Modern Maturity's circ plan strikes gold

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May, 1989 by Michael Garry

Modern Maturity's circ plan strikes gold

New York City--Modern Maturity has attracted five new advertisers as a result of its price-breaking quarter-circulation offer.

To make its hefty advertising rates less daunting, bimonthly Modern Maturity last fall began offering advertisers one-quarter of its 19.4 million circulation, the largest in the country. The 4.85-million slice of subscribers is distributed randomly throughout the United States. That reduces the price of a full-page color ad from $171,000 to $46,000, but keeps the same geographic and demographic reach of the regular circulation. (Most magazines offer partial circulation buys only on a regional basis.)

In the first issue to feature the special buy, February-March, the magazine ran quarter-circulation ads from Diet Coke, Red Lobster, Lenox China, Nordic Track, Ashton-Drake Galleries, General Mills and Pearl Vision Center; only the last two had ever before advertised in the magazine. The April-May issue featured eight quarter-circulation advertisers.

"We didn't anticipate that many advertisers to start," says Peter Hanson, advertising director. "But at five million circulation, a lot have become interested in the mature market." The magazine has been promoting the offer in Standard Rate and Data Service (SRDS), through direct mail, and on sales calls.

The success of the quarter-circulation buy has also lifted the fortunes of the half-circulation arrangement already offered by Modern Maturity, adds Hanson.

Furthermore, the split buy proved painless on the production end, says Charles Allen, production director. "We have a press form that can deliver one-quarter circulation without changing plates," he says. In the printing process, 50 copies of each quarter-circulation advertisement are printed at a time.

Only a few limitations crop up: Because the circulation is divided by four, the number of quarter-circulation advertisers has to be a multiple of four; if not, the excess space is occupied by a house ad. Also, only full-page ads are available to quarter-circulation advertisers, in view of the logistical problems that fractional ads would present, notes Hanson.

The process calls for additional film inspections at the publishing house and at printer R.R. Donnelley, but overall, Allen notes, the extra expense is minimal. The next step, he says, is to use R.R. Donnelley's Selectronic technology to produce the split editions, as well as to produce editions edited for specific audiences.

Modern Maturity, published by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), is mailed free to association members, and, in the past year, has grown at the rate of about 7,000 new subscribers per day.