The sex-laden lad magazine category that includes Maxim and Stuff has been getting all the press lately but there is another category of magazines worth exploring if you are interested in reaching the 18-24 year old demo. It’s a category of magazines focusing on the “trend conscious outsider” who’s living the hip urban lifestyle and yearning for confirmation of their cool factor. These magazines include Anthem, The Fader, Mass Appeal, Vice, While You Were Sleeping, and Tokion. Editorially, they are an eclectic mix of sex bordering on pornography with a bit of politics thrown in for good measure.
Intriguingly, the fact that these magazines exist and claim to cover “cool” makes them uncool. As we all know and as the author of this article points out, once something is deemed cool it is cool no longer and the readers of these magazines are just wanna-be cool hunters.
“The truly cool tend to come from outside this cohort and have no need of political or sexual prescriptions, much less magazines that tell them what they already know.”
Moving past the “not cool because it’s deemed cool” line of thinking, there’s no reason why advertisers shouldn’t tap this market. Let’s face it, not everyone can be insider-cool. The “insider-cools” define cool yet represent a small number far too insignificant and far too difficult for a marketer to reach. The “wanna be cools” is where the money is at. They take cool and make it a trend. It’s where the defining theory of cool becomes a reality that can be monetized.
