. Over the last six months Bauer has continued to invest in global brand growth, and as a truly cross-platform brand we have further enhanced our digital properties engaging film loving audiences across the world via our many touch points.

MUSIC

MOJO (m) – 74,203

MOJO is the biggest title in the music market, engaging its upscale loyal audience with a quality, immersive music experience.  In October 2013 the magazine celebrated 20 years of publishing excellence with a landmark, collector’s issue. The celebratory issue featured an exclusive cover hand drawn by Kate Bush which reinforced the founding MOJO principle of producing a magazine which transcends time, place and genre and simply celebrates the very best in music. The brand’s website www.MOJO4Music.com also underwent a successful relaunch in July 2013 bring compelling content to music fans 24/7.

Kerrang! (w) – 34,127

Kerrang! is the world’s largest weekly music magazine, attracting an influential, passionate young audience across its multiple platforms and engaging with over 5 million music lovers each month through online, radio, TV and print. The annual Kerrang! Awards attract the biggest names in rock and the Kerrang! Tour presents an amazing opportunity for readers to engage directly with the brand.

GARDENING

Garden News 33,688

Following its February reinvention and record-breaking performance in the first half of 2013, Garden News continues to deliver outstanding results week-on-week, culminating in the reclaiming the number one spot in the highly competitive weekly gardening market. The brand has delivered significant growth in the July-December period with sales up a remarkable +24.21% (yoy) and +0.68% (pop).

Garden Answers 17,807

Sister title Garden Answers has also performed strongly registering an impressive +7.06% year-on-year growth in the July-December period.

MOTORING

Classic Cars 35,869

Classic Cars has delivered a fantastic ABC performance during the July-December period, showing growth of +4.91% (yoy) and +6.05% (pop).

MCN (85,651)

MCN strengthened its leadership of the UK motorcycling market, growing its share of newsstand sales to over 55% and subscription sales by 15% year-on-year. The MCN digital edition, launched in February, significantly increased the title’s overseas audience, while the brand continues to grow its reach online via motorcyclenews.com and social channels. The MCN brand now engages with over 1.9m consumers through its various touchpoints.

For further information, please contact:

James Matheson, Eleanor Crossman at Braben

E: bauermedia@braben.co.uk

T: 020 7025 8021

Spokespeople available:

Abby Carvosso, Group Managing Director, Bauer Media

About Bauer Media:

Bauer Media UK reaches over 22 million UK consumers through a portfolio of world-class, multi-platform media and entertainment brands including KISS, heat, Grazia and Empire. It creates and curates entertaining media content that audiences love whenever, wherever and however they want through a multi-channel strategy and a focus on product excellence and audience insight.  The result is an exciting array of influential brands, content and talent which provide compelling and engaging advertising opportunities with valuable audiences for UK commercial partners.  Bauer Media UK is part of the Bauer Media Group, one of the world’s largest privately owned media businesses with media assets all over the globe.