THIS IS LIFE

Temptation island

Leading lights from international men's magazine 'Maxim' talk about babes, boys and DNA

VANNIYA SRIANGURA

On the evening of March 30, the warm and welcoming Ko Samui, which has long been regarded as Thailand's own Fantasy Island, turned into something more like Temptation Island, with sexy models in hot pants and bikinis lining up at the island's Q-Bar to welcome 60 fun-loving delegates from all over the world.

It was all part of the three-day-long "Maxim Global Conference 2007", the magazine group's first-ever international meeting in Thailand. The beachside get-together was attended by publishing executives as well as editors from as many as 30 nations in which the magazine is published.

Originating in the UK in 1995, Maxim sells over 4 million copies globally every month. It styles itself as a men's lifestyle magazine featuring guides to girls, sports, fashion, gadgets and automobiles. Versions of the magazine are sold in 45 countries, including China, Germany, Italy, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Romania and Serbia. The Thai version was launched three years ago and is now one of its successful editions.

real.time managed to catch up with Kerin O'Connor, the executive director of Dennis Publishing UK, publisher of Maxim; Simon Clays, Maxim international manager; Derek Harbinson, editor-in-chief of Maxim UK and Jimmy Jellinek, editor-in-chief of Maxim USA.

"Maxim" has held annual conferences in top international cities like Las Vegas and Rome. Why Samui this year?

KERIN: We've been launching magazines in Asia for about five years and it's very important for us to have an Asian conference. Thailand is one of our most successful editions and is also one of our best friends, so the choice was easy. The country is beautiful, the people are friendly and the warm and sincere Thai hospitality is well known all over the world.

We were considering several islands. We could have gone to Krabi or Phuket but we thought Samui was more fun, more of a party town.

You have just come out from the conference room in beachwear, is this normal for your annual meetings?

DEREK: Maxim's conference is not a conference that anyone else would imagine: It's a get together of friends. Even when we're separated by thousands of miles, the editors email each other all the time. We always swap ideas, show each other photographs, and this is a chance for us to get together. It's a bit of work and a bit of a party as well.

KERIN: The most important thing about the conference is that the editors spend time with each other, not really what I say on the stage. It's all about changing ideas and knowledge. It's the culture of the company.

What did you learn from the conference?

BFJIMMY: What we have learned is how important the international community is to the entire magazine market. Especially nowadays when the world is so much more inter-connected than it was 10 years ago or even five years ago, it makes that much more difference when all 32 editions work together to reach a common goal and act together in one unit.

Someone was talking about the DNA of "Maxim". Can you define that? And what is the most distinctive DNA of the magazine?

KERIN: The DNA structure is the heart of our magazine. It is how all the editions share commonality.

One element of that is social ammunition - the little bullets that a man needs to live his life well. To be a young man these days can be quite difficult because they've got more pressure than the older generation did. Men are expected to be good at business, good with clothes, good in bed, good about how they smell, how they look and how they behave at parties. So they need things like Maxim to help guide them through the minefield of what it means to be a young guy.

DEREK: It's not just entertainment you can take out of the magazine. It's also some useful facts that you can learn and pass on to your friends. And you can feel like you are the best guy in the bar because you know stuff that your friends don't. And that's very important for a man, to feel that he knows more than his friends, whether it's something to do with clothes, with girls, or with phones. Reading our magazine should probably make you slightly better than your friends.

How about sex? Is it a part of the magazine's DNA also?

SIMON: No. It's one of the biggest misunderstandings of all. Maxim is not about sex. It's sexy but not pornographic. Part of my role is to police that, to make sure that the cover doesn't go that way.

So you don't consider "Playboy" your competitor then?

KERIN: Absolutely not. Playboy is a completely a different magazine. It's been around for 50 years and it is published according to the rules of 1958. It has nothing in common with us. We have a completely different market.

Do you have women readers?

KERIN: The average percentage of women readership in every country that we have launched our magazine is 20 percent. In the US, there are 40 million readers, three million of them are women. They like the jokes, they like the humour and they also want to understand a little bit about what men are thinking. Our magazine is very girlfriend friendly, and that's another part of our DNA.

So, are men in different countries really any different? For example, do they prefer different parts of a woman's body?

DEREK: I suppose they do. Different cultures have different ideas of female beauty. The Latin Americans, for example, prefer bigger bottoms while the British prefer bigger boobs and Germans prefer blondes.

KERIN: When we launched our magazine in Korea, we put blonde Western girls in bikinis on front covers and the sales were terrible. After six issues we said okay, we'll put Korean actresses with dresses in front covers and the sales skyrocketed.

Men in different countries are always different in details. It depends on local needs. But eventually all guys want the same thing out of life. They want to be successful, they want to be well liked by their friends, they want to look good.

Any last words?

JIMMY: I think men in general love beautiful women regardless of what they look like. And the thing about our magazine is that we're not just celebrating the beauty of women, we are celebrating women.

It's not a magazine that is used to objectify women. We are here to celebrate women, their minds, their bodies, their sense of humour, what they stand for, what they offer us as men and how they help us grow as people. It's important to remember that the reason why there are pictures of beautiful woman in our magazine is to remind us that women really rule the world, and they rule us men as well.

Bangkok Post

Last Updated : Sunday April 08, 2007