• by February 3, 2006

There's a new girl in magazine town, and her name is Jane. Jane magazine, launched nine years ago under the eponymous imprint of former Editor in Chief Jane Pratt, is being effectively re-launched with a refocused editorial product developed by new editor Brandon Holley.

Pratt left the magazine last summer and was replaced by Holley, the former founding editor of Hachette's Elle Girl, who joined the magazine in August 2005 and has been tinkering with the editorial product ever since. The first issue to bear her complete stamp from beginning to end will carry a March cover date, and will be available on newsstands Feb. 21.

The issue will be backed by a substantial marketing push that includes a new advertising campaign and a variety of below-the-line elements, according to Jane Vice President-Publisher Carlos Lamadrid. A magazine spokeswoman said Holley has been running cover tests and interviewing "twentysomething" readers at dinner meetings over the past few months to get a feel for what kind of material they want to see in the magazine, which is targeted to women with a median age of 28.

The new issue includes redirected as well as new editorial departments and features designed to more accurately reflect the current mindset of women in their 20s, which makes up the magazine's core readership, Lamadrid said.

"When Jane was launched nine years ago it had a very specific DNA that spoke to twentysomething women," said Lamadrid. "It was for confident women who knew what they wanted and where they wanted to go." He said the magazine still targets the same demographic, "but that same twentysomething group has changed in the intervening years." He said that today the group is larger than it was, and that their tastes and attitudes have changed. The previous iteration of Jane celebrated the grunge lifestyle, but now the magazine has moved on. "Grunge is totally over and dead," Lamadrid said.

Research has shown that Jane's current target group is more interested in beauty and fashion than their predecessors, and editorial coverage of those areas has been increased accordingly in the new issue.

"These women grew up with working mothers and they realize that you can be pretty, strong, and smart all at the same time," according to the publisher.

New editorial includes coverage of home décor, with an article in the March issue on how readers can turn their bedrooms "into a space Diana Vreeland would've kissed you for." "We didn't do any of this coverage before, and now we'll be doing two to four pages of it in each issue," said Lamadrid.

Interactive features have also been added in which readers can opt-in to be notified shortly before an issue goes to press and answer questions posed by the editors to different topics online. The answers are then rushed into print, and appear in the magazine. Holley has also increased the number of movie reviews in the magazine, and added a new section that reviews blogs.

Lamadrid said the overall look of the magazine is also changing, becoming "fresher, bolder, and bigger." He said the new art direction represented a significant departure from the previous Jane, which he said "looked a little dark because of the whole grunge thing. This is lighter and more colorful."

The re-launch will be backed by an extensive marketing plan that includes a new advertising campaign from San Francisco-based HEAT ad agency, which also handles advertising for Jane parent company Conde Nast Publications. Lamadrid said the campaign was still in the planning stage and declined to provide details, but said it would be a multimedia effort.

In addition to advertising, he said the marketing plan also calls for a redesigned Web site that will include three different blogs by editors who will interact with readers.

An array of promotional efforts are also scheduled, including video displays at shopping malls and airport newsstands, in-store radio ads, posters on mall and telephone kiosks, podcasts, and a gala party in Milan during fashion week at the end of February.

Jane had been part of the Fairchild Publishing division of Advance Magazine Group until late last year when the group was reorganized and the magazine, along with several other titles, became part of Conde Nast Publications.