Viva to target older women

Viva: Jerry Hall graced dummy

A new monthly magazine for women over 45 is due to launch in February, called Viva.

The 100-page glossy will target women aged between 45 and 60 and will feature a mixture of fashion, travel, celebrities, health and beauty, gardening and financial advice.

The launch is the result of a joint venture between magazine publisher CBC Communications – responsible for the recently launched gay title Refresh – and the over-50s website 50connect.co.uk.

Linda Hamilton, founding editor of 50connect and co-editor of Viva, told Press Gazette: "If you look at the sector, there are a lot of pre-40 and post-60 magazines for women, but there isn’t anything in the middle." She said she hoped Viva would appeal to users of the 50connect site, which currently attracts 5.1 million page impressions a month and has 100,000 members. It will be distributed to members as well as being sold on news-stands.

The magazine’s 15 staff are based in Windsor and Dale Lovell, editor of 50connect.co.uk, is the other co-editor.

Prior to launching 50connect in the UK in 2000, Hamilton worked on the website in Australia, where she also worked as a features editor on Australian Women magazine.

She is planning to use similar content to 50connect in Viva and suggested its closest rivals would be Real and Reader’s Digest.

The over-45 market is a difficult one to crack. Although Hamilton said she was targeting a slightly younger audience than Saga and Yours, both reported growth in the latest ABCs. Saga, which claims 45 per cent of its sales are actively purchased, increased by 10 per cent to 1.2 million, while Yours, which is sold entirely on the news-stand, rose by 5 per cent to 368,006. Real published an ABC of 172,087, while Reader’s Digest recorded a figure of 948,865, but fell 12 per cent.

Key features in the first issue of Viva include ‘Would you have botox?’ and ‘One woman’s quest to the North Pole’. It is also expected to feature interviews with supermodel Jerry Hall, singer Gordon Haskell and actress Su Pollard.

Viva is due to launch on 20 February with a print run of 100,000 and a cover price of £2.35.

By Ruth Addicott