Parenting’s Growth Spurt: Dual Focus on Early and School Years Boosts Interest Among Readers and Advertisers
MPA REPORTS By Tony Case
After Bonnier Corp. split its Parenting magazine into two separate versions this past February—one focused on the “early years” of parenthood, the other geared to parents of kids currently in their “school years”—it didn’t take readers long to voice their vote of approval.
In July, just six months after introducing the concept, the magazine announced it was upping the rate base of the “School Years” edition from 500,000 to 550,000 as of next February, taking up the guaranteed circ of the two editions combined to 2.2 million and marking its first rate base increase since 2001. The magazine also says its average subscription price has steadily grown since the launch, and that Parenting now boasts the greatest number of paid subs in the parenthood category.
And as readers have come on board, so have advertisers. As a direct result of the creation of the “School Years” edition, Parenting says it has attracted more than 20 new accounts in categories from retail (Subway, Wal-Mart’s Your Zone) to packaged goods (Kellogg’s Pop Tarts and Frosted Mini Wheats). The focus on school-age kids also helped drive Parenting’s back-to-school marketing program, which this year generated 50 percent more business than last.
The dual editions made for “a more meaningful proposition for the consumer—and we knew that becoming a more meaningful proposition to the consumer would inevitably mean we would become more meaningful as an advertising vehicle,” says Greg Schumann, Vice President and Group Publisher of The Parenting Group, which also includes the title Babytalk.
Whereas issues geared to rearing infants and toddlers and adolescents and teens used to get covered under the same roof—potentially alienating readers and advertisers geared to one constituency but not another—the new dual editions solved such perceptual problems overnight.
Putting the two versions side-by-side, it’s clear that both are Parenting (same bright-red logo, same general look and feel)—and yet, a glance at the respective cover lines serves as a tale of two magazines. Just think of them as fraternal twins. While both editions of the September issue promote “the secret to healthier, happier kids” on the cover, the “Early Years” version (with a picture of a mom giving her toddler a piggyback ride) teases content on the inside involving defusing checkup jitters and making learning fun in the preschool years. Meantime, the “School Years” edition (picturing a mom walking what looks to be her eight-year-old daughter home from school) promotes stories on getting kids out the door to school on time and tricks for encouraging your children to do their homework.
As Schumann puts it: “When you talk about the fundamental principal of how to sustain the relationship we have with our consumer…the notion of meeting her needs properly through the one-size-fits-all model doesn’t work anymore.”
The dual-version strategy means not only that parents can now select a magazine sporting content that speaks more directly to them, but also that advertisers can now better target those readers. As a result of the split editions, clients have the choice of running two distinctively different ads, targeting parents in each of the two age groups, during the same month.
For example, to promote its portrait studios, retailer JC Penney features a baby in its ad in the “Early Years” edition of the magazine and a school-age kid in the “School Years” version. Meantime, the tagline “Your precious moments—our expertise” and coupons for clipping appear identically across the two versions. Likewise, an ad for Children’s Claritin features a cute toddler riding a seesaw in the “Early Years” edition, and a pigtailed girl sitting in her desk at her grammar school in the “School Years” version.
Claritin ad for "Early Years" edition
Claritin ad ran for "School Years" edition
Besides Claritin, the September issue of Parenting features split-creative for advertisers LeapFrog, Clorox and Cloud B.
As for September, the month is a milestone for Parenting, marking its biggest month yet in terms of ad business since introducing the dual issues (the “Early Years” edition sports 97 ad pages while “School Years” boasts 83). And while previously available only through subscription, the “School Years” version becomes available at Barnes & Noble stores with the September issue.
