Advertising agency Beta has launched a new website called High50 aimed at the over-fifties and edited by former Sunday Times Style magazine editor Tim Willis.
Laying down the gauntlet to existing leader in the sector Saga Magazine – which has a print circulation of over 600,000 a month – High50 says on its website: ‘It’s time to put Saga in the old folks home.’
The site will be funded through advertising and will be free, but readers will be invited to register to qualify for offers and discounts. It is aiming to reach 200,000 registered readers.
Willis said: ‘As far as we’re concerned we have no competition. Saga was aimed at the fifty-plus audience but now seems to be targeting retired people so we think we’ve found a gap.”
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He added: ‘The fifty-plus audience is at the moment 30 per cent of the population and with 80 per cent of the disposable income and that will be rising.
‘The media and advertising simply ignore them, they’re obsessed with youth. This generation isn’t going anywhere and they’re not retiring. They’ve got the power and the influence.”
In terms of editorial resources, Willis said: ‘We have a very small team and we’ll be using the resources available through the agency… at the moment we’re only publishing fifteen or twenty articles a week.”
Regular freelance journalists head up the various sections: Shopping (Rosalind Russell), Travel (Oliver Bennett), Food and Drink (Elaine Lemm), Culture (Mike Prodger), Sport and Leisure (Julie Welch), Home and Garden (Dinah Hall and Sally Brampton), Family and Relationships (Celia Dodd), Money (Sheila Prophet), Health and Wellbeing (Daniela Soave) and Life and Times (edited by Willis himself).
Nancy Dell’Olio, former girlfriend of ex-England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, is the first guest columnist.
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