Interview: Susie Forbes, Easy Living (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
Never underestimate Condé Nast. Glamour, its last UK magazine launch, took just three years to become Europe's best-selling women's monthly, confounding the sceptics with a circulation currently above 620,000. Now the publisher of Vogue and Vanity Fair plans an equally radical shake-up in the older women's market with Easy Living, a "revolutionary new magazine concept" that has rival editors holding their breath.
Commentators and media buyers may question whether there is a market for yet another glossy monthly, particularly one aimed so broadly at women aged 30 to 55. But as the editor, Susie Forbes, puts it, "they said the same about Glamour - yet if something's right for its time, the readers are out there".
Until today, little has been known about Easy Living, beyond its vast £17 million launch budget and vague promises to reach this "new generation of 'grownup' women". But now, eight days before the first issue hits the newsstands, its editor is ready to divulge the mysterious formula that has convinced Condé Nast that it is about to "redefine" women's magazines. Forget the celebrities - just portray older readers' "real lives" in the glamorous, relentlessly upbeat and aspirational terms normally reserved for A-list stars.
According to Forbes, the 38-yearold former deputy editor of Vogue, this glitzy take on ordinary women's lives is what is missing from today's titles. "It's a strand that runs through every section of our magazine," she says in her suitably aspirational office overlooking Old Bond Street - from the "emotional intelligence" pages to the extensive food section. "We talked to 12,000 women during our research, and obviously we're entranced by the results or we wouldn't be launching. They want the magazine to be anchored in reality, but with gloss and glamour at the same time. So we're holding a glamorous mirror up to real life."
She admits that she has crafted the magazine partly in her own image. "It's very me," she says, "but I represent a lot of what women feel - their anxieties as they juggle home and work life, their role as a mother, their role as a wife. I'm leading the life." But it is the Easy Living life, rather than the Vogue life she has left behind after a decade. "There's nothing stylish or glamorous about me in my glasses and my pink dressing gown trying to get my children into their school uniforms," she says, "but it is all very lovely."
Forbes is married to the designer Bill Amberg, and they live in Kensal Rise with their children aged four, seven and eight. "It's that big juggle that many of my readers know, with my life depending on fantastic nannies. Yes, the magazine is done on my instinct. But my life is as flawed as the next girl's. It's really difficult to work hard and have three children. I find I have to keep my marriage together while being very busy. It's hard. But it's blissful. And for now, it's working out."
She exactly matches her magazine's target median age of 38 - women, as Forbes explains, who have the spending power that the 22-year-olds lack. That explains why the company is charging advertisers up to £31,720 for a spread. But rather than focus on her readers' ages, Forbes prefers to define them by their "attitude". Condé Nast professes to have discovered a new life stage experienced by women over 30, which it calls "second youth".
"Whatever her age, she has a modern approach to her life, very sure of herself but knowing she's still up for help," Forbes explains. "She doesn't feel a magazine will change her life, but she loves the sensation of reading one and wants to feel she's getting help or advice. The old stereotypes have gone. On my travels, I met everyone from rather conservative 35-year-olds with two children to completely wild 50-year-olds who'd just pierced their belly buttons, got divorced and were ready to get out there and start dating again. Just because she's turned 45 doesn't mean she's checking out of life."
Yet do we really need another women's lifestyle magazine? Forbes insists there is room if, like Real Simple in the US, it makes readers feel "marvellous and inspired". Within six months, she predicts that at least 180,000 of them will be buying her magazine. "And if we hit 200,000, I will be absolutely delighted."
The same size as Vogue, with 150 editorial pages and a similar number of ad pages in the first issue, Easy Living is designed to be calm and easy to navigate, "as functional as it will be fashionable", with the various sections colour-coded to make it easy to locate a dessert recipe or a sofa. The sections, at around 25 pages each, carry equal weight, so that fashion is as dominant as food, beauty as important as the triedandtested consumer pages. Woven through the magazine are its own safely pre-tested columnists, including Lesley Garner, Sally Brampton and Linda Kelsey.
The opening section, labelled "real life", is designed to set the tone - offering, as Forbes puts it, "a nose into other people's lives, and with lovely pictures". In the first issue, this includes a feature about successful businesswomen who have found a way to include their children in their work, thus solving the eternal juggling of kids and careers. There is none of the celebrity coverage to be found in glossies such as Emap's Grazia - a magazine which Forbes thinks "will work, though it won't affect us as we're not doing much celebrity content".
The fashion section follows, with five "real women" testing the catwalk trends. "Nice-looking women, smiling, happy," Forbes adds. Then comes "emotional intelligence" - a "touchy-feely" section inspired by Oprah magazine, which deals with relationships - and "health and beauty", focusing not on radical makeovers but on the new products readers are in practice likely to try. Finally, there are two sections covering food and homes - "lovely features, with beautiful women" - before closing with the "tried and tested" consumer page that offers independent product reviews.
This last service may prompt concern at Good Housekeeping, whose own product-testing institute is well established. Forbes insists that she is "absolutely not attempting to compete with the Good Housekeeping Institute", and that hers is a "very different magazine". Yet Condé Nast's literature clearly positions it alongside Good Housekeeping, whose former publisher Easy Living has poached.
"One of the critical differences between us and Good Housekeeping is that it will be a real indulgence, a treat, to pick up Easy Living," Forbes says. "Being glamorous isn't high on their list."
Other editors in the sector are less reticent about what some see as Easy Living's aggressive targeting of their own readerships. Sue James, editorial director of Woman & Home, says that with her rising circulation of 333,000, she is relaxed - although the March cover price has been cut from £2.90 to £2 "as a sampling exercise" (Easy Living will cost £1.90).
"We identified this huge group of women, which we call the 'treat me' generation, about three years ago," James says, "so it's flattering that someone else has finally discovered them." At Red (down to £2), editor Trish Halpin is taking seriously "any possible threat" to her 30-something readership - although any gap, she believes, has to be in the 40-plus market, and she feels her established title is in a strong position. The challenge for Forbes is to prove that the gap actually exists.
"It's not necessarily that women feel they're missing something at the moment, but Glamour has been the proof that you can grow what seems to be a saturated market," she says. "They're reading all sorts of things. It could be Marie Claire, it could be Good Housekeeping or Vogue. But I hope that when they see Easy Living, it will fulfil their wildest dreams."
Whether it does remains a £17 million gamble. And as Condé Nast knows, its rivals will not give up readers without a fight.
(Evening Standard, February 23 2005)
Never underestimate Condé Nast. Glamour, its last UK magazine launch, took just three years to become Europe's best-selling women's monthly, confounding the sceptics with a circulation currently above 620,000. Now the publisher of Vogue and Vanity Fair plans an equally radical shake-up in the older women's market with Easy Living, a "revolutionary new magazine concept" that has rival editors holding their breath.
Commentators and media buyers may question whether there is a market for yet another glossy monthly, particularly one aimed so broadly at women aged 30 to 55. But as the editor, Susie Forbes, puts it, "they said the same about Glamour - yet if something's right for its time, the readers are out there".
Until today, little has been known about Easy Living, beyond its vast £17 million launch budget and vague promises to reach this "new generation of 'grownup' women". But now, eight days before the first issue hits the newsstands, its editor is ready to divulge the mysterious formula that has convinced Condé Nast that it is about to "redefine" women's magazines. Forget the celebrities - just portray older readers' "real lives" in the glamorous, relentlessly upbeat and aspirational terms normally reserved for A-list stars.
According to Forbes, the 38-yearold former deputy editor of Vogue, this glitzy take on ordinary women's lives is what is missing from today's titles. "It's a strand that runs through every section of our magazine," she says in her suitably aspirational office overlooking Old Bond Street - from the "emotional intelligence" pages to the extensive food section. "We talked to 12,000 women during our research, and obviously we're entranced by the results or we wouldn't be launching. They want the magazine to be anchored in reality, but with gloss and glamour at the same time. So we're holding a glamorous mirror up to real life."
She admits that she has crafted the magazine partly in her own image. "It's very me," she says, "but I represent a lot of what women feel - their anxieties as they juggle home and work life, their role as a mother, their role as a wife. I'm leading the life." But it is the Easy Living life, rather than the Vogue life she has left behind after a decade. "There's nothing stylish or glamorous about me in my glasses and my pink dressing gown trying to get my children into their school uniforms," she says, "but it is all very lovely."
Forbes is married to the designer Bill Amberg, and they live in Kensal Rise with their children aged four, seven and eight. "It's that big juggle that many of my readers know, with my life depending on fantastic nannies. Yes, the magazine is done on my instinct. But my life is as flawed as the next girl's. It's really difficult to work hard and have three children. I find I have to keep my marriage together while being very busy. It's hard. But it's blissful. And for now, it's working out."
She exactly matches her magazine's target median age of 38 - women, as Forbes explains, who have the spending power that the 22-year-olds lack. That explains why the company is charging advertisers up to £31,720 for a spread. But rather than focus on her readers' ages, Forbes prefers to define them by their "attitude". Condé Nast professes to have discovered a new life stage experienced by women over 30, which it calls "second youth".
"Whatever her age, she has a modern approach to her life, very sure of herself but knowing she's still up for help," Forbes explains. "She doesn't feel a magazine will change her life, but she loves the sensation of reading one and wants to feel she's getting help or advice. The old stereotypes have gone. On my travels, I met everyone from rather conservative 35-year-olds with two children to completely wild 50-year-olds who'd just pierced their belly buttons, got divorced and were ready to get out there and start dating again. Just because she's turned 45 doesn't mean she's checking out of life."
Yet do we really need another women's lifestyle magazine? Forbes insists there is room if, like Real Simple in the US, it makes readers feel "marvellous and inspired". Within six months, she predicts that at least 180,000 of them will be buying her magazine. "And if we hit 200,000, I will be absolutely delighted."
The same size as Vogue, with 150 editorial pages and a similar number of ad pages in the first issue, Easy Living is designed to be calm and easy to navigate, "as functional as it will be fashionable", with the various sections colour-coded to make it easy to locate a dessert recipe or a sofa. The sections, at around 25 pages each, carry equal weight, so that fashion is as dominant as food, beauty as important as the triedandtested consumer pages. Woven through the magazine are its own safely pre-tested columnists, including Lesley Garner, Sally Brampton and Linda Kelsey.
The opening section, labelled "real life", is designed to set the tone - offering, as Forbes puts it, "a nose into other people's lives, and with lovely pictures". In the first issue, this includes a feature about successful businesswomen who have found a way to include their children in their work, thus solving the eternal juggling of kids and careers. There is none of the celebrity coverage to be found in glossies such as Emap's Grazia - a magazine which Forbes thinks "will work, though it won't affect us as we're not doing much celebrity content".
The fashion section follows, with five "real women" testing the catwalk trends. "Nice-looking women, smiling, happy," Forbes adds. Then comes "emotional intelligence" - a "touchy-feely" section inspired by Oprah magazine, which deals with relationships - and "health and beauty", focusing not on radical makeovers but on the new products readers are in practice likely to try. Finally, there are two sections covering food and homes - "lovely features, with beautiful women" - before closing with the "tried and tested" consumer page that offers independent product reviews.
This last service may prompt concern at Good Housekeeping, whose own product-testing institute is well established. Forbes insists that she is "absolutely not attempting to compete with the Good Housekeeping Institute", and that hers is a "very different magazine". Yet Condé Nast's literature clearly positions it alongside Good Housekeeping, whose former publisher Easy Living has poached.
"One of the critical differences between us and Good Housekeeping is that it will be a real indulgence, a treat, to pick up Easy Living," Forbes says. "Being glamorous isn't high on their list."
Other editors in the sector are less reticent about what some see as Easy Living's aggressive targeting of their own readerships. Sue James, editorial director of Woman & Home, says that with her rising circulation of 333,000, she is relaxed - although the March cover price has been cut from £2.90 to £2 "as a sampling exercise" (Easy Living will cost £1.90).
"We identified this huge group of women, which we call the 'treat me' generation, about three years ago," James says, "so it's flattering that someone else has finally discovered them." At Red (down to £2), editor Trish Halpin is taking seriously "any possible threat" to her 30-something readership - although any gap, she believes, has to be in the 40-plus market, and she feels her established title is in a strong position. The challenge for Forbes is to prove that the gap actually exists.
"It's not necessarily that women feel they're missing something at the moment, but Glamour has been the proof that you can grow what seems to be a saturated market," she says. "They're reading all sorts of things. It could be Marie Claire, it could be Good Housekeeping or Vogue. But I hope that when they see Easy Living, it will fulfil their wildest dreams."
Whether it does remains a £17 million gamble. And as Condé Nast knows, its rivals will not give up readers without a fight.
(Evening Standard, February 23 2005)
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