How We Think About Our Readers

The Inside Story of the Most Read Magazine in America Today

A Speech to the City and Regional Magazine Association in 2019

Before we begin, a little story from my city magazine days: My older sister Rita was a charter subscriber to New York magazine in 1968. I was a skinny, suburban high school kid obsessed with rock & roll and reading. But when New York magazine came into our Long Island home, it was like the city itself had broken down the door. This thing changed my world—gave me a career plan. I had never read anything so engaging and alive and cool and sophisticated. It was important and fun at the same time. Clever puns in every headline. Politics. Bigfoot writers—Mailer, Ephron, Wolfe, Talese. Best burger in town? New York was on the hunt. Best pizza places? Yesss! The Great Bloody Mary Brunch Investigation of Maxwell’s Plum. (Was there any vodka in those expensive drinks? They sent an undercover team to find out.) It was a magazine designed for the young and hungry, for night owls new to New York, exploring the four corners of a metropolis that was likewise a stranger to this new kind of journalistic love hug: THE CITY MAGAZINE!!!!

A little more than ten years later, I had the chance to work at New York, and it was a wildly different publication. The first editors and writers had largely moved on, the new ones were more status-conscious uptown types. Best burgers? Bah. Our food critic Gael Greene was taking her porn star boyfriend to the capitals of Europe on tasting jaunts: Pizza? For peons, young copy editor . . . . The editors lusted for seats at four-star restaurants and great deals on caviar in Southampton . . . .  Not that there’s anything wrong with that!!! . . . . But the sad thing was, for those of us who were still in the hot adolescence of our love affair with New York, we were being served crumbs at the kids’ table. The magazine had outgrown a segment of its audience and didn’t really get around to fixing it until long after I left, when the great Adam Moss re-imagined New York by taking it back to its roots—in typography as well as tone—in a full-on embrace of the readership, from young to old, rich and strivers, from Manhattan to Marine Park, Brooklyn. There were lessons in there that I never forgot. 

For me, that was then—followed by stops at Rolling Stone, Playboy, Best Life, Men’s Health, Reader’s Digest, The Week—a career arc that took me to the most interesting and challenging work of my lifetime at AARP. This is how we spend our days and nights working hard to engage and grow our core audience of Baby Boomers and entice the leading edge of Generation X.

EVERY DAY, 10,000 BABY BOOMERS TURN 65, which, in prehistoric times, was referred to as “Retirement Age.” This demographic corner was turned in 2011, and the trend will roll on unabated for the next ten years.[1] By sheer numbers, the Boomers are in the process of disrupting the very idea of aging in America, just as they disrupted the life stages that came before—courtship, marriage, parenting, divorce. But here’s something you might not know: Since we moved into our middle years, Baby Boomers—my generation— have been largely ignored by nearly all advertising and the majority of mainstream publishing.

Let’s break that statement down for a minute.

We the people over the age of 50 are 108 million strong. We will soon control more than 70 percent of the disposable income in this country. We buy two-thirds of all the new cars, half of all the computers and a third of all movie tickets. We spend $7 billion a year shopping online! The spending habits of these big spenders—mostly Boomers but a few Gen Xers, too—constitute the third largest economy in the world, trailing only the gross national products of the United States and People's Republic of China. And yet! . . . And yet! Only 5 percent of advertising is directed at older consumers, according to Nielsen. As for editorial, probably no more than that tiny slice—in print and online both—is targeted to the wants and needs of this enormous audience.

So, to all those hip, young publishers, editors and marketing directors who have left the space wide open for us, we have just two words: Thank you!”

 Good morning, Minneapolis on this rainy day. From what I can see from up here, many of you may be a little too young to be subscribers to AARP The Magazine. So, I hope you don’t mind if I tell you a little bit about who we are and what we do, mostly how we think about our readership. And the five things we make sure we never forget to reach and keep close the Baby Boomers that make up most of our audience. I’ll tell you how we—

I.   Work Hard to Understand Our Readers

II. Ride Along on Their Life Journeys

III. Offer Not Just Information and Inspiration

IV. Approach Print-Finity and Beyond

V. Never, Ever Forget the Mission!

You may be surprised at parts of this tale, which unfolds with a couple of twists and turns. But perhaps in the end, some of what I tell you today may even be helpful, as you stalk not only the elusive, print-phobic millennials, but Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and slightly older folks.

These are the print publications of AARP, the social mission organization for Americans over the age of 50. We are sent to all of our members across the country in 23 million households.

The magazine and its sister publication, The AARP Bulletin, are the country’s largest magazines by circulation and readership: 23 million paid circulation for the magazine. . . 38.5 million readers, according to MRI. That audience is growing, has grown by 4 million since 2013, when I was hired as editor in chief by a publishing icon named Myrna Blyth who told me she wanted to shake things up.

I am a small part of a talented, energetic team of teams of editors, writers, designers, photo editors, production experts and others. We are supported by AARP’s leadership and executives and embedded in a great, 60-year-old membership organization whose goal—very simply put—is to empower people to choose HOW they live as they age. We in the print pubs shop are surrounded by digital, video and social media teams, along with membership mavens and brand experts—more on all of that later—and our success is supported by all of our colleagues in all the different channels of communication at AARP.

So, yeah, we’re putting up these big bad audience numbers, but I recognize that the magazine is a publishing outlier. We are a membership magazine. We do not appear on any newsstand. New members must first join and even wait a couple of months before they get to sample the publications. We know that many people are first attracted to AARP by discounts, or health insurance or by our highly effective advocacy in the policy arena—probably all of the above. But then, we give them six issues of the magazine a year; 10 Bulletins—16 examples of a value proposition we offer to members.

It’s our job to keep up the quality and engagement of the publications so that renewal rates stay healthy. And so far, so good, they tell us. The publications are rated consistently among the top reasons members renew, they tell us. Once folks are introduced to what we publish, they become the most loyal, most enthusiastic readers in the Seven Kingdoms of Print. That last sentence was a gratuitous Game of Thrones reference; there are not seven kingdoms of print.

Back to our story: How enthusiastic are these readers? The audience measuring firm MRI attests to the following truth: Nearly seven in 10 of our readers (67%) say they have read four out of the last four issues. As you undoubtedly know, this is a gold standard for reader engagement and a metric that has remained steady for the last 10 years.

You might have noticed that I used the words member or membership eight times in the first few minutes. Hold that thought and let me ask you a question.

Question: When is a subscription more than a subscription? [Pause]

Answer: When it’s a membership!!!

Publishers, I know you have come to Minneapolis searching for new streams of revenue, recharged renewal rates, buffed-up brand loyalty and maximized engagement with your readers. Guess what? The newest answer to that quest appears to be an very old idea: membership. Right now, the Wall Street Journal is engaged in an all-out battle to turn its subscribers into members. WSJ PLUS offers members invitations to events, discounts on travel and wine, free downloads of e-books and more cool stuff once a week via email. Likewise, People magazine, which was the best-read magazine in the U.S. until AARP The Magazine overtook it a couple of years ago. People recently tried offering members access to editors, exclusive content and backstage passes to events—for a small upcharge to subscription. National Journal does membership. B2B publications do it. The fastest growing print magazine in the nation, Costco Connection, is a membership publication that highlights its members and fosters the notion of a great shopping community. Membership is an idea at least as old as the National Geographic Society—1888—and as new as Medium.com, which offers its members exclusive online content for $50 a year.[5]

Okay. Bumped up revenue and more chances to upsell events, products, partnerships, etc. Enhanced community and engagement among readers. Those are some of the obvious virtues of a membership model. But let’s look at the five other ways we at AARP Media work to connect with the core of our audience, the Boomer generation—our content strategy.

 Chapter I. Know Thy Readers

I’ll start by quickly differentiating our two publications. AARP the Magazine, as I mentioned, comes out six times a year and offers a mix of entertainment, features, health service and financial advice. This is AARP’s aspirational story, told with bright, colorful photography, celebs on the cover, entertainment coverage and a mix of notables, experts and members sharing advice and tips on living, working and retirement. I picture the magazine taking pride of place on our members’ coffee tables. This is our “lean back” publication, a fun and leisurely read, the wise friend who brings you the latest news and content on living la buena vida.

The AARP Bulletin, at 10 issues a year, keeps its primary focus on news you can use—advice, service policy and advocacy. It offers updates on AARP’s ongoing story—reports on our advocacy efforts as a fierce defender of older peoples’ rights—in Washington, DC, and 52 states and territories. It covers Medicare and Social Security and AARP’s defense of these vital programs. The Bulletin is our “lean in” publication, the “kitchen table” advisor that’s there when families convene to discuss important life events. The two publications have some overlap, of course, but we edit them to complement each other in helping us serve ALL THE NEEDS of our readers. 

This brings up a question: How do you stay in touch with the moving target of readers’ interests without the feedback of the newsstand?

Answer: We conduct reader-engagement surveys on EVERY ISSUE. Our polls pose a portfolio of questions, down to whether members found particular pieces to be informative, engaging, or unique. It goes out 2,000 members—different folks for each issue—asking what they liked, what they read and what they skipped. And, after every issue we also ask: What do you want more of? Who might you want to see on the cover and in the magazine?

Turns out in one memorable case they wanted to see Steve Martin, who had not starred in a big movie in a really long time. Even though he was below most people’s radar, he was the number-one choice (out of 20 celebs and artists), which was a bit of a surprise. But he had created an emotional connection to a vast swath of the Boomers with his warmth and persona and a long career. So we put him on the cover. We delivered and they responded in a loop of positive feedback.

In general, however, the same subjects come up again and again, pretty much is this order: Health service articles, financial advice pieces and lifestyle enhancing content like travel, or, as our CEO, Jo Ann Jenkins likes to put it so pithily: “Health, wealth, and self.”

Yes, it’s self-interest, but in a broad construction. Readers’ sense of “self” encompasses how they are connecting to others, what kind of community they want to build, what kind of world they want to help create and leave for their children and grandkids. And a person’s sense of self at 55, 65, and 75 is far different than at 25 or 35. We are the only major publications addressing this huge and mostly ignored cohort—a mega-niche if you will—of the US population.

And we listen very closely. Our contact center fielded 5.3M interactions in 2018, via phone, in-person, mail, social and digital channels. 

And then, as with any successful consumer magazine, it’s all about a relentless focus to get beyond topics and really know your readers’ worlds. At Rolling Stone, where I worked for twenty years, we saw the universe—music, politics, sports, life, everything—through the prism of youth. When I was a features editor there, the joke went, our reporters would blow into town, sit on the curb and smoke cigarettes with the kids, gaining insight to the real story of what was going on, not the official line from the lying suit at City Hall. At AARP, our reporters don't sit on the curb and smoke with their sources (as far as know), but everything we produce is likewise filtered through a single lens: The wishes, hopes, dreams and fears of Americans 50 and older. 

Chapter II. Keep Up with Readers on Their Life Journeys

Certainly, understanding our readers goes beyond soliciting their suggestions. On a deeper level, it involves anticipating the transitions and journeys that lie ahead for them—then serving them content they need at the time they need it. They’re probably not describing these wrenching changes as politely as “life transitions.” They depict these events in more direct terms—"Our kids have left home,” “I lost my husband,” “I got laid off,” “I’m caring for my Mom now.”

These are times when members need information, support, advice, and what comfort can be derived from learning how others have faced similar situations. Aside from the transitions I just mentioned, we also cover ageism in all its pernicious forms, as well as social isolation, end-of-life planning and fraud prevention. A big part of older Americans’ journey is coming face-to-face with Social Security and Medicare, great programs for elders’ security but very hard to navigate without the kind of compass that we provide.

But which transitions should we cover when? Our 38 million members range in age from those born in the year of Woodstock to those born just after World War I. So, instead of sending everyone a one-size-fits-all magazine, we rely on demographic versioning. Many of you have had experience in publishing geographically versioned magazines and newspapers, so you know what I’m talking about. But we segment our publications by age, as well as by region and sometimes household wealth. We do it for the readers and we do it for advertisers. AARP has always been a leader in the field of audience- segmentation because of the tremendous size of our membership.

At AARP The Magazine, we curate content for members as they move through their fifties, sixties, seventies and beyond. We also deliver geographic versioning for The AARP Bulletin. With 13 regional editions, we are able to tell our readers about AARP’s state-level advocacy specifically in their states.

Versioning is most visibly demonstrated in our service journalism: health and finance, but also in travel and entertainment and humor, too. Pieces like:

Your Body at 50-plus, or 60-plus, or 70-plus, which tells readers the specific delightful things that happen to your health at these ages

The New Rules of Retirement with Suze Orman, for readers who are in their prime earning-and-saving years, or

Encore Careers in Your Sixties and Seventies, for those who are more focused on fulfillment than finances

Student Loan Guides for fifty-something parents of teenagers, or

Travel for Grandparents and grandkids

You get the idea. And if we’ve accomplished our work, we do it with a bit of wit and humor and style. 

We have had great success in reaching Boomers by never forgetting who their icons are. People like Michael J. Fox and Sally Field have shown amazing resilience when it comes to their popularity. We had terrific response to covers featuring Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan and Smokey Robinson, musical legends who can answer questions intelligently about life and how to keep a career going for the long run. 

Funny story about Dylan, who gave us an exclusive interview a few years ago—his first in years and his last big one since: I kept getting voicemail messages from his management team, which I ignored. I thought to myself: “Dudes, you should know that I haven’t been at Rolling Stone for years.” But they persisted, and I picked up the phone one day, and it turned out that I was WRONG! Dylan indeed wanted to give a sole and exclusive interview to AARP The Magazine on the occasion of his new CD of American standards, Shadows in the Night, passing up the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Time and other mainstream publications. 

Then there was another surprise. To coincide with the album’s moved-up release date, we suddenly had to publish the interview in a hurry, which is not exactly easy when you come out every two months. So we ran the interview first online as a global exclusive, pushed out the full 9,000 words, and it turned out to be one of our earliest cross-platform successes. The news of the interview reached far beyond our membership, all over the world, and changed many minds about what we do at AARP The Magazine.

I know many of you put out special publications and annual sections that are in a way versioned: bridal specials, school guides, perhaps Baedekers for new arrivals. Even if different editions of your main magazine don’t make financial sense for you, there are countless ways to appeal to these market segments through stand-alone or bound-in or ride-along products that meet readers’ life-stage needs. There’s more DATA available now and we as content providers and publishers must figure out how to use it. 

Chapter III. Be Aspirational!

Wherever our readers live, whatever decade they were born in, the longstanding assumptions about life after 50 are in the process of disruption. And it’s up to us at AARP’s publications to reflect and even shape this evolving landscape.

Hey, hey, it’s more than OK to be 50. Jennifer Aniston is 50. J Lo is 50, Paul Rudd too. Rene Zellweger. Will Smith. Brad Pitt and George Clooney are in their fifties. It’s also OK to be 88 like Warren Buffett. We humans have longer lifespans—and longer health spans, too.

For good and ill, we’re working longer, too. Almost a quarter of those 65 and over are in the workforce today, about double the rate of just over 30 years ago and still growing. But the Disrupt Aging movement that AARP champions and our publications embody goes beyond simple metrics. It’s a powerful mindset, the idea that the second half of our lives can be a time of third acts, a time of passion and discovery, not decline. 

In our magazine, we’re don’t so much proselytize for that vision: we show it every issue. We’re telling the stories of celebs, musicians, notables, but also real people doing great things at formerly unheard-of ages. A data consultant who took up sword fighting at the age of 49. Bring it on. An 86-year-old lifeguard. A beauty writer who made her first documentary film—and got distribution for it—at age 89.

For 18 years our Movies for Grownups awards have celebrated experience over youth in the movie business and encouraged the industry to make more films that speak to this vast, underserved audience. Not an easy task, but we have been told by insiders that we have moved the needle quite a bit. Movies for Grownups is a complete multiplatform extravaganza with a red-carpet event, magazine cover story, screenings of films across the country all year, and a PBS special of our awards show.

And, ladies and gentlemen, we can walk and chew gum at the same. While all this glitzy stuff is going on, in the Bulletin we’re describing the Association’s battles in Congress and the courts to stop age discrimination in hiring and firing.

 Chapter IV. To Print-Finity and Beyond: Our Cross-Platform Future

Our Boomer readers still prioritize print, bless their hearts, but they increasingly expect to access information and entertainment in every format on every platform. Like you, we know that to succeed we must serve up engaging content wherever consumers are: mobile, desktop, social, podcasts, ALEXA!??? ALEXA??? Can we really DO THAT?????

Our online and social-media editors choose from among the offerings of the publications for each of those environments and tailor the content to the platforms for SEO and other things. (No special identity or URL for the publications.) Our premier showcase, aarp.org, gets 13 million unique visitors and 100 million page views each month. There’s no paywall right now: all of our editorial content is available to members and nonmembers alike. We also make a stream of content available for free on Apple News, but we did not join Apple News+. We do produce a tablet edition, which is available to members only, however.

Our online story is a good one: Users spend on average upwards of 8 minutes per visit on aarp.org, which makes us number one in our competitive set. And we find that online viewers click on the same content subjects they ask for in print: health, money, home and family, and entertainment.

We have apps, too. Who doesn’t, right? The AARP Now daily news app, which has been downloaded several million times since it began life almost three years ago, is mobile-only news tailored for our audience. We also offer 27 email newsletters that anyone can receive by opting in. Our newest offering, the weekly Girlfriend e-newsletter, now has more than 225,000 subscribers and 233,000 Facebook followers, most of them between the ages of 35 and 54. Some 76 percent of this audience are non-members, by the way, and we’re okay with that. Our goal here is to engage the female Gen X audience with must-read content, and so prime the pump for AARP by introducing a new generation to the Association before their 50th birthdays.

Following Girlfriend, we introduced Sisters, for African-American women in the same age demo. We’ve also made The Girlfriend a testbed of innovation, rolling out an 18-part digital web series titled “The Other F Word” that has attracted millions of views for each episode. (That other F word, by the way, is “fifty.”)

Between our website, newsletters, apps, and social media, we’re reaching Boomers and prospective members we might not have reached via our traditional route: the dreaded direct-mail offers some of you may know. In fact, over the past year, more than 200,000 people joined us or renewed their AARP membership through social media.

And then there’s the terrific AARP Studios, our big push into video content aligned with our mission. Our YouTube channel has 100,000 subscribers. A funny video produced by our studios called “What is Old?” (which punctures stereotypes of aging), has been seen 30 million times on Facebook and YouTube. Another one, “Badass Pilot Buys Own Fighter Jet,” has been viewed nearly seven million times on YouTube. Our video series of celebrities sharing a meal with comedian Don Rickles before his sudden death in 2017—Dinner with Don—racked up nearly 6.6 million YouTube views.

We produce podcasts, too, and our most popular one, The Perfect Scam, which unspools as a crime drama, has been downloaded nearly 900,000 times and is among the top 200 ranked podcasts, so we’re doing something right there.

They key to future success for all of us: projects explicitly designed—from the start—to cross multiple platforms. An example about to unfold is a project we’re calling, “A New Age,” in which we have partnered with the celebrated agency Magnum Photos to capture images of aging from 13 countries around the world. Photojournalists traveled 175,000 miles, bringing home more than 1,500 images. A small sample of that work will appear in the June/July issue of our magazine. Online and on our social feeds, readers will find many more photos, videos, and expanded stories. 

This project will show how the idea of aging is substantially changing—how people are living longer, healthier lives in new permutations of family, tradition, work, and play. I think it will show something else as well: the power of storytelling across multiple formats and channels where print is an indispensable part of the picture, but not the whole enchilada.

As we produce dynamic content across multiple platforms, we are well aware that print may not be the place where we’ll find the next generation of AARP members. So even though we are currently blessed with an audience that loves print, we’re not assuming that will always be the case. We have launched an aggressive multi-platform content strategy— because we have to, because we are not about to wait for the burning platform to set our yoga pants on fire.

I’d believe there is no substitute for high quality targeted execution on any platform—imaginative thinking, first-rate reporting, design, still photography and video, scrupulous fact-checking—all adding up to killer journalism in which we can take pride. No matter the medium, hooking and keeping readers still comes down to the same thing: storytelling that can inspire, inform, surprise, and delight.  

Chapter V. Mission Central: Wrapping It Up

Maybe it’s a Boomer thing? Maybe a Sixties throwback kind of thing, but for me, the best part about working for this association is that I get to put my lifetime of journalistic skills to work for a cause larger than just piling up profits for Jann Wenner. We at AARP harbor this preposterous notion that we want to leave the world a better place. I think the Baby Boomers get it, this “do gooder” dog whistle. In the end, MISSION may be the most important source of our appeal to people my age.

Our promise is this: Join us and we will defend you in court against the man who wants to raise your utility rates or take away your job if you’re deemed too old. Join us and we will protect your health and financial security in Washington, D.C., and in every state capitol. Join us and we will lift up the vulnerable elders in our society—in your name and in the name of generations to come.

We know that city and regional magazines are doing much of that already and have always done so. City books have always reflected the best of a place or a region back to itself— along with keeping bureaucrats and politicians honest. 

At AARP, we strive to serve the people of my generation—but we never forget those older and younger, too. . . . The lessons of my New York magazine days are still with me even now. As editors, we outgrow, outpace, out-sophisticate our readers at our own peril. We must learn how to serve the newcomers in their fifties and those who have stuck with us into their eighties and beyond. And we’ve figured out how to do it in print pretty well and we’re figuring out the digital future even as we speak.

So that’s my message. Mission may very well be our superpower. But that covers a lot of ground. We offer free driver safety courses and income tax preparation to anyone who asks for them. We fund livable communities and educate bankers about elder fraud. We lift up seniors in need through our Foundation. We advocate for our members and non-members alike in every state capital. Along with that and much more, yes, we’re also putting out cool media. And even convincing Hollywood to take another look and see the wisdom and beauty and talent of older, experienced actors.

So, here’s to the Boomers and their encore careers, their third chances and undimmed hopes, and to those who follow behind them—to being part of a great vibrant community of people who just happen to be lucky enough to be growing older in 21st century America.  

Thank you for your time this morning.

End Notes and Sources

[1] https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2017/05/09/10000-Boomers-Turn-65-Every-Day-Can-Medicare-and-Social-Security-Handle-It

[2] https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/style-trends/info-2014/baby-boomer-economic-power.html

[3] https://blog.aarp.org/2014/05/14/top-10-demographics-interests-facts-about-americans-age-50/ This includes 76.4 million boomers (born 1946-64), and half of the Gen X audience over 50. Adapted from AARP stats

[4] From Digiday of 2014. https://digiday.com/media/publishers-chasing-reader-memberships-subscriptions/

[5] https://medium.com/membership