Teen magazines and the celeb scene
Barbara O’Dair likes what she’s hearing. O’Dair, managing editor of Teen People, sits at the head of a staff meeting grinning as music editor Matt Hendrickson lists the celebrities attending their American Music Awards after-party. The list is impressive, and it grows by the hour.
A sample of the yes column: ‘N Sync’s Justin Timberlake and Lance Bass, Mandy Moore, the Osbourne family, Sarah Michelle Gellar and husband Freddie Prinze Jr.
“Keep naming names -- I like this,” O’Dair says.
Throwing star-studded parties is integral to O’Dair’s job. In the competitive world of teen magazines, landing A-list celebrities for the cover is vital to sales. It’s something Teen People is good at, and it’s probably why the magazine dominates the competition in newsstand sales.
Newsstand sales are particularly important to editors because they feel it’s a sign of a magazine’s vitality. (Seventeen, the genre’s matriarch, has the highest overall circulation, including subscriptions, at about 2.4 million, compared with Teen People’s 1.7 million, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation.)
The music awards’ post-party gives O’Dair and her staff a chance to exchange business cards and discuss future coverage with celebs.
So they party. And schmooze. A lot.
“We have more parties than I had in college,” Hendrickson tells the group, only half joking.
As Teen People marks its fifth anniversary this month, it remains one of the most successful publications in the teen genre. Its circulation is up slightly from last year, by about 40,000. (Newsstand sales are down a bit.) And it was the first spinoff of a grown-up magazine.
Since Teen People’s launch in 1998, Elle and Cosmo have developed their own teen versions. And Vogue recently brought a little sister into the fray with Teen Vogue, featuring rocker Gwen Stefani on the cover.
“Every year, it seems like there’s a new magazine that comes out,” says O’Dair, Teen People’s second editor.
Teen People’s success -- it started turning a profit within 16 months of its debut -- illustrates something that most marketing types already knew: Courting teens is a profitable business. To wit: The amount teens spend grew 41% from 1997 to 2001, according to Teenage Research Unlimited, a market-research company. And the average 16-year-old spends $104 a week.
But the challenge for all of these magazines is finding the editorial formula to capture those dollars. They each have a mix of celebrity, products and real-life stories. The degree to which they present those elements is the difference.
“Teens are the hardest people to get as subscribers or as loyal buyers,” says Paul Caine, Teen People’s publisher. “They’re the most fickle demographic. Adults are more forgiving. They stick with a brand for years, or they try a brand because it’s interesting. If you’re not connecting with teens, then forget it. If you have connected with them and you stop connecting with them, then forget it. It’s an all-or-nothing deal.”
The other difficulty is finding a celebrity dynamic enough to draw people to the newsstands who isn’t gracing the cover of other magazines. “It’s the most difficult thing right now -- to sell out on the newsstand on a personality alone,” Caine says.
Before Teen People, teen magazines generally fell into two categories -- celebrity-driven books such as Tiger Beat or lifestyle magazines such as Seventeen and YM. Teen People is different because it covers pop culture, real life and fashion in one magazine. And, unlike its counterparts, it appeals to boys and girls. (Its readers are 20% male.)
“I think we’re one of the last real general-interest magazines out there,” says O’Dair, 40. “It’s very hard not to go totally niche right now.”
Maybe so, but the differences among teen magazines are subtle.
Teen People is skewed a bit more toward celebrity and music. But Teen Vogue’s first issue, with Stefani on the cover, has a story discussing her new clothing line. Also on its cover is a tagline that promotes “sexy scene stealers” and lists Matt Damon, Chris Klein and Colin Hanks. That’s easily something that can be found in Teen People. And the latest issue of Cosmo Girl has Jennifer Lopez on its cover.
But with its focus on fashion, the editor of Teen Vogue, the new competitor, says it’s filling a void.
“There was no teen book that focused on fashion, beauty and style,” says Amy Astley, editor in chief of Teen Vogue. “Most of the teen books focused on advice and most embarrassing moments. That’s already there, and it’s well covered.”
So while Teen People uses its teen “trend spotters” to alert editors to new trends, Teen Vogue tells its readers what’s hot.
“We want to show them things they’re not wearing yet,” says Astley. “They want to see new stuff, to get inspired. We consider ourselves to be trend spotters. We go to runway shows and have incredible access.”
Meanwhile at Cosmo Girl, editor Atoosa Rubenstein is focusing on what she calls the teen girl’s lifestyle.
“We recognized what’s missing from the teen market is a focus on the girl herself,” says Rubenstein. “All the magazines out at the time we launched focused on fashion and celebrity. We’ve owned the area of lifestyle.”
With each editor saying her magazine owns one key area, there may seem to be no angle that’s not covered. That doesn’t mean there won’t be another teen magazine revealing itself soon.
