The empowerment of the female race in the 21st century has officially moved beyond donning the power suit and crushing glass ceilings with a pair of icicle-heeled Jimmy Choos. We’ve read the business pages – in fact, we write the business pages – and we are right at the forefront of making it all happen. Unlike the ’90s, when we just kicked butt and pretended we didn’t have a home life, it’s okay these days to get to work with a little milk stain on the lapel, or to admit to a gynae appointment for a 20-week check up (yes, she’s pregnant, not gaining weight!). We are just loving being superwomen.
The best part is that with the power of liberation comes the power of choice and, (wo)man oh (wo)man, those niche titles talking about pretty white dresses and babies are certainly feeding into our newfound income, independence and global voice. Locally, the growth in what was once the relatively small niche market of bridal and parenting magazines suggests that there is an audience out there that is getting bigger, bolder and more demanding about issues surrounding “girl stuff”.
Certainly publishers within the sector are confident about its growth possibilities. Alchemy Publishing, recently bought by Media24 and publishers of Your Baby (22,126), Your Pregnancy (29,647) and Baba en Kleuter (24,020), will introduce their fourth parenting title, Your Child, in September this year (ABCs Jul-Dec 2004). Managing director Liezl de Swardt says that although the market is filling up with titles, the stable is showing positive growth. “We are seeing a steady rise in the circulations and ad revenues of strong niche titles. In our case, our ABCs for the coming period will be up by an estimated 5% and over the last 3 years we’ve averaged a 17% increase in ad revenue year-on-year. The growth that we are seeing is particularly good when you consider the number of launches into our space in the past three years.”
Tony Walker, publishing director for Highbury Monarch Communications, publishers of SA Wedding Album (11,576) and Healthy Pregnancy (11,305), says that the trend is similar with bridal publications although only four titles are currently being audited (ABC Jul ’03 – Jun ’04). “Within the bridal magazine sector a notable feature is the high number of titles and the low number of ABC figures,” he says. “The last few years have seen an explosion in the growth of bridal titles – South Africa now has more than ten, but a glance at the last ABC listing shows only four audited titles, one of which is our SA Wedding Album and three of which are brand extensions and not stand-alone titles [Fairlady Bride, Sarie Bruid and True Love Bride].” So why isn’t this happening? “That’s both tricky to answer and obvious at the same time! Maybe they are selling so few copies of their title that they don’t want the advertiser to know.”
Who’s telling the advertiser what is the subject of another debate. To continue the thread, the parenting sector boasts around ten titles and according to de Swardt the opportunity exists for more; hence Your Child. “The parenting market is certainly well-serviced in terms of magazines, but Your Child‘s niche – parents of kids from 4 to 12 – is not being addressed. The mainstream women’s titles do some parenting stories and there are a number of free distribution titles around, but no one is focusing directly on the pre-primary and primary school years, with a quality magazine.”
Finding an editorial focus that’s fresh and original and doesn’t crash into the competitor’s backyard is a challenge, particularly when dealing with the “niche within a niche”; pregnancy. Touchline Media’s Lani Carstens, publisher of newly launched Fit Pregnancy, says the focus for the publication lies firmly within the theme of all the group’s publications – health and wellness. “Our editorial focus is on the health and well-being of the mom-to-be. To us at Fit Pregnancy, the pregnant woman is not a different woman, she’s the same woman having a different experience. We look at her heart, her head and her womb – and all the issues that will be affecting her.” For Carstens, another strong differentiating factor is Fit Pregnancy‘s target market. “Our reader is around 30, probably has a career, and falls into LSM 9-10 (she could be the Shape reader when pregnant). We know that, according to AMPS 2004, other pregnancy magazines have their bulk readership in LSMs 6 and 7.”
Shelagh Foster, editor of Alchemy’s Your Pregnancy, says: “Whereas other pregnancy magazines prefer to focus on specific areas of pregnancy (health, fitness), Your Pregnancy covers all aspects of pregnancy. We also tend to be pretty practical, ‘real’ and hands on, and we’re not afraid of the gritty realities of labour and birth, as you’ll see if you page through our photo birth pages (not for the fainthearted!)”.
In fact the pregnancy market is particularly interesting in terms of circulations. Fit Pregnancy‘s ABC for Jan to March 2005 was around 15,000 and Healthy Pregnancy is not far off. Your Pregnancy remains the market leader, even though the cover price is considerably higher than that of its competitors. “In a market characterised by price-sensitive readers choosing cheaper magazines, this testifies that the 29,647 Your Pregnancy [buyers] possess considerable disposable income and they are willing to pay for what they want,” says de Swardt.
The bulk of the parenting publications remain tightly focused within their niche. However Caxton’s Living & Loving is positioned to cover the full spectrum of parenting, capturing the reader when she’s pregnant and working towards retaining her through to when her toddler is at a preschool age. “We cover the full spectrum of parenting – from pregnancy to preschool – where others focus on specific phases within this market,” says editor Kerese Thom. “We are about the parenting relationship, not just about the baby, toddler or pregnancy. We are about the whole, and we factor this into our editorial.” With ABCs at 34,885 (Jul-Dec 2004) and ad revenue between R700,000 and R900,000 monthly, the positioning as a consistently reliable “everywoman” parenting publication is a formula that Thom is not about to mess with.
While the parenting sector has largely maintained strength and established wholly new titles (aside from the previously freestanding Baby & Me, which is now Femina Kids, an alternative monthly run-of-paper supplement), the bridal sector growth pattern suggests that the new players are brand extensions of well-established publications.
Media24 have spearheaded this philosophy, and according to editor Heather Parker the affinity is a positive one for both the extension and the mother ship. “Depending on the title, anything between 40% and 60% of our Fairlady, Sarie and True Love readers are at the ‘marrying age’, i.e., between early 20s and mid-30s. The relationships these publications have with their respective readers is a personal, trusting one. It therefore follows that an ‘own brand’ magazine would be the first recourse for brides-to-be. So, they were launched as brand extensions, primarily.”
Published bi-annually, Fairlady Bride, Sarie Bruid and True Love Bride have all shown fair circulation figures since inception. At figures of 8,977, 8,974 and 7,574 respectively (ABC July 2003 to June 2004) they appear to have shown no signs of affecting the mother brand circulation figures. “To the best of my knowledge, no research has been done to suggest that there’s any impact at all in circulation terms,” says Parker. “When someone is getting married – and let me remind you, brides-to-be become delightfully price-insensitive – a bridal magazine will become an ‘as well as’ purchase. Because of its niche nature, it’s unlikely ever to be an ‘instead of’ buy.”
Nor will it be an “instead of” advertising purchase, believes Carstens. “I don’t know that parenting titles as such would eat into mainstream women’s magazines from a circulation or revenue point of view. Certainly from an advertiser point of view parenting titles are very niched, and are so life-stage specific that most mainstream advertisers will probably stick with higher circulating general interest titles.”
But de Swardt isn’t so sure that this emergent sector is not adversely affecting the mainstream publications. “I think the growth of niche is happening at the expense of general interest magazines. Advertisers are acknowledging the power of niche and readers are demanding magazines that speak directly to them about their interests and passions. Faith Popcorn uses the term ‘clan’, and describes the trend whereby people want to belong to a group with similar needs and values. I think the growth of niche titles is a reflection of that.”
That would be us. The girls. The clan. This sector has acknowledged that we are out there, economically active, information hungry, and ready to explore all those things that make us fabulously unique.