Obama Fever Driving Double-Digit Magazine Sales Lifts

In a decidedly positive turn for the magazine category in a difficult year, consumers have been snapping up regular issues and specials featuring President-elect Barack Obama.

An early read supplied to Newsstand Forum by Magazine Information Network (MagNet), based on POS data from four key chains (three supermarket, one bookstore), shows magazine category dollar sales up approximately 13% and copy sales up 13.5% for the week following the election (November 7-13), compared with the previous week (October 31-November 6).

On immediate post-election issues featuring Obama, the newsweeklies are projecting copy sales of 500,000+ for both regular issues and specials, US Weekly is likely to top 1 million, and People could see some of its highest-ever sales, reported The New Single Copy.

As expected, magazine third-quarter sales were impacted by the intensified economic crisis that set in at the end of September. Dollars for the period declined 2.1%, and units declined 7.3%, according to MagNet data from wholesalers accounting for 98% of category market share.

The category’s performance for the fourth quarter and through the inauguration should realize a boost from the Obama phenomenon.

Major newsstand magazines are far from the only ones seeing a welcome bump.

"We've sold thousands of the newsweeklies, but nearly every magazine we have in our stores has a photo of Obama on it--including the international titles--and they're all selling like crazy," reports Justine Kawas, VP, communications Universal News.

Black Enterprise's January 2008 issue, bearing Obama's photo and the cover line: "Why Barack Obama Should Be President" (the first time BE had endorsed a presidential candidate) yielded copy sales 32% above the average for the title's issues during the first half, according to SVP, marketing Bea Hanks. BE's November issue, with Obama's photo and the cover line "Yes, We Must," is currently performing 33% ahead of the average for July through October, she reports. BE's cover price is $3.99.

Meanwhile, Multi-Media International LLC, a publisher specializing in event-driven specials, decided that the odds in Obama’s favor were strong enough to risk printing 440,000 copies of a special, Obama, The Forty-Fourth President, in advance, so that copies could be in stores just a day or two after the election.

And if Obama lost? “We gave wholesalers instructions to destroy all copies if we turned out to be wrong,” says M-MI president Rober Maiello. “We were willing to take the gamble that we might have to eat the copies.”

“We’ve never seen any publisher do something like this before," notes Jim Roberts, SVP, Kable Media Services, Inc., M-MI’s national distributor.

Fortunately for the publisher, the calculated risk paid off. M-MI and Kable sent pre-election communications to wholesalers alerting them that they’d receive the special copies on November 3 or 4, and urging them to get the copies into stores on November 5, if possible. Wholesalers came through: 60% to 70% of copies were in stores between Wednesday and Friday, reports Maiello.

“We beat the big publishers’ post-election issues into stores for that weekend,” he says. “By the following Monday, we were seeing big sales numbers, and we knew we had a winner.” In fact, M-MI expects to see 80% to 90% sell-throughs for the $6.99, 68-page special in some key retailers.

To meet demand from consumers and wholesalers (M-MI received thousands of direct calls from people wanting to know how to get more copies), the publisher did a 160,000-copy second printing.

M-MI is continuing to feed the demand for commemorative publications with a second special, Obama, The Dream Fulfillled. This one (116 pages, $9.99) is an historical retrospective spanning African Americans’ struggle for civil rights under the leadership of Martin Luther King through Obama’s election.

The 500,000 copies of this special will soon arrive at wholesalers, and M-MI is hoping most will be in stores in time for the weekend of December 4-5.

“This special is the perfect Christmas gift for the many people who want to give their friends and family a keepsake of this historic event,” says Maiello. “Some people told us they wanted to buy 10 or 15 copies of the first special.”  —Karlene Lukovitz