The Australian Women’s Weekly (AWW) has created an iPad app and undergone a physical facelift and in an effort to reach a new generation of women. 

The AWW is still Australia’s most read magazine, with over 2 millions sets of eyeballs viewing the monthly, but the updates are an effort to make it more relevant and accessible to younger women, while retaining loyal readers. 

Editor-in-chief Helen McCabe says the most exciting development is the Women’s Weekly app. “I was blown away by what the mag looks like on an iPad,” McCabe tells Marketing magazine. “It does so much more than the mag you can hold in your hand.”

Issues of the magazine will be released on iTunes for $5.99 concurrently with the physical copy. It will include the entire normal magazine’s content, along with extras like behind-the-scenes videos from the magazine’s celebrity shoots, and cooking demonstrations. 

McCabe says the move onto the iPad is primarily directed at engaging a new, younger audience, but she also believes the AWW’s existing audience is more digitally enlightened than many think.

“We’re looking at women in our key demographic of 40 plus too. They are already interested in iPads, they are big uptakers of social networking, and they’ll become more interested in this version of the magazine over time.”

The changes to the physical copy are mainly design-based, with updates to fonts and the layout, resulting in a cleaner, “more contemporary feel”. 

The changes will be backed by a $4.5 million TV spend, with a 45 second TVC created by Ogilvy and Mather to hit all national markets.