Specialist mature marketing agency Millennium has moved into publishing with the purchase of the established Active Life magazine.

The 76-page bi-monthly, introduced 16 years ago, will run parallel with a specially designed online version as part of Millennium’s move into direct consumer services for the mature market.

Millennium aim to develop the magazine, using their experience and in-depth knowledge of the mature market, to feature editorial, services and products that they know are best matched to the needs and interests of over 50’s consumers. Yorkshire-based Millennium has built a reputation, over the last decade, as the UK’s premier specialist in marketing to senior generations and the move into publishing is a natural use of the agency’s understanding of the ‘mature consumer’ market.

The age of the magazine’s reader profile has been lowered to appeal to a slightly younger market of people approaching retirement as well as those already in their 60s and 70s. Millennium also has the opportunity to extend circulation further by forming strategic alliances with selected clients who opt to make it available as an added benefit to their own mature customer-base.

Active Life’s editorial mix will feature celebrity interviews, health advice, gardening, finance, travel and topical issues. And there will be cost saving benefits from negotiated deals in leisure, travel, property, finance, health, and other pre and post retirement areas. The initial print run was 100,000 all of which were mailed at the beginning of October – with plans to more than double that figure next year.

Former editor Helene Hodge was appointed for the relaunch in September 2006 and to take the redesigned glossy head-to-head with other leading mature market titles. “I was formulating great plans for taking Active Life forward before I left. I’m really pleased that I now have the opportunity to put them into effect. It’s a very exciting time for the magazine”, says Helene Hodge.

“There are already good traditional magazines for the mature readership – and we have used them many times to place advertising for our agency clients,” says Martin Smith, Millennium Group MD. “But we know what services and products mature consumers want, and how they wish to be communicated with, and there is plenty of room for a new communication platform offering something a little more contemporary and modern in design and content. Nobody, yet, seems to have got a print and online magazine, in this sector, running in parallel to maximum benefit – which is why we are paying particular attention to creating a web version at www.activelife.co.uk.

We know that a quarter of UK Internet surfers are over 50 – they are the fastest-growing age group on the web – so we fully intend to take Active Life firmly into the digital age and have specially designed the site for navigation by ‘silver surfers’.”

“The acquisition of Active Life will enable us to practise what we preach as the only UK agency dedicated exclusively to the rapidly expanding mature consumer market.”