King Stakes Its Claim: A men's magazine from Harris Publications plans to give the Maxim formula some serious street cred. But will the Puffy lifestyle play in a time of war and recession?

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Dec 1, 2001 by Whitney Joiner

Flip open the November issue of hip-hop magazine XXL, and amid the promised features on rappers like Ja Rule, the Geto Boys and Fat Joe, you'll be greeted by four pages of "Eye Candy." It's XXL's most popular section, thanks to revealing photos of music-video honeys and lines like "Angela's confidence is about as full as her breasts." Now, "Eye Candy" is the hormonally charged impetus for Harris' latest magazine, King.

The urban men's magazine will pay homage to the incredibly successful Maxim formula-women and cars, gear and beer - although without the nudge-nudge, wink-wink frat-boy sense of humor. And King will have an edge that's more Puffy than preppy.

"It's not an identical translation of Maxim," says King publisher Dennis Page. "Maxim has a whole different white-boy sensibility. King is much hipper, much more hip-hop, much more street. Maxim doesn't touch anything in the urban arena."

So what does "street" mean to Page, who is also the publisher of Guitar World and Revolver? "It's the bling, it's the excess, it's the Bentleys, it's the Benz-watch any hip-hop video and you'll understand what King is about."

While the urban hook may distinguish the newcomer in an increasingly crowded field, Harris will find itself competing against the juggernaut of Dennis Publishing, which owns Maxim (circulation, 2.5 million) and Stuff(1.1 million). And while the white-owned Harris is no stranger to the urban market, with XXL and the basketball title Slam, it has suffered from racial tensions in the past, when XXL's original black staff quit after being refused an ownership stake in the title. And in a time of war and economic crisis, it's not clear if the latest ultra-luxe trends of the rap lifestyle will still play with hip-hop fans.

"It's one thing to look at naked women who are hot," says OJ Lima, executive editor of potential competitor Vibe. "That's universal. But how do you present that [lifestyle] without it seeming ostentatious at a time when people don't have a lot of money to spend? If they can do it, I tip my hat to them."

King, like Maxim and Stuff, will be stocked with lots of pictures of scantily clad women. But what sets it apart is its focus on scantily clad women of color. Other men's titles occasionally put a black or Latina woman on the cover, but the majority of women are white. "It's like, all right, we've got a new queen now," says King editor in chief Datwon Thomas.

Publisher Page expects King to be mainly a newsstand draw; Harris is distributing 500,000 copies of the premier issue, which is guaranteed to have a 150,000 paid circulation. "Magazines built out on fluffy giveaway subscriptions will ultimately die," he says.

Thanks to sibling title XXL, advertisers like Nike, Reebok and Seagram's appear in King's first issue (which has 45 ad pages), albeit at very attractive rates. Of the 35 advertisers, Page says "a good bulk" came aboard with the help of an ad package offered with XXL, which has a ratebase of 175,000 and a 45 percent sell-through.

XXL and King advertiser Stephanie Debartolomeo, director of marketing for the cognac Courvoisier, says the glitzfriendly feel of King fits in with her product: "Courvoisier is the most decadent, indulgent cognac, and King is going to be the Robb Report for the urban market."

Page knows that it's a turbulent time to launch a new title; it's why he's launching King as a quarterly and why he's keeping it quiet. "I wasn't looking to have a gargantuan launch," he says. "The key is to stake the claim and be first to this category."

Thing is, he's not really first. Smooth, another urban men's title similarly obsessed with hip-hop and women of color, launched in October, produced by single-title publisher Star Media. Owner Sandy Vaccione says she went to Harris Publications with the idea for Smooth back in March, hoping to get advertising advice, but the people at Harris discouraged her from launching the magazine.

According to Page, plans for King were underway when Vaccione met with Harris. "We told her we were working on a similar project. I felt that she was just too small to pull it off," he says.

But Vaccione says that King never mentioned a "similar project," and points out that King's prototype promises coverage of two stars--Garcelle Beauvais of "NYPD Blue" and Philadelphia 76er5 MVP Allen Iverson--who appeared on the prototype cover of Smooth. "They were so shocked that nobody had thought about doing a magazine like that," Vaccione says of her meeting with Page. "The word 'King' was never mentioned. [Page] said it was a great idea. They're much richer than I am, of course, so they will probably be able to go out and spend more money. But I'm not turning back. Being a minority, I feel lam able to contribute more to this magazine than my white counterpart." Page, who is white, declined to respond to Vaccione's comments.

COMPETITION FROM THE TRUE KING?

For now, Page doesn't consider the much larger and whiter Maxim as a competitor, viewing Stuff and Vibe as more likely rivals. But King could battle with the giant of Dennis Publishing eventually; the company has considered spinning off an urban version of Maxim, whose 9.1 million readership is 9 percent black and ii percent Hispanic, according to Mediamark Research Inc. "We've thought about nearly every demo-whether you can apply the Maxim/Stuff formula to it," says Swff general manager Andy Clerkson. "But we just launched a music magazine [Blender] a news weekly [The Week] and a fashion magazine [Maxim Fashion]--it's still something that's in our sights to do."