Out of Focus
CONSUMING INTEREST
By LESLIE ADRIAN
These are birthday thoughts prompted by the anniversary of the Consumer Council's monthly magazine Focus which at lid. for each of its two dozen pretty pages has hidden its persuaders so effectively that nobody knows they are there at all.
Remember, this was to be The Magazine that cares where your Money goes' and was to tell you 'how to get value for money.' Let us not forget, therefore, that in that first issue they went to all the trouble of tabulating a score of lipsticks on sale in Britain, costing anything from 6d. for 1.57 grammes to 29s. 3d. for 3 grammes, without naming a single ingredient (including eocene to which some lips are allergic) and with- out giving an average cost figure for the stuff itself minus the case.
Granted cosmetics are a tough and touchy subject, because they sell mostly on myth (though, I would guess, not susceptible to negative slogans like `Kleenkreem Repels City Grit'), but that feature would have left most women with a question mark not a decision. Which? would have done it better, but they never have. So, one point to Focus for filling a gap; cancelled for not doing a thorough job.
Again, in its second issue Focus did an impres- sive job on solid fuel, bang in the middle of the season when you cannot have it delivered until you no longer need it. Every kind of coal and coke was priced, described and identified, but no objective scale was offered for comparing the only thing that really matters, the average cost of heating an average room, given standard con- ditions. Readers could have used some calcula- tions such as those offered by Alan White in his Home Heating (EUP, 7s. 6d.)—one cubic foot of room needs five British Thermal Units an hour and so forth. All the fuels were given BTUs per pound, but people like to have their sums done for them. They could work out their own best buy, but this was to be the magazine that shows how to get value for money.
Come to think of it, the running slogan only says that it 'Cares where your money goes.' But not enough. So Which? has the edge still as well as more than ten times the circulation. There were features in Focus that promised practical help. Such was 'Approved,' a monthly briefing on exemplary firms like Marks and Spencer and the Guild of Professional Launderers and Dry Cleaners. There were good, strong sermons like Tibor Barna's on premium petrols, that gave wider currency to his minority report in the Monopolies Commission Report on petrol retail- ing than it might otherwise have had. Courageous campaigns like Elizabeth Ackroyd's against the
Caxton Publishing Company were a tonic. And there were much-needed exposés of self-appointed arbiters of value for money like the quite un-' official Purchaser Advice Bureau. For this, an7 much more, all praise.
But the Caxtons and the .PABs need the hay- maker that only the press can deliver. When Focus had Julian Jeffs criticise the wine trade last November under the witty title 'There's no place like Beaune' (instead of 'Not a Beaune I would pick'), no one but Mr Jeffs took a blind bit of notice. And he had a letter circulated to say that he hadn't said certain things about bottle capaci- ties and alcoholic strengths that had appeared in the published version of his article. But when the Sunday Times let fly the wine trade went into special session. What Focus needs is deep focus rather than broad beam, digging deep into one sore subject till the blood (or wine) spurts. Never mind the big, big half-tones and generaus artwork. Just dole out the plain truth in big, hard lumps four or six times a year. And divert all the money such economies would release to massive research projects into such matters as the building industry or motor-car servicing, combining the devastating detective work of the Insight team with the painstaking precision of Which? Have people in the field nosing out poten- tial scandals such as cut-price motor insurance, then worry it to death and print the results. The disbelief such an exercise would release would really make news. It might even openly persuade people to subscribe to Focus.
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