Emap aims Yours at younger grey market

by Robin Parker, Media Week 31-Aug-06

Emap is planning a younger repositioning of its older women's monthly Yours, with an increase from monthly to fortnightly later this year.

A team from the Emap Esprit division is believed to be presenting the
new look to the Emap Consumer Media board this week.

The publisher presented a dummy to media agencies last week, described

by one person who had seen it as "fresher, cleaner and more modern".

Emap is thought to be keen to grow its readership at the younger end of
its over-50s readership rather than seek out a new demographic, echoing
IPC's recent redesign of its women's weekly Woman in a more contemporary
style.

Competition for this audience has increased recently with the launch of
Heyday, published by Redwood on behalf of Age Concern, and news-stand
trials of Saga Magazine.

However, the source questioned whether this target age group would warm
to a more contemporary style, claiming that Yours' long-established
nostalgic tone appeared to chime with their tastes. A relaunch as a
fortnightly would leave Emap with just one women's mass-market monthly,
New Woman.

Launched in 1984, Yours originally had backing from charity Help The
Aged and was bought a year later by Emap, which later relaunched it as a
full-colour lifestyle magazine.

It was brought into Emap's health and parenting division Esprit, which
also publishes Mother & Baby and Pregnancy & Birth, in 2000. The
division was brought under Grazia MD David Davies in March, following
the closure of Slimming and Health Plus.

With an ABC of 400,312, Yours is currently the fourth biggest-selling
women's monthly behind Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping,
though its circulation for January to June this year fell by 5% period
on period and was 7.3% lower than a record high of 440,070 for the same
period in 2005.

The magazine, which mixes real-life and celebrity stories, health and
beauty advice and nostalgic reflections on the past, appeals to mainly
pensionable women and has an even split of ABC1 and C1/C2 readers. Emap
confirmed it had "exciting plans" for the title, but declined to comment
further at this stage.