The Economic Crisis and Magazines: Comes autumn, comes hope

Research has shown that the economic crisis has an influence on the publishing industry and the magazines. The bleak days of the economy has it’s impact on the magazine industry.

The traditional men’s magazines continue to slide, while the women's weekly market has suffered from consumers cutting back on multiple purchases (Nicola Clark, 2009).

According to the managing director of BBC Magazines, Peter Phippen, in times like these, recession periods, people tend to be attracted to strong editorial brands (In: Nicola Clark, 2009).

The publishing director of Vogue, Stephen Quinn, insists that top-quality titles, such as Marie-Claire and Elle, are coping, despite the downturn in the economy (In: Nicola Clark, 2009).

However, the number of adverts in high-fashion magazine Vogue has fallen by 20% over the past few months (and advertising volume is down 7% across all group titles), which shows us that even a company with 70% of the luxury-magazine advertising market is not immune (James Robinson, 2009).

But now, the autumn is a very important time for glossy magazines. Think about the Vogue September issues, full of advertisements willing to promote their new season designs, which are ‘usually heavier than newborn babies’, says The Guardian journalist Lucy Barrett. In these times advertisers are not only keeping up their marketing, but are boosting it to large extends.

This had not been the case the past year. While magazines are suffering from an overall drop in advertisement, this is not due to a decline of luxury brand spend. The reason is because ‘mid-market advertisers are cutting back their marketing budgets’ (Lucy Barrett, 2008).

In addition, several luxury brands have increased their spent. These brands include Gucci, Chanel and Louis Vuitton, it is suggested that this will be a trend over the next months ahead of us.

These brands do so in order to stay top-of-mind for consumers.
So, in the months to follow we will see an increase in advertising of luxury brands and a decrease of advertisements of the smaller brands in the glossie magazines.

Barrett, L. 2008. The Guardian.
Why quality street will survive the credit crunch
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Clark, N. 2009. Marketingmagazine.
Weathering the magazine circulation storm
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Robinson, J. 2009. The Guardian.
Crisis, what crisis? Condé Nast says the future's glossy.
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Traister, R. 2009. U.S. Economy Salon.
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