Elle Macpherson, Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Hawkins: How Stellar encourages readers to sit down on a Sunday and read the paper
Since launching in 2016, glossy magazine Stellar has aimed to be at the forefront of the conversation around lifestyle and women’s magazines. Now celebrating its third birthday, editor-in-chief Sarrah Le Marquand looks back on launching a print title after print had already ‘died’ and securing the interviews nobody else gets.
Was 2016 the right time to launch a print publication with a focus on women’s lifestyle content? If you look at the statistics, and the debates about the death of print that have raged for many years, probably not. But if you look at the success of Stellar, the glossy weekend title available with The Sunday Telegraph, maybe it was. Editor-in-chief Sarrah Le Marquand certainly thinks so.
Stellar editor-in-chief Sarrah Le Marquand
“You’ve got to honour where the readers are and right now, on a Sunday in Australia, people are still reading a Sunday newspaper. The Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Herald Sun are two of the most read papers in the country. That audience is already so massive, it’s really helped Stellar carve out this special claim, and then it’s about building integrity and trust, and while that can live on in any medium, I do think print is the natural home of products that people feel like they can trust,” says Le Marquand.
Stellar is almost exactly the same product as the old Sunday magazine, which News shut down to make way for Sunday Style. And now they’ve gone back to the same format, but rebranded it Stellar.
The only difference is that Stellar has fewer pages, slightly smaller dimensions and (of course) fewer staff.
To talk about Stellar as being a new product makes me shake my head in disbelief.
Stellar never, ever enters my consciousness and I am their target audience. Last I heard the Sunday papers circulation figures were spiralling down so I suspect this is all promotional hot air.