Hard-bodied men once dominated newsstands and graced the cover of men’s magazines. But six years ago, Maxim magazine started a revolution – a red-hot, bikini-clad, beer-drenched revolution.

‘Sex, sports, beer, gadgets and fashion,’ said Mike Hammer, Maxim’s former executive editor. ‘These are, of course, the great pillars of the human endeavor.’

Three of Maxim magazine’s finest spoke yesterday in Studio A of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications II. They discussed the basic principles of publishing, writing and design that have helped the sexy, sarcastic Maxim build a circulation of more than 2.5 million readers.

Hammer, now the editor in chief of Stuff magazine, described Maxim’s fast-paced, explosive design and editorial strategies. Stephen Colvin, president and CEO of Dennis Publishing, detailed the publication’s jump to the United States from the United Kingdom and its rapid rise to the top of the men’s magazine market. Dennis co-founder Peter Godfrey, whose daughter is a sophomore at Syracuse University, recalled the origins of his company and the long line of ventures that preceded Maxim’s success.

Dennis, which owns Maxim and Stuff in the United States, was established in the United Kingdom and spent the ’70s and ’80s producing computer magazines and fold-out poster magazines to promote upcoming films. The company published a promotional magazine for the original release of ‘Star Wars’ and created a popular magazine for budding personal computer users in the 1980s.

But Maxim has been the company’s largest success. Today, the magazine publishes editions in 23 countries and has a higher circulation than any other men’s magazine. Stuff, which Dennis established in the wake of Maxim’s success, has grown to a circulation of more than 1.1 million.

‘The market was a lot bigger than one magazine,’ said Colvin on the creation of Stuff. ‘We were bringing beer to the desert.’

Maxim launched in the United Kingdom in 1994 and crossed the Atlantic Ocean three years later. Though the American men’s magazine segment was barren and desolate before Maxim’s arrival, few in the industry believed the magazine could succeed.

Dennis’s consultants and advertisers insisted the company didn’t have the foothold in the United States to compete in a market that seemed to be saturated by GQ, Esquire and Men’s Health.

‘Generally, they thought we were crazy,’ Colvin said.

That market, however, proved largely untapped. Since Maxim was introduced in the United States, Colvin said, the industry has grown by more than 5 million buying readers.

Maxim introduced its European editorial style to American readers and changed the face of the industry. While American magazines employed huge staffs and wrote ornate, lengthy articles, Maxim’s content was short and eye-catching. Much of the content in the first American editions, Colvin said, was produced by eight or 10 guys in one room.

‘We’re funny, sexy and useful,’ Hammer said. ‘And we tell the stories that guys want to hear.’

Today, GQ and Esquire have adopted many of Maxim’s youthful marketing tactics. Hammer says the transformation seems awkward, and he compares his competitors to old men aroused by an MTV dance party.

Maxim provided a novel, humorous, unpretentious look at masculinity, Hammer said. The publication’s British designers also pioneered techniques to incite impulse newsstand purchases, which Hammer said have been integral to Maxim’s success.

The designers create the cover and graphics based on their ‘four-second rule,’ a design technique that aims to pull the reader in with voluptuous women and intriguing headlines. Maxim’s designers realized that women in bikinis move magazines and exploited that by plastering hot, scantily clad celebrities across its covers.

Maxim’s success has also relied largely upon its expansion to new media and marketing partnerships. Maxim’s website makes an independent profit and elicits about 10 percent of new subscriptions, Hammer said. He added that Maxim brands wireless phones, CDs and the nation’s best-selling men’s hair coloring product. The magazine regularly throws Playboy-esque parties, and it even helped produce a show on NBC.

Though Maxim’s revealing cover photos and sometimes scandalous pictorals draw frequent accusations of chauvinism and objectivization of women, the magazine’s creators maintain that their publication is intended as a tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating parody of masculinity. In fact, women account for about a quarter of the magazine’s readership.

‘Men know that women are the better sex,’ Hammer said. ‘We know that we’re all just big kids inside.’

Published on October 29, 2003 at 12:00 pm