The be generation - My Generation magazine aimed at baby boomers - Statistical Data Included

Brandweek, March 5, 2001 by David Rakoff

THEY'RE BIG. THEY'RE AFFLUENT. THEY'RE A GREAT DEMO...THEY'RE BOOMERS

Here's an interesting little factoid: By the time you get to this comma, someone in the United States has turned 50. That's one person every six seconds, 51/4 million baby boomers reaching the half-century mark each year. This tsunami of humanity is by far the largest sector of the population, some 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964.

Because of its sheer mass, this generation represents the dominant social reality in our postwar culture. While its immediate elders have laid claim to the feel-good moniker the Greatest Generation, boomers have a reputation for a legendary sense of entitlement, a presumption to a position of historical importance. Despite this, however, Americans now in their 50s feel misunderstood and extremely ambivalent about who, in the broadest sense, they are or what they will do with the rest of their lives. Fortunately for boomers in search of answers, there are a couple of new magazines--My Generation and More--ready to function as spiritual guides of sorts.

"The entitlement is there, but none of the things they thought they were entitled to have actually happened," says Betsy Garter, editor-in-chief of My Generation, the bimonthly that will launch with a March/April issue. "They have their children still tugging at one side and their parents still tugging at the other. They're not as sure of who they are as we thought they would be."

With an initial guaranteed rate base of 3.1 million, My Generation is being touted as the biggest launch in magazine history. The organizational muscle behind it comes from the American Association of Retired Persons, the 20 million-member-strong lobbying group that also publishes Modern Maturity. But given the fact that much of AARP's membership still works--to say nothing of the negative, put-out-to-pasture connotations of retired--the letters now serve as acronym without portfolio. The hope is that My Generation will decalcify AARP's geriatric image yet further.

The magazine will be sent to AARP member households, in this case, members aged 50 to 55. Simultaneous with the launch of My Generation, Modern Maturity will go through a refocusing, with a redesign and a split into two separate editions--one for readers 56 to 65, the other for the over-65 set.

All of this is potentially good news for advertisers, who can benefit from a market that is focused while still being the size of Belgium. "We reach 21 million households, 34 million members," says My Generation publisher James Fishman, 60. "Advertisers can now give us three separate pieces of creative for the three cohorts the magazines are reaching."

In addition to its controlled circulation, My Generation will be available on newsstands at a cover price of $2.95. As this is entirely new territory for the publisher, a modest 50,000 copies will initially be available in 10 cities only (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.). Another 75,000 will be distributed free in public places, doctors' offices and the like. Underlining AARP's new direction, its acronym will not appear on the cover of newsstand copies (it will appear on copies sent to members' homes). Further, these 125,000 copies will not be part of the 3.1 million rate base, making a full-page buy at $120,000 quite economical.

Reaching the magazine's boomer demo can be a tricky proposition. Even more than other age sectors, boomers are mercurial: They are getting old, but they don't want to admit it.

"These people deal with a lot of information in a very media-savvy way," says Carter, a 55-year-old magazine veteran with titles such as Harper's Bazaar, New Woman and Esquire. "They're irreverent, they're not as literal And they in no way think they're getting old. They say, 'I'm not 50 the way my parents were 50.'"

This reluctance to go gently into the arms of their dotage flies in the face of what was perceived wisdom of the advertising community until fairly recently. Namely, that a person's consumer choices are, for all intents and purposes, set in stone by age 35.

"It's all based on presumptions and studies that were made in the '60s and '70s," says AARP editorial director Hugh Delehanty, 52. "All of my brand choices have changed in the last five years. Not consciously, I'm just at a different stage in my life."

Any advertiser that ignores this enormous sector of the population does so at its own peril. Especially since people are living longer than they used to. "If any client had a buyer for the next 30 years, they'd be awfully happy," says Julie Pinkwater, publisher of More. The Meredith publication, aimed at women over 40, blazed the boomer trail.

A Ladies' Home Journal spinoff launched in September 1998, More has proved to be a sprightly publication. Since its inception, circulation has jumped 88 percent to 600,000, and advertisers have responded in kind. Estimated ad revenue in 2000 was $16.2 million, a 43.6 percent increase over the previous year.