When it comes to the audience of a product, industries must identify their target audience. The target audience is made up of demographics–race, gender, age group, household income, etc.–and psychographics–attitude, motivation, behavior, personality type, etc. Both XXL Magazine and Rolling Stone Magazine are music and pop culture related, but they each have their own separate target audiences. Rolling Stone targets A broader audience than XXL, where Rolling Stone targets both men and women evenly, mainly white (71% of their audience is white), ages 18-49 (makes up 59% of their audience). XXL, on the other hand, is predominantly male (78%), African American (67%), age 21-29 (50%). While both XXL and Rolling Stone are magazines that cover similar genres, they cover those genres in their own unique ways to appeal to their respective audiences.
XXL is a hip-hop magazine that targets specifically African American men aged 21-29. This specific edition (April 26, 2022 issue) features Playboi Carti–a popular rapper–on the cover with the words “one of a kind” gracing it next to him. One page is entirely dedicated to the rapper Future and a timeline of all of his album releases. There is a Question and Answer publication with Playboi Carti where he elaborates on how he is “one of a kind” as stated on the cover. There was also a piece on Kanye West and how the only people truly defending him in his scandal with Kim K and Pete Davidson are his true friends, making this a real eye-opening experience for Kanye. There are lots of pieces with figures around the hip-hop scene, there is a page dedicated to news about DaBaby. This magazine also contains lots of different fonts, styles, colors, etc. to make it stand out to a much younger audience. XXL does a good job of knowing their audience and what they would want to see and read about to get them to continue reading their issues as they come out.
On the other hand, Rolling Stone is a general pop culture and music magazine that features popular Youtuber Mr. Beast on the cover (labeled the Creator’s Edition). There are also previews for the other featured stories on the cover–A piece on Bella Poarch and “Class of 2022 Rising Stars”–with Mr. Beast in the background laying on a canvas of money, with money covering his torso. This shows the status that Mr. Beast and creators alike hold in our society. They also have a “Creators to Watch” publication. This edition is very specific to the influencer side to pop culture over music. It also seemed as though Rolling Stone was trying to put out publications that anyone would read. For example, there is a memorial story on Taylor Hawkins–the late drummer for the Foo Fighters–that could appeal to the older part of their target audience, whereas all of the publications on influencers appeals to the younger generation–men and women alike. Differently from XXL, the way that Rolling Stone displays their pieces is more bland, for they use less unique fonts, less color, etc. Reading Rolling Stone was like a step up from reading a novel for me. When I read XXL, I was actually thoroughly enjoying it, and I felt engaged with the magazine because of all of these cool colors, fonts, etc. All in all, Rolling Stone Magazine definitely is much more broad than XXL in terms of what they produce due to the spread in their target audience being a mainstream magazine.
When looking at the media kits for both magazines, I found something interesting. The way that each magazine prices their ads are very different. For example, XXL prices their ads by per inch and per word, and Rolling Stone is priced by whether the ad has color, how much of the page is covered by the ad–full-page, half page, and quarter page–instead of by inch. To buy space for an ad in XXL, you can expect to pay $495 per inch and $11.95 per word. In Rolling Stone, however, to buy a full page ad is $122,941(four color) and $110,650 (Black and White). A half page ad is $73,760 (four color) and $66,390 (Black and White). Cover ads range from $153,680 to $114,950 depending on which one you buy. Looking at this, Rolling Stone’s prices are a lot more “scary,” per se, because of the high numbers. Their prices are also that high because they have a wider range for their target audience, so you would think that they sell much more than XXL, right? That is wrong, for in 2012, XXL was the highest selling magazine in their category over Rolling Stone magazine. The seemingly low prices to place an ad in XXL and the higher sales should mean that there are more ads bought for XXL.
When looking through the magazine, I found something that surprised me after looking over the media kits. The amount of ads in XXL Magazine was nothing compared to the amount of ads in Rolling Stone. This is likely because Rolling Stone is the “mainstream” magazine that has a much broader audience than that of XXL. Rolling Stone featured ads from companies like Meta, Fancy Cat treats, Scope Mouthwash, a new show on Hulu, Dog Chow, and Stihl. XXL featured ads from Copenhagen, Slam Goods, and Branson. As stated earlier, there were barely any ads in XXL compared to Rolling Stone. I believe that this actually helps me choose XXL over Rolling Stone because XXL is filled with content and not ads, they appeal more to the consumer and not the ads put into it. XXL lets their brand sell itself, where it seems that Rolling Stone relies on heavy advertisement endorsements with other companies in their magazine to sell it.
Rolling Stone and XXL are both great magazines, but they appeal to different audiences of the same genre. XXL targets mainly black men in their twenties, where Rolling Stone targets white men and women from age 18-49 (a much broader audience). I think that XXL is a better brand due to them selling their brand using emotion, they make their magazine look different (colorful, cool fonts, pictures that look very nice) to make the consumer happy, where Rolling Stone relies heavily on the logos that their ads bring to the table to buy their consumers. I think the 2012 calendar year is a great example to show that people do not want advertisements shoved in their faces, for they did not pay to see these ads–or so they think–they paid to read the content of the magazines. Both XXL and Rolling Stone are magazines that I like, and they target very different audiences, but I think that XXL does a much better job at bringing in buyers than Rolling Stone does because of what they put into their magazine and how they make it look.
Works Cited
- 2012 Media Kit – AMERICA\’S Media Marketing – Free Download PDF, https://nanopdf.com/download/2012-media-kit-americas-media-marketing_pdf.
- 2022 Media Kit – Rolling Stone. https://brandstudio.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Rolling-Stone_Media-Kit_January-2022_FINAL-compressed.pdf.
- “2022-05-01rollingstone_compressed. Pdf.” Google Drive, Google, drive.google.com/file/d/1gMmMgE8d9tN2m4Lu7v5u6ki4K2xTXiVB/view.
- Xxlstaff. “Playboi Carti Covers XXL Magazine’s Spring 2022 Issue.” XXL Mag, 12 Apr. 2022, www.xxlmag.com/playboi-carti-xxl-magazine-spring-2022-issue-cover/.