Shifting Marketplace : Parent Magazines Ride Baby Boomlet
The current elevated birth rate may rank as a mere boomlet when measured against the Baby Boom of the 1950s and 1960s, but you wouldn’t know it from the echoes reverberating in the child-care magazine business.
No fewer than five major new national magazines aimed at parents are in the final planning or early distribution stages, and perhaps two dozen regional parent-oriented tabloids have sprung up in the last five years.
Through the August issue, the number of advertising pages in Parents magazine increased 13.9% over 1984 levels--compared to an average 1.4% decline for all magazines--and its publisher says that 1985 will be the magazine’s biggest year ever for revenue and profits.
Meanwhile, American Baby Inc. has evolved from a single-magazine publisher into a baby-focused conglomerate, cranking out everything from books and magazines to a weekly cable-television program, videotapes for maternity wards and a hospital gift program.
“Every year seems to have its topics,” says a researcher at the Magazine Publishers Assn. in New York. “Last year, it was computers. A few years ago it was science. This seems to be the Year of the Baby.”
Risk of Over-Saturation
There is a danger, of course, that some of this year’s novas will be next year’s black holes. “The main risk is over-saturation,” says Michael Fleming, editor of Media Industry Newsletter, a New York-based weekly publication focusing on magazines. “Certainly, if you see a good product, you’ll see a bunch of imitators. What sometimes happens is that they have to shake themselves out.”
However, there’s no sign of that yet. Although some magazine executives predict that advertisers will become choosier, and not all of the new entries are thriving equally, the experience of L.A. Parent illustrates the kind of experience the baby boomlet can give a publisher.
Jack Bierman was scratching out a living in Los Angeles as a free-lance writer and editor in 1979 when his brother, a young parent, told him about canvassing a block in New York City to make sure that it was safe for his children to trick or treat.
“I thought, ‘Here is an area of specialty that isn’t being touched,’ ” Bierman recalls. Envisioning a sort of “city magazine for parents,” Bierman took $7,000 in seed money and rented space three days a week at a printing house. With a staff of four, he began publishing a 12-page monthly tabloid magazine that he called Pony Ride and distributed through an estimated 300 libraries, bookstores and other outlets countywide.
Within six months, advertising income was more than covering production costs. The magazine, later renamed L.A. Parent, has been profitable ever since. Today it has 19 full-time employees in Glendale to put out a magazine that averages 68 pages and is distributed at 900 locations.
This spring, Bierman launched a sister publication, Parenting, in Orange County, and other regional editions may follow.
There is a vast chasm between L.A. Parent--printed on newsprint and handed out free to about 115,000 readers a month--and Parents magazine, the slick publication that pioneered and dominates the parent-oriented field with its 1.7 million paying subscribers. But the same factors contribute to the success of both, and others like them.
Whether a magazine has paying subscribers or not, its health reflects the appetites of its advertisers, and advertisers in recent times have been simply ravenous for space in publications for mothers.
A Sure Sign
“It’s shocking,” says Laura Dayton, editor of New Mother, a bimonthly magazine that Mountain View, Calif.-based Ujena Co. (formerly Runner’s World) launched in May. “When national advertisers call and want to know about getting into your magazine, you know you’re onto something.”
Part of the appeal lies in the numbers. There were 3.6 million babies born in 1983, the most current government statistic available. While not even a boomlet peak--that came in 1982, when there were 3.7 million births--it’s still 20% more births than the nation’s women produced in 1975, the post-Baby Boom trough. More significant from a marketing point of view, a little more than 40% of those babies were first borns, who prompt far more spending than any subsequent children.
But numbers alone don’t account for what the magazines are experiencing. After all, far more infants were born in the original Baby Boom--which peaked in 1961 with 4.2 million births--without setting off a publishing wave of this intensity.
Editors and publishers say the difference is the life style of today’s mother. “In 1960, one out of 10 mothers worked outside the home,” says Elizabeth Crow, editor-in-chief of Parents. “Now, 50% do.”
The proliferation of two-income families with greater spending power than their predecessors has produced an explosion in baby products and marketers, and a corresponding increase in competition and advertising in that marketplace, industry experts say.
“Our (advertising) pages have gone up and, correspondingly, revenue and net income are doing very well,” says Neal Bookman, vice president and advertising director for American Baby, one of the oldest baby magazines. “That gives us the capability to develop new properties.”
At the same time, marketers outside the baby business have come to see parent magazines as a way of reaching a lucrative market that can otherwise be somewhat elusive.
“Look at the difficulty of reaching young women,” whose TV watching is limited and who may read multiple magazines, says Raymond Eyes, president and publisher of New York-based McCall Publishing Co. Next January, McCall will add Baby! to a roster that already includes two mother magazines. “We’re hearing from cosmetics people. We’re starting to carry automotive advertising, computer items, insurance, flooring, cameras.”
Publishers of parent magazines say they also can deliver another prized commodity: a high-interest reader.
“Marketing people realize that reader interest and involvement in a magazine is in direct ratio to the importance of the subject the publication covers,” says John Hahn, publisher of Parents, which has broadened its editorial content in recent years to include fashion, beauty, medicine, fitness and other topics in an effort to be a full-service magazine for the busy mother.
“We address the single most important facet of the lives we appeal to: the kids.”
The life-style changes of the last 20 years also have created new and better ways for magazines to reach their potential readers, a critical factor in attracting advertisers and establishing ad rates.
Pregnant women who work need more specialized clothing, for example. Meredith Corp.--publisher of Better Homes and Gardens--will try to cash in on that beginning next month with Motherhood, a magazine that will be distributed through 320 Motherhood Maternity Shops nationwide.
And working mothers usually require child care. McCall recognized that and in 1984 launched Working Mother Digest, which it distributes through day-care centers. Parents in increasing numbers have been heading for prepared childbirth classes; American Baby responded last year with Childbirth ‘84, a magazine it updates annually.
But even giving birth at a rate of 3.6 million babies a year, the mommy market is no giant, and baby busts have a way of following baby booms. Once there are not as many playpens and strollers to be sold, and once the number of working women with an eye for toothless cover girls declines, there simply are going to be fewer advertising dollars.
But executives at established publications don’t think they’ll suffer. They contend that there will always be enough babies and advertisers to support at least a core of magazines.
