What Baby Boomers read is a topic of great interest to media planners and generational marketing agencies like Creating Results.  So, when min – an authority on the consumer and b2b magazine business – welcomed the new decade with a list of the top 10 monthly magazines for the last decade, Creating Results wondered … are Baby Boomers behind the positive numbers? 

We gave a mature marketing twist to Min’s five year chart (from min’s full 5-year monthly report) listing the top 10 glossies that had a positive percentage gain in 2009 vs. 2008 and their ad page numbers from 2005-2009. 

Our new column (far right) shows the median age of the readers of each publication.  Magazines with  readerships dominated by mature consumers (Baby Boomers and beyond) are noted with an asterisk.

As you can see, six of the top ten gainers rely on a base of readers who are mature (40+).  Fitness readership is on the cusp. 

Thoughts on (Mature) Readers and Online-Offline Connections

The median age of StyleWatch readers doesn’t surprise us at all.  In youth, people are focused on fitting in.  What we do, what we wear, what we buy is part of how we are defining ourselves socially. 

As David Wolfe puts it in his must-read book, Ageless Marketing, youth is a season of acquisitiveness.  And StyleWatch fills that need effectively both online and off with features like “You Asked, We Found,” “Top 5 Looks for Less” and “Save on Star Style!” 

Past Fitness Magazine’s covers have captured women who are clearly over 30 (typically a celebrity).  And their topics often touch on tips “for any age.”  But that’s in the actual glossy publication.

Online, the Fitness website features mostly photography of 20-something women, which is disappointing.  I’m the same age as the median of their readers (39) and did not feel like the site was going to be relevant to my life.

It’s not until we’re nearly 40 that we shift our focus from things and towards experiences.  Aquisition yields to appreciation.  Saveur and Antiques effectively, beautifully promote the kinds of experiences that Baby Boomers desire – with food, with art and antiques.  Which is why we were surprised that the median age of the readership for Antiques was not higher. 

A rep from Antiques kindly noted that their circulation includes a large number of students who read the magazine through or for their degree programs.  Without these younger folks, our bet is their typical reader is quite a few years grayer more mature than 43.

One publication that seemed to show a disconnect with their mature readers was Family Circle.  Not the print version; content and photography are typically ageless.  But we find it a bit odd that Family Circle’s online home is under parents.com, when the median age of their readers is 50 – the same age the average American woman becomes a first-time grandmother. 

There’s been lots of chatter about whether print is dead.  We say “at least not yet.” As these numbers show, magazines are still very desirable to Baby Boomers and older consumers – and by staying relevant to these mature readers, you can not only survive but thrive.

On this we give the last word to mature marketing expert Chuck Nyren, who wrote a while back about positioning magazines for Baby Boomers.

[A magazine] is like a pleasant dinner, a walk, a good movie, a good book – to be singularly appreciated. Too often, I see magazines desperately trying to compete with and within the digital nest. This nest is here to stay – but for a big part of their day Baby Boomers are happy to fly far from all the chaos and into another nest – one that is warm and nourishing.

Tags: ageless marketing, fitness magazine, min online, monthly magazines

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 8:22 am and is filed under 40+, Boomers, Mature Consumers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.