Beneath the Covers
Interesting and fun media analysis by The Wall Street Journal last week (“Hot Covers! One Prince, Three Sisters, Lots of Breakups”), timed to coincide with the year-end Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers.
Photo illustration by Matthew Weber/The Wall Street Journal; Photos: Zuma Press (Bieber); Associated Press (Kardashian, John); Getty Images
Did you know that 40 percent of all the covers of the six major celebrity magazines (yikes, I’m missing at least two in my pile at home), starred people “who owe their fame to reality TV.” No real shock there, but a big number nonetheless.
It gets a little more pedestrian: The folks from MTV’s “Teen Mom” accounted for nine covers of In Touch Weekly, more than Kate Middleton, Jennifer Lopez or Demi Moore.
What else do we like? Seems like we enjoy celebs who are preggers, but not their kids (sorry, Suri) as well as breakups and makeups. It also seems that adversity usually beat out successes when it comes to securing ink (Christina Aguilera’s “new love and fresh start” cover for US Weekly was the second worst selling for the mag in 2011).
And this type of coverage report wouldn’t be complete without the Kardashians. One of the Dashes was the subject of about one of every six celebrity-weekly covers last year. And Kim was one of the top-selling covers of Glamour and Cosmo (don’t know if that is pre- or post-Kris).
Lessons for PR folks, even those of us in financial services: drama does sell, keeping it real even better and struggles, not triumphs, trump all. 