• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, March 11, 2015

"The Economist" is a very interesting one to watch, not just for the way it is transitioning smoothly to digital (subscriptions nearly trebled last year in the UK) but for the way it talks about its online readership.

Clearly, things are going very well for the magazine online -- so much so that it has held its print run numbers where they are and focused instead on growing digital subscriptions with spectacular results. While the UK has seen a near trebling of subscriptions, they have doubled in Asia and gone up 77% on average globally. Just for good measure, the magazine claims that nearly one in three of its readers is a millennial. That is the kind of talk that gets marketing gurus and publishers alike very excited. 

The thing is, although The Economist is probably very happy to have such a young engage readership, it actually bucks the trend of harping on about demographics and the importance of "digital natives" and instead cuts to the chase. In an excellent opinion piece for The Guardian last week, the magazine's CEO Chris Stibbs summed up eloquently that demographics are not the full picture. For The Economist, it's attitude and the type of person that they seek to attract, not an age or a location. By definition, the magazine, both in print and digital, attracts intelligent readers who are very aware of world events and want to find out more -- "progressives" as Stibbs calls them.

This type of audience is considered as a psychographic rather than a demographic by the magazine. In other words, the magazine is more interested in its readership's interests and areas of curiosity than it is their age, location, job and earnings.

The key message Stibbs passed on was not to believe all the assumptions people make about millennials because, according to Deloitte, one in six will subscribe to a print newspaper. Furthermore, it is not only millennials who are are consuming video or access the magazine on a tablet. This is happening across the age ranges, and crucially, Stibbs warns that to chase millennials down would mean relentlessly targeting them and organising its service around what are considered to be their unique needs -- which would, of course, risk losing the rest of its readership.

So interest and state of mind is what The Economist seeks to attract not just anyone too young to know George Michael used to be slim and in a band with his school pal and the shoes he used to wear have kind of come back in to fashion (I'm reliably informed).

The lesson here, then, seems to be incredibly clear. You don't have to go hell for leather to reach out to millennials and tick a box in every marketing guru's check list. You also can't assume they are a totally different digital breed. Get the product right and they will come, as will like-minded people of other ages and backgrounds. Media is about reaching out to a state of mind -- a type of person rather than a strict age group.