A GREAT MAGAZINE BOOMS

The New York Times reports today the success of AARP The Magazine.

AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired persons) bills itself as the “world’s largest circulation magazine."

Six times a year, the magazine is shipped to 22 million homes representing 37 million AARP members.

They receive the magazine as part of their $12.50 annual membership, which also gets them a regular bulletin.

The magazine is even segmented among three editions — 50’s, 60’s and 70-plus — to make it more helpful to readers and marketers.

AARP, according to the financial statements of its parent organization, increased advertising revenue by 37 percent, to $106 million, in 2005, from $77.6 million in 2003.

According to the Publishers Information Bureau, ad pages at AARP The Magazine were up 13.6 percent during the first seven months of 2006, when the industry over all was basically flat, compared with the same period of 2005.

The September-October issue with Ms. Field on the cover is, at 140 pages, the biggest the company has published for the 50’s category

INNOVATION had the pleasure of working for AARP in the development of its new editorial strategy, and since then I am a loyal reader of AARP, The Magazine.

We had there a great consulting team lead by Barry Sussman (Thomaz Souto Correa Leo Bogart, Claude Erbsen and Douglas Griffen) and my role as director of the project was, as always, "to be paid to learn."

We are very happy to see now these results when more and more magazines are in crisis.

What we found in this group was a great team of editors and reporters willing to do real "service oriented journaslism."

Again, serious journalism pays off.