Later Looks For An Older Lad

Later, the new men’s title from IPC Magazines, joined the men’s lifestyle magazine market last week in a flash of controversial publicity as two of its ads were withdrawn by the Advertising Standards Authority (see IPC’s Later Poster Campaign Censured By ASA).

The majority of titles in this sector are aimed at men in their late teens and twenties and the market is dominated by Emap’s FHM and IPC’s Loaded, which currently have circulations of 751,493 and 457,318 respectively (ABC July-December 1998). IPC’s spin on Later is that it aims for those men aged 25-40, who may be ‘outgrowing the existing glossies’.

A profile of Loaded‘s readership shows that the biggest proportion of its readers are aged 18-24, with penetration of the 25-34 and 35-44 year old audiences dropping off. This could be good news for IPC and Later if the new mag can pick up readers where Loaded drops off.

However, in terms of age profile, Later shares its target audience with GQ, and perhaps overlaps with titles such as Arena, Face and Maxim. Of GQ‘s male readership, almost 60% are aged 25 or over; this compares to around 45% for Loaded and 46% for FHM. Fifty three percent of Maxim‘s male readership is older than 25. In due course, readers of the ‘younger’ male titles are likely to grow up and move on from Loaded and FHM, but Later may face competition in securing these ‘mature’ readers from the likes of GQ and Maxim.

Arena and Face both suffered significant losses of circulation in the latest ABC audit. This is possibly bad news for IPC’s Later as it might point to a decrease in the popularity of the more mature men’s lifestyle market, rather than simply a poor performance for these specific magazines. Wagadon’s Deluxe, which also aimed at the more mature ‘thinking man’, was closed after only eight months following poorer than anticipated sales.

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