• by February 14, 2006

Wachovia Wealth Management and Pace Communications are launching a new, high-end custom magazine that will be distributed to 50,000 Wachovia clients and prospects responsible for administrating $130 billion in assets.

The magazine, as yet unnamed, will debut in May 2006 at a Wachovia-sponsored PGA golf tournament in Charlotte, NC. The new title will be published quarterly, and will carry only eight pages of external advertising out of a total of 52 pages.

The magazine is the latest example of a marketer hiring a custom publishing company to create its own magazine to directly target its constituents. Some companies use custom publishing as a public relations vehicle, while others use it as a means to communicate a tailored message in a controlled editorial environment to a specific audience of current or prospective customers.

Because of its affluent target group, the Wachovia title is expected to be an attractive advertising vehicle for luxury advertisers seeking to target high-income consumers.

Custom publishing is a growing field that has become increasingly popular among marketers that have found traditional advertising less effective than it once was, as a result of media proliferation and technologically savvy consumers who block ads and hand-pick the media they use to receive information.

The custom publishing industry has shown steady growth over the past ten years, and has become a $30 billion-plus business as of 2004, according to the Custom Publishing Council, an independent trade group that was spun off from the Magazine Publishers Association several years ago.

Greensboro, NC-based Pace Communications is one of the nation's oldest and largest custom publishers, having staked its claim in the field early on with the successful publication of several in-flight magazines, including titles for United Airlines, Delta Airlines, and U.S. Airways, among numerous other clients.