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of Real Simple
It's no Rosie, or O or Martha, but crank it does
By Jeff Bercovici
Real Simple isn't the oldest of the so-called New Sisters, the group of women's magazines whose growth has loosely tracked the decline of the traditional Seven Sisters like Good Housekeeping and Better Homes & Gardens.
That honor belongs to Martha Stewart Living.
It's also not the biggest--that would be Rosie--or the most buzzed-about—probably O: The Oprah Magazine.
But Real Simple has its own claim to fame: It’s the first magazine of its kind to prove that you don't need a brand-name celebrity to sell home-and-hearth content to women in their 20s and 30s.
Exactly two years after its launch, it's hard to view Real Simple as anything other than a hit, or at least a hit in the making.
Though it's less than half the size of Martha Stewart Living and only a quarter the size of Rosie, Real Simple's circulation grew 47.4 percent last year, and its rate base, originally 400,000, goes up to 1 million as of August.
Moreover, in a year when countless magazines took a beating on the newsstand, Real Simple's single-copy sales were up 24.3 percent, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. About a third of the magazine’s circulation comes through the newsstand.
That's impressive when you consider that Real Simple's covers lack the two things women's magazine editors rely on most to fuel sales: sex and celebrities.
"I have consciously made it a kind of quiet cover," says managing editor Carrie Tuhy. "Martha and Oprah and Rosie are in their various own ways celebrity driven. We're sensibility driven."
That serene, understated sensibility doesn't allow for an eye-catching, oversize logo or cover lines promising better orgasms. It doesn't even allow for people of any sort, much less celebrities.
"I tried a couple covers with people," says Tuhy. "They didn't tank, but they didn't jump up."
Through trial and error, Tuhy found that the ideal Real Simple cover, whether depicting a bowl of soup or a bookshelf, is a meditative image with an almost accidental feel to it – a still-life with the kind of imperfections that you find in real life.
"A book left open or shoes or a coffee cup. . . There's always the sense that someone has just left the room," says Tuhy.
Creating that real-life feel was Tuhy’s main goal when she took over as managing editor 18 months ago. Real Simple's launch editor, Susan Wyland, had resigned under pressure after putting out just two issues. Time Inc. executives reportedly felt she had failed to translate the magazine's high-concept premise into something readers could relate to.
In some ways it was a classic Time Inc. launch, out the front door half-dressed, one shoe on, the other in hand, fleeing for the station, hoping the train hasn't already left.
"I've put the rugged start behind us," says Tuhy, arguing that the start wasn't even all that rugged anyway. "Two years for a magazine to find its feet is not very long."
The next two years, however, will hold their own set of challenges, including Chic Simple, a new magazine from Hearst based on the book series of the same name.
Chic Simple looks to be more fashion-based than Real Simple, but, says Tuhy, "Having the word 'simple' in the name, I do worry about confusion in the marketplace."
Advertising will continue to be a challenge for the entire magazine industry, with economists predicting that the recovery, if it materializes, will be relatively shallow.
But Real Simple hasn't been much bothered by the recession. Ad pages were up 29 percent in the first quarter, and the next two issues, May and June/July, may be up as much as 60 percent, says publisher Robin Domeniconi.
March 12, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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