COVER OF THE ROLLING STONE: Whose face on magazine covers sold well? Well, according to stats from last year, it was apparently Lady Gaga. (Though they admit her numbers may be skewed since she was featured on the Rolling Stone cover which had the McChrystal interview.) Rihanna also did well, propelled in part by her semi-topless GQ shoot this summer.
Who were the losers? Interestingly, despite her big album sales, Taylor Swift doesn't seem to sell magazines, with her covers for Elle, Glamour, and Marie Claire all having limited sales success. And despite Anna Wintour's apparent massive girlcrush on Blake Lively, she had a decidedly mixed record, not selling well on the covers of Esquire or Vogue, but giving Allure its bestselling cover of the year.
I have to wonder with Taylor Swift if it may have been the case of too many magazines at the same time with her as the cover model. Right around the time that her album came out, I was in a drugstore and felt like there were dozens of Taylor Swifts looking at me. Doesn't seem conducive to selling a lot of any one magazine. Also: kinda weird.
ReplyDeleteI believe Matt has a bigger crush on Taylor Swift than I did on muktuk and Magical Negro movies.
ReplyDeleteShe's more than a little young for me (though I do think she's a very talented songwriter and recording artist, though live, not so much).
ReplyDeleteAnd two folks who I'd be interested to see numbers on, but I think the data isn't in on yet--Katy Perry and Lea Michele. I'll bet Perry sells well on male-focused covers, but less well on lady-mags, and Michele's GQ cover sold well, but she's generally not a big seller.
The methodology of this study is ridiculous. Comparing one month to another doesn't make sense. If, for example, the June issue of Vanity Fair always outsells the rest of the year because everybody takes it on the jitney to the Hamptons, then whoever is on the June issue gets a boost. To do this correctly, you'd have to build an index of comparable magazines (or at least magazines with the same demo) and figure out when a magazine outperformed or underperformed the trend, while also taking into account confounding events (like the McChrystal article). You might also model of expected performance using past sales, but I kind of doubt there would be enough usable data.
ReplyDeleteDammit, where's Nate Silver when we need him? (Though your complaints about methodology are valid.)
ReplyDeleteNothing to add except that I love the title of this post -- one of the best songs ever.
ReplyDeleteAre you suggesting we need to calculate Value Over Replacement Cover, where RC is represented by Drew Barrymore?<span> </span>
ReplyDeleteNo -- this is really just a basic event study.
ReplyDeleteAssuming arguendo that the methodology of the study is sufficiently valid to conclude that Taylor Swift performs less well others, I hypothesize that it's because she self-discloses exactly as much to the world through her music and social media as she does through a glossy cover stories. If she writes a song about John Mayer, that's what she has to say. The magazine doesn't add anything. Magazine cover stories are built on the promise that a star, previously reticent, has finally come clean/gotten real/shared girl talk/opened up. Taylor Swift promises her fans that she is an open book. Why would you read a cover story when you've already heard the story?
ReplyDeleteSlightly off-topic, but has it been determined that Swift's song "Dear John" is in fact about John Mayer and that it is accurate and not simply the result of an unrequited crush on a man more than a decade older than her? Not that evidence doesn't exist to support the Mayer = Jerk theory, but T. Swift does seem to be making the rounds of the Hollywood men and I don't think she's quite as young as the image she works so hard to project. I like Taylor Swift - John Mayer, too, for that matter - and I think it's a good song. I'm just curious.
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