Today's Vancouver Woman has a drop-off circulation of 42,000.

Over the past couple of years, at least four new Vancouver-based consumer magazines with some kind of green angle have sprouted: Granville, Good Life Living Green, Edible Vancouver and Blush. But while the new arrivals would seem to signal a broad acceptance of environmentalism by West Coast magazine readers and advertisers, Rebecca Ephraim, publisher and editor-in-chief of SharedVision, which has covered green issues for 22 years, has changed the magazine’s title to extend its reach even further. The new name, Today’s Vancouver Woman, debuted this month with a new tagline: "Savvy, Green and Soulful.”

Though the magazine has a drop-off circulation of 42,000 and an average pick-up rate of 97%, Ephraim says focus groups revealed that more women would be inclined to pick up a magazine called  Today’s Vancouver Woman than one called Shared Vision, which, according to Ephraim, had connotations of being too “new age-y.”

“We found [the old name] limiting,” Ephraim says. “Even if you recycle and we drive a hybrid car, you may perceive a magazine by the name of SharedVision as diving into the deep end. And people who are deep, deep green perhaps would go there. Those who are light green may be a little bit intimidated by it.

“What we want to do is broaden the scope for reaching a more mainstream audience that [our advertisers] in their marketing have not be able to reach.”

A name change can be a difficult to pull off, especially for a magazine that’s been around for 22 years. To ease readers through the transition, the January issue of SharedVision featured a double cover, with the second introducing the new name. Advertisers, meanwhile, were individually contacted and informed about the transformation.