Stellar has been on a mission to own the Sunday reader since it launched in August last year.
One year on and 48 issues later, the glossy magazine has reached a readership of just over one million.
“It’s a solid start and we definitely surpassed expectations, but being the ambitious person I am, I’d like to hit 1.5 million in the next six months,” editor-in-chief Sarrah Le Marquand tells AdNews.
Stellar is distributed through The Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Herald Sun and The Sunday Mail. It replaced the Sunday Style, aiming to bring a more luxury feel to weekend readers.
David Jones, Myer and Woolworths are just a few of the big brands partners that have appeared in Stellar.
“Stellar sits in a unique space because it's newspaper content through the magazine lens,” Marquand says.
“The learning curb for me has been to honour and respect the place that Sunday has in a reader’s mindset – the weekdays are chaos and Saturday is often a day for errands and kids sport, but Sunday is a really removed day.
“The first few issues of Stellar were primarily beautiful but also substantial, but there were some harder news stories too. We’ve pulled back on that. It doesn’t mean we don’t touch harder stories or shy away from big issues, but we don’t lobby or hit people over the head with big issues.”
Apart from the pivot away from hard news stories, Marquand has not had to make any other changes to the content, sticking to core pillars of fashion, beauty, home, travel and food.
“We really celebrate our own stories and I’m proud to say we haven’t bought a single story. All our content is completely commission by us and we are possibly the only magazine that can lay to that claim,” Marquand says.
“A lot of magazines rely on third hand innuendo and gossip, but the people we write about are people we have actually spoken to. We have a first run policy.”
The magazine has had exclusive stories with high-profile stars, including Elle Macpherson, Serena Williams and Moriah Carey.
It is often a place where high-profile Australians will tell their side of the story, with Karl Stefanovic giving his first interview after his marriage break-up and Amber Sherlock speaking out about jacket-gate.
Karl Stefanovic spoke out about his marriage breakdown in Stellar
As readership has climbed, advertiser interest is also building, Marquand says, as the publication explores other commercial partners.
Most recently Stellar introduced sampling with L’Oreal.
“Monthly magazines have been doing sampling for a long time, but for weekend magazines it’s a new innovation,” Marquand says.
The Stellar readership skews towards female, with 68% readership being females and 32% male. With an average income of $64k Stellar doesn’t sit in the luxury space, but somewhere in the middle.
“We have an unusually diverse audience – we aren’t on the luxury end of the market but we are certainly not on the mass market end either. Our biggest selling point is the level of engagement, which is now unparalleled, and we will prove that when we release our research,” Marquand says.
News Corp has commissioned a neuroscience study for Stellar. The results will be shared in coming weeks.
Catch the new issue of Stellar this weekend, featuring Nicole Kidman on the cover.
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