Paul Merrill, thanks for talking to us about Take 5! How are you?

Busy! We’ve just launched Take 5’s monthly edition, a weekly podcast, a Take 5 dating service and a weekly newsletter – so there’s a lot going on!

You’ve just launched the first real life mag in Australia for 20 years. Tell us how your brand new bumper monthly edition is different to its weekly stable-mate?

Well, we asked our readers what they wanted more of in Take 5, and they replied ‘everything’! One edition a week simply wasn’t feeding their appetite. The monthly is bigger and has more pages. It also has more lifestyle elements like travel, health, fashion, beauty and advice, but still manages to have more real life stories than any mag in Australia – not to mention puzzles prizes worth over $32,000.

How did you know the demand was there for more Take 5?

We’ve been growing our market share for years so we thought it was about time we launched something new. The monthly will increase the real life market in two ways. Firstly it’ll be an additional
purchase for existing buyers craving more of what they love, and secondly it’ll appeal to more casual or lapsed readers who’ll soon realise there isn’t another mag in the country that’s better value for money! A major launch such as this shows Bauer’s faith that ‘if you build it, they will come’!

You’ve won more awards than anyone else in the last couple of years – Magazine of the Year two years running, Editor of the Year, Best Marketing Campaign and even the Mumbrella Excellence Award – the industry’s most prestigious trophy.

Yes, all of those were huge honours, and testament to the incredibly talented editorial, advertising and marketing teams that work on Take 5. It was also nice that the judges recognised that no other publication is so connected to its readers and delivers content you simply can’t get elsewhere. We’re about celebrating Australia’s heartland, a demographic often overlooked by marketers. Whereas some mags get all pretentious with their curated beetroot essence soufflés and deconstructed octopus confits, we show how to make great family tucker on a tight budget.

What does winning the top gong at the Publish Awards mean to you and the Take 5 team, and what do you think it means for the health of ‘print’ in general.

It was a huge vote of confidence in the staple making industry! Print is more relevant than ever. Name anything that smells better than a brand new magazine.

Side bar – whose desk do the awards sit on? Or do you all get to time-share? How is the award shelf looking now?

We’ve built a shrine for them in the middle of the office and perform tantric yoga around it after the morning coffee run.

And now for another ripper! Take 5 has just launched its own weekly podcast series, Take 5 Ripper Real Life . Tell us about that.

Ah, now we’re very excited about this. Our aim is to make This American Life sound like Brendan Fevola’s Mad Monday diary! We basically choose our most jaw-dropping real life stories and then sit around arguing about them and drifting off-topic.

What else has Take 5 got in the pipeline at the moment?

We’ve just launched Take 5 Dating, an online dating service which is going gangbusters. We’ve already had over 2,000 people sign up. It’s our way to breed the next generation of Take 5 readers!
And our new weekly newsletter is already one of the biggest in the media with 70,000 subscribers. And watch this space for more news later in the year!

What about exciting advertising opportunities in the Take 5 environment? What innovations or new opportunities can we expect?

Advertisers love Take 5 because we have so many innovative ways to help them get their message across to a huge audience. We have yet to find a single campaign where we couldn’t integrate it
skilfully and over-deliver. In fact, I’ll issue the challenge now – if we can’t find a way to make your strategy come alive, I’ll eat a large hat live on the podcast!

Paul, thank you for taking 5 with us to talk about the new monthly Take 5, the Ripper Real Life Podcast and more. We can’t wait!