(06-04-2018 09:54 )hairbald Wrote: Paul Raymond has twigged that by and large babeshow girls have the biggest social media followings
This claim by hairbald does not stand up to scutiny.
First of all, selecting Mayfair magazine from the Paul Raymond range and checking all girls featured in the last year, the average number of Twitter followers for the babeshow girls featured is around 48k, compared to 54k for the non-babeshow girls featured. Selecting a different magazine would probably not make much difference, as Men Only for instance seems to use pretty much the same girls.
I included Danielle Maye as a babeshow girl, as it’s not that long since she was on TV, and with a big 110k followers she helped to narrow the gap somewhat, but the non-babeshow girls still come out ahead.
A comparison can also be made with the girls who have appeared in Sixty6 magazine. They average 71k followers on Twitter, against the 48k of the babeshow girls in Mayfair, so even more of a difference, despite the Sixty6 roster including many genuine newcomers who have less than 1k followers. Without the newcomers, the difference would go through the roof.
As with Mayfair, Sixty6 can also be broken down into babeshow girls, or Studio 66 girls in this case, and non-babeshow girls. This results in an average of 51k followers on Twitter for the Studio 66 girls and 75k for the non-babeshow girls. The difference on Instagram is much greater and is another thing that goes through the roof.
Contrary to hairbald’s claim, I cannot find any evidence that babeshow girls have the biggest social media followings.
(06-04-2018 09:54 )hairbald Wrote: They have sussed that putting a Babeshow girl on the cover boosts sales even if they don't work to traditional levels.
Again, this claim does not stand up to scrutiny. I can’t find any evidence to suggest that it’s true.
In most Paul Raymond publications the girls featured tend to repeat and repeat, not only across titles, but within the same title, although they seem to largely find a new girl for the covers. The recent issue of Mayfair is advertised as featuring Holly Gibbons, Honour May and Natalia Forrest, but all have been Mayfair cover girls quite recently. It therefore makes a lot of sense that they would have someone like Kiki Daniels on this issue’s cover, whether babeshow girl or not.
It’s also notable that Paul Raymond covers don’t seem to ever mention that the babeshow girls depicted are in fact babeshow girls. They describe many of them as ‘newbie’ which in most cases is a bit of a stretch, unless they mean newbies to Paul Raymond Publications. A girl appearing on the babeshows seems never to be mentioned, which is not good for hairbald’s claim that they regard it as a selling point.
Perhaps if they mentioned the babe channels, these newbies wouldn’t appear to be so new after all?
It’s worth mentioning too that the owner of Paul Raymond has a long history of being fascinated with babe channel girls, back to the days when he first formed Bluebird Films and made frequent pronouncements of how many babe channel girls he would get to do hardcore porn. Since it’s commonly known that babe channels girls are his special favourite, it’s really no surprise to see them heavily featured in the magazines he now owns.
I say again that I can see no evidence to justify hairbald’s claim that Paul Raymond "have sussed that putting a Babeshow girl on the cover boosts sales even if they don't work to traditional levels." I don’t think they have sussed or believe any such thing.
The traditional levels part is misleading in itself, because Mayfair for example has not been a porn magazine since 2012, when it was declared to be a glamour magazine specalising in ‘mainstream tabloid page 3 models’. In other words, babeshow girls don’t need to work to what hairbald refers to as traditional levels, as Mayfair itself does not aim at these traditional levels anyway.
Incidentally, although hairbald starts out by referring to "the difference in approach from Paul Raymond mags (Mayfair, Men Only, etc) to S66 mags", the overwhelmingly most striking thing about comparing the two is actually how very much similar they are. A glamour magazine with largely mainstream tabloid page 3 models not only describes Mayfair, it’s a pretty good description of Sixty6 magazine too. The similarities between the two publications seem to dwarf any differences.
(06-04-2018 09:54 )hairbald Wrote: S66 seem to going for attractive but obscure girls.
This claim doesn’t stand up to scutiny either.
Taking hairbald’s own metric, social media followings, it’s hard to see how Sixty6 go for obscure girls. Many of their featured models have formidable social media followings, even in the multi-millions on Instagram. If we stick to Twitter, Paul Raymond magazines haven’t in the last year featured many girls with Twitter followers over 100k, but in Sixty6 this is common, with some of their models even exceeding 500k.
It's also argued by hairbald that Sixty6 has a poorer approach than Paul Raymond because Sixty6 used an American pornstar "probably unknown in the UK". But Paul Raymond magazines also use American pornstars with similar standing to the one he refers to, so hairbald doesn't have a valid argument. An American pornstar featured in Mayfair only 2 isssues ago.
(06-04-2018 09:54 )hairbald Wrote: they've got a great hook with likes of Becky, Cara and Caty who I guess have massive social media following that they are not using.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Becky, Cara and Caty don’t have massive social media following at all. Not compared to many of the Sixty6 magazine featured models.
The Studio 66 personality with the biggest overall social media followings, as far as I can tell, is Linsey Dawn Mckenzie with 119k followers on Twitter and 122k on Instagram. But this is not that significant compared to some of the non-babeshow girls in the Sixty6 magazine, whose Instagram followers are in the many millions. Take Lindsey Pelas as an example - 538k followers on Twitter and 7.2m on Instagram - and those figures are not the highest of the Sixty6 girls.
None of the Studio 66 TV girls can even remotely compete with the upper echelon of Sixty6 magazine girls for social media reach. Which brings us back to where we came in, with hairbald’s claim that babeshow girls have the biggest social media followings. A claim which is easily proven wrong.
(06-04-2018 09:54 )hairbald Wrote: Does continue to confirm that the guys in charge are a bit clueless
Perhaps hairbald is allowing his dislike of Studio 66 to cloud his judgement?
Having spent some time comparing the relevant publications, I think the very opposite is true. Sixty6 has a better approach to the market and a better position in the market than Paul Raymond Publications.
I base this conclusion on 4 factors.
Sixty6 has a much better image for the type of magazine it is than the likes of Mayfair and Men Only. Sixty6 is known as a glamour mag and has featured in national newspapers as such. The publicity has been terrific and it even gets labelled as a lad’s mag, which I’m sure they do nothing to discourage. Paul Raymond mags on the other hand are most likely porn mags in most people’s eyes - even hairbald seems to think so, judging by his comment about traditional levels. The image of Sixty6 also probably affects the types of model they can attract. Advantage to Sixty6.
Sixty6 has much bigger names than Paul Raymond Publications has these days. If you take hairbald’s metric of social media followings, its basically no contest. It's not even close. I didn’t check them all, but the most Instagram followers I could find for a Paul Raymond model was less than 1m. In comparison the first 3 Sixty6 girls I checked were all in excess of 6m. The difference is nowhere near as great on Twitter, but still significant. Of the top 10 girls across Mayfair and Sixty6 for Twitter followers, Mayfair accounted for only 3. Advantage to Sixty6.
Sixty6 has a lot of genuine newcomers, with Twitter followers of less than 1k and almost certainly girls that the magazine viewer wouldn’t have seen before. Genuine fresh faces (or should I say bodies, ha?). The girls referred to as newbies by Paul Raymond aren’t truly newbies. Felicity Hill for example had appeared on websites like Only Tease and Strictly Glamour a long time before her Mayfair debut, not to even mention her many appearances on TV. Of course she was a newbie to Mayfair, but there’s no guarantee that the reader wouldn’t have seen her before. Advantage to Sixty6.
Sixty6 so far has not been repeating girls, whereas Paul Raymond girls are constantly recycled. Jasmine Jae for example has featured in 3 of the last 9 issues of Men Only as well as managing a Mayfair appearance in the same time. The latest issue of Men Only marks her 15th Paul Raymond feature., although this is by no means an outstanding total as Cara Brett seems to have racked up as many as 32. It’s normal with a Paul Raymond publication to find that many of the featured girls have featured in the same magazine within the previous 6 months. Advantage to Sixty6.
In conclusion, I think it’s very reasonable to say that Sixty6 has a superior approach to the market than Paul Raymond Publications. This shouldn’t be a great surprise to anyone, as the owner of Paul Raymond Publications has a rather colourful record in the adult industry, to put it mildly. The losses when he ran Loaded were admitted to be in the millions and that followed remarkably high losses with Bluebird.
The only reason given by hairbald for taking a different view is that "babeshow girls have the biggest social media followings", which as we’ve seen is not just incorrect, but wildly incorrect. Here’s one final example. Sixty6 model Bianca Gascoigne has a modest social media following compared to some Sixty6 models, but she still racks up 162k on twitter and 270k on Instagram, which leaves most babeshow girls trailing by a very great distance.