Are magazines more of a girl product or a boy product? Most people I speak to seem to think mags are more skewed towards girls.

This perception tends to dominate because the biggest selling mags happen to be for women, and as a result, we see more advertising and branding for these titles. They are also more sensationalist in nature, focusing more on gossip and celebrities. These are undoubtedly more female orientated.

Women buy more mags, but there are probably as many titles targeted towards men as there are towards women. If I had to guess, women would buy in greater volumes, while men would buy a greater range.

Interestingly, we see a small bias towards female customers when it comes to subscriptions. This becomes more pronounced at gift giving times such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day. We would have thought that males would buy more gift subscriptions than women, as it is a more stereotypically female item, hence lending itself to be gifted. However, perhaps the top of mind factor is in play here, where people give gifts based on what comes to mind with regards to what they would like to receive.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, we will see our gift subscriptions increase in volume. I wonder if this year girls will continue to out-subscribe the boys, or whether the boys will wisen up to the joys of subscriptions?

There was a fascinating post recently on the excellent Newsagency Blog run by Mark Fletcher, a blog that we read quite religiously. It was titled:

“Older women beat older men any day”

Mark defines older as being 75+. Some of the justifications were:

Older women tend to know what they want, they enjoy a laugh and they are prone to flirting, yep, flirting – I like this on a slow day at the counter.

Older men tend to grunt rather than speak words, they rarely laugh and often don’t know what they want.

A number of comments then followed, one which I liked so much that I have to replicate it here in full:

Old women want a bag to put that mag in when they are already carrying two.

Old men dont care.

Old women forage around in their handbag for that 25c to “make the change” easier from that $37.40.

Old men dont worry.

Old women shuffle forward in the queue and when at the counter decide THEN to start looking for the money inside the purse which is inside the bag which is on the floor.

Old men have it in their hand ready for action.

I am introducing a female age limit in my shop.

I thought that this was quite amusing. The really interesting comment however was from one newsagent who, as more of an aside, mentioned that over 70% of his customer base was over 60 years old. The newsagency sector readily admit that they appeal to a more elderly demographic. This is a real worry for us.

We have never been backwards in saying that we are not a newsagency. While we deal with the same product in magazines, we have completely different philosophies and commercial approaches. That said, we need them to survive. They are the main distribution point for all the mainstream magazines, and if newsagents disappear, many magazines will fall by the wayside. mag nation stocks all the niche stuff, but we still do sell a fair number of your everyday titles.

So, my question to the community on the Newsagency Blog is what are you doing to get more relevant for the under 60s? Younger consumers don’t care so much for lotto and newspapers from a newsagent. They don’t want to share stories with a random stranger about their dog having fleas.  They are online, brand savvy, and want a cool lifestyle experience, not an old-fashioned general store experience.

We need you guys to survive and prosper. Can you give us any confidence that you have a plan on how to do this? Then again, I doubt many of you are reading this blog (not that we are by any means fantastic but we are somewhat in the same industry), which probably tells a story in itself.

A little while ago we asked our Twitter followers to send us the names of magazines that they follow on Twitter. The idea was for us to collate all these names and create a list to be used as a resource for any interested parties. We got an absolutely fantastic response, and have now pushed this list live.

http://blog.magnation.com/list-of-magazines-on-twitter/

This is obviously not the definitive list of magazines who use Twitter. If you are a magazine and we have missed you, or if you follow a magazine and it is not on this list, feel free to let us know and we will add it.

The only caveat is that it has to be a physical magazine. We are not listing online only magazines for now.

We will keep on updating this list and try to keep it is relevant and fresh as we can. Thanks to everyone who took the time to send us their suggestions.

We hope that you find this list useful.