Hong Kong
Bitchslaps Between Hong Kong’s Socialite Magazines
Daaahling, the world economy is collapsing, but nobody seems to have told Hong Kong’s socialite magazines (or their luxury advertisers).
Prestige Hong Kong and Hong Kong Tatler both published forest destroying 808-page issues this month and - not surprisingly - there is now a bit of a catfight over who is number one.
Prestige weighed in at more than 3 kgs to mark the magazine’s third anniversary. The issue includes a 108-page luxury travel pull-out and Prestige partnered with top fashion houses to choose socialites to represent brands.
Published by Hong Kong-based entrepreneur Brian Chow, Prestige claims a fivefold increase in advertising revenue. The magazine’s circulation has grown by 50% to 30,000 copies each month, Marketing reports, but did not specify the timeframe of growth.
Bitchslapping back, Hong Kong Tatler claims that in addition to publishing the bulky Hong Kong edition, the combined regional Tatler page count of 3,214 pages of luxury lifestyle content is a regional record. 
Other Tatlers produced by the Hong Kong-based Edipresse include Philippine Tatler, with 356 pages, along with editions in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Korea, Shanghai, Taiwan, Macau and Beijing.
This Thursday, September 11, Edipresse Asia CEO Barrie C. Goodridge will host the Tatler Ball at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Will Brian Chow of Prestige receive an invitation?
UPDATE: Peter Comparelli, editor of Prestige, now adds espionage to the toxic mix:
We have 808 pages in two books, not including covers. Tatler has 794 in three books, not including covers (one reverse gatefold).
Newsweek had reported that our Third Anniversary Issue would be 800 pages, so Tatler went for it too. Both being “808″ was a superstitious coincidence or a bit of espionage on their part.
For the record, we beat them onto newsstands by six days and ours is a better read! Who’s your Daddy?
Guess we won’t be seeing Peter at Tatler’s ball either.
Any reply from Tatler?
Discussion
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3 comments for “Bitchslaps Between Hong Kong’s Socialite Magazines”
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Link up:
My newspaper articles:
Random Faceroll
I have the feeling they’re overdoing it on style, or did you make that obvious?
I cannot comment on distributing a 3KG magazine but at 30k copies/month I can think of a lot more useful magazines.
tatler: a lot on design and padding the magazine with unreadeable material.
who cares about 3000 blah blah blah of pages. why ride on the other titles. prestige hk just pushing their one issue becos it can stand on its own. do hk people really care about how fat the macau t/ or sing t issue is? gosh i dont. .do advertisers care? dunno. but tatler rates low so it really doesnt count for much
prestige: looks better; revenue up; since their rates are higher than tatler’s now.
tatler ball: grapevine has it that they are getting the big heave ho no from quality socialites since this legendary annual do has become so declasse, boring and filled with brand and ad reps. gave tables aways to pr companies to help them fill the gaps and advertisers. i thought these soicety dos were supposed to have society wannabe big wigs clambering over themselves to get invited…
poor boring tatler…
peter comparelli/ brian chow/ gordon lam… thumbs up all around
Strange, how you are talking about Prestige or Tatler like they are real magazines rather than the queer, oddly local throwbacks to HK in the 80s when high society last mattered. Could any of the editors take a copy of these magazines to the real world like London or NY and not fear being laughed out of a meeting? Come on. Prestige features 200 pages of society pictures, 200 pages of fashion show runway content provided by design houses, 8 pages of the publisher’s birthday party…shall we go on…all showing off the same group of people over and over again. What’s to really read? Does the editor do any real editing beyond collating the vast pages?
And the real story isn’t mentioned: That Prestige started the year by cutting ad rates in half against Tatler to pull away business. And now the war is on to hang onto the ad clients while raising prices. Will Tatler fight back? Can HK support two society magazines?