The Readers Are Over 40 But Don’t Tell Advertisers!
- September 6th, 2010
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More, the magazine from the publisher Meredith for women over 40, ran an article in its most recent issue on how to seem younger. Among the advice: get your bikini line waxed, start text-messaging, and stop planning everything (the young people don’t bother with it at all).
Some readers were ruffled. “Is there only one way to be an acceptable ‘over 40’ woman?” a reader named Marla Miller asked on More.com. “Other magazines don’t tell you the content is for 40 or older and then ask you to ‘act younger,’ ” a reader named Catherine Lee wrote.
That is the challenge for a magazine whose organizing principle, aging, provokes anxiety among its readers, says Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times.
“Don’t take it seriously,” Lesley Jane Seymour, the editor in chief of More, said in a recent interview. “We’re making fun of ourselves. We don’t take aging seriously. It happens to everyone. You can’t avoid it.”
More certainly does not. Age infiltrates almost every article, and while it is a touchy subject for readers, advertisers are wary about it as well. More’s average reader is 51, among the oldest in the magazine business, making selling ads a challenge, More executives say. While it tackles ageism in its pages, it is getting a good dose of it from advertisers.
Meredith introduced More in 1998 to attract baby boomer women who were hitting middle age and had income to spare. The magazine has grown steadily, increasing its guaranteed circulation almost every year, most recently in February to 1.3 million.
Its newsstand sales were down just 3 percent in the last six months of last year, the most recent period available, compared with declines for competitors like O, the Oprah Winfrey magazine, (down 25 percent), Real Simple (down 6 percent) and Martha Stewart Living (down 17 percent), according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
When Ms. Seymour began in early 2008, she made a few changes. She had spent her career at women’s magazines, including as editor in chief of Marie Claire, Redbook and YM. After reader research suggested that older women felt ignored on the what-to-wear front, she increased style and beauty coverage. But her fashion spreads are not advice on what pantsuit to wear to hide your flabby arms. Ms. Seymour puts over-40 models in tiny plaid shorts from the Limited and bright chiffon Catherine Malandrino tank tops.
Ms. Seymour, 52, said some people might say, “You’re not showing me things with sleeves.”
“I think that’s outdated,” she said. “They know how to dress for their bodies.”
Other features in More speak directly to working women, like its finance and career section. There are no articles on how to organize your child’s closet or find a peaceful moment amid family chaos. Talking to readers led her to another addition: more sex coverage.
Ms. Seymour ran several sex articles in May, and their perspective was telling. Instead of Cosmopolitan-like tricks to please your man, or assurances to women that their sex life was just fine already, the message was blithely selfish: basically, have sex when you want to, and skip it when you don’t.
“It’s a focus on you, and I don’t think that’s a problem,” said Bonnie Barest, executive vice president of the media-buying company Optimedia, whose clients include L’Oréal USA. “You know you’re going to be reading about things that are relevant to you as opposed to, ‘Do it for your family.’ ”
Whereas 40 years ago that would have been a feminist statement, today it is just an attitude. It is one Ms. Seymour seems to embody, too. The day of the interview, she was wearing a cornucopia of accessories: strappy silver and cork sandals, gold bracelets, three rings, a gold coin necklace, enamel-and-gold hoop earrings, a silver belt and a large plastic turquoise watch. Her toes were painted a metallic green, her nails a bright pink, and somehow, the whole thing looked both pulled together and like she had had fun getting dressed.
The model for the magazine’s sharp, irreverent tone, she said, is the men’s magazine Esquire. But Esquire, though its average reader is about 45, hardly deals with age at all, and puts people ranging from age 23 (Megan Fox) to 79 (Clint Eastwood) on its covers. It’s hard to imagine a men’s magazine as concerned with growing older.
Anne E. Barrett, an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University, said the magazine’s focus is a result of how aging women and aging men are perceived differently.
“Physical attractiveness plays a large part in how women are valued socially, and we have youthful standards of beauty so age erodes a social asset, where for men, age can enhance their most valued assets, their earnings potential and achievement in the public sphere,” she said.
So advertisers penalize More for its age: The average More reader makes about $93,000, around $30,000 more than the average for Vogue, Allure or Harper’s Bazaar, according to Mediamark Research and Intelligence. But More has hardly a luxury ad in it.
And they penalize the magazine because its readers are female. The More reader makes a lot more than the average reader of Esquire, at about $66,800, and GQ, at about $75,100. But where GQ, Esquire, and the younger women’s magazines are filled with ads for designer clothes, fragrances and expensive accessories, the ads in More suggest that when rich women hit 40, they yearn for cheap processed foods.
The July/August issue’s ads included Crystal Light, Pringles, Coffee-Mate, packaged meals from Oscar Mayer, Bertolli, Tyson and Marie Callender’s, and two liquor ads — for wines under $10. Oh, and Friskies.
The good news is that the mass-market base has helped protect More against the downturn. Ad pages in More are down only 2.8 percent through the year, and its September issue is down 5 percent, said Lauren Stanich, its publishing director.
The bad news is that More’s pages are not as abundant as its competitors’.
“The media departments have their segments, and I don’t know how it became 25 to 44 — excuse me, so I’m invisible?” said Brenda Saget Darling, More’s publisher. “It goes back to this American obsession with being young.”
More might still be hampered by Meredith itself. Based in Des Moines, the company is known for hearth-and-home titles like Ladies’ Home Journal and Better Homes & Gardens, which do not usually run luxury ads.
Its stock price has held up better than most other media stocks this year — at $27.95, about where it was a year ago. Analysts like that its magazines have not had the severe ad declines of other publishers (one magazine, Family Circle, will have its biggest-ever September issue this year), that it has cut costs aggressively, and that it has revenue from nonmedia sources, like branded products at Wal-Mart.
For More, however, being in the Meredith stable means it cannot be included in multimagazine sales to luxury advertisers. “No, I don’t have the package the way a Condé Nast or a Hearst do,” Ms. Darling said. “It is harder here.”
Slowly, More is starting to pick up high-end advertisers. Credit card companies have come on board, along with Tiffany and Elizabeth Arden, and Cadillac will run its first More ad in October with the introduction of the $34,155 Cadillac SRX Crossover.
“More is really geared toward the independent, self-made — whether she’s married or not — professional female,” said Sherrie A. Weitzman, divisional advertising manager for Cadillac. “Luxury vehicles are a sign of confidence, a sign of success — that’s how we market the Cadillac brand — and I believe a magazine like More fits very, very well with that target.”
But even Ms. Weitzman would like to see More’s average reader get younger.
“Cadillac, like probably most automakers, but certainly those in the luxury space, is trying to lower the median age of the car buyer,” she said.
So More is trying to get that average age a bit lower, by promoting subscriptions online, where readers tend to be younger, and by reaching businesswomen, for example, at airport newsstands.
“What would make it easier to sell advertisements is a younger age,” said Ms. Stanich, the publishing director.
Ms. Seymour interrupted. “It’s America,” she said. “You get to a certain point in your life where if you don’t laugh about it, you’ll cry about it.”
Look at your brand. . . now back at me. Now back to your brand. . . now back to me. Sadly, we’re going to tell you what you don’t want to hear about the Old Spice campaign.
