You can sell a magazine on a cover photo but you can always sell it on a coverline

This cover on the front of Rolling Stone magazine was taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz just hours before the ex Beatle was shot dead in Dec 1980.

It has become one of the most iconic magazine covers of our time and formed the beginning of Mel Nichols' second presentation to Uclan magazine students yesterday

Mel reminded the audience of the words of David Hepworth that magazine covers are

about ingenuity and are the art of the possible

Covers he continued to say are the clear communication that are critical for getting the impulsive buy.

Magazines have to sell themselves for every issue and the poor cover can lose you a lot of readers.

Yet his presentation showed just how often bad covers get to the new stands and lack some of the attributes of what a cover should convey.

Most importantly they should convey the brand of the magazine.

Surprisingly it is the cover line rather than the image that Mel thinks is the most important

if you can only have one thing on a cover it is the cover line.You may sell a cover on an image but you can always sell it on a cover line

For a successful cover strategy, three crucial things are required.

1.Visibility
2.Stories and
3.Ideas.

and perhaps the most important.........deliver what it says on the tin