The past few months have been pretty hard for US Vogue. As previously reported, the ad pages for their September issue have dropped by 36% from last year, with ELLE beating them in pages for the first time.
In light of these problems, recent reports claim that the magazine is quietly revamping. "Think a new circle of models, an influx of fresh, young photographers and a desire for 'unpredictability' in the stories."
Magazines are in a really bad place at the moment; I mean really bad. WWD reports that this year's September issues will be a lot smaller than usual across the board. Let's just say that carrying our September issue will be a lot easier this year.
Publishers are said to have resorted to pushing closing dates back and dramatically dropping the page rates to encourage brands to spend on ad space. Although many were optimistic that things would improve despite the dramatic decline in ad pages over the past six months, recent figures prove otherwise.
According to reports, the September issues will have up to 30% less ads that previous years, with many publishers pleased that they have not lost more.
However, many luxury brands have dropped their campaigns for their pre-fall collections in the summer issues to focus their budgets on the fall, so hopefully the situation will improve soon.
Anna Wintour definitely woke up smiling this morning. After an embarrasing loss of overall ad pages to ELLE two weeks ago, US Vogue has come back fighting. Fashionologie reports that despite the overall loss, the magazine is still leading with the most luxury ad pages.
According to a Vogue spokesperson, the magazine's share of luxury ads have increased by 5% this year compared to InStyle, who have experienced an 8% decrease, and ELLE, whose luxury pages have dropped by 5%.
Last week we broke the news that, for the first time, ELLE bagged more ad pages than Vogue. When asked about how the magazine's advertising is doing, as they begin to close the big September issue, Vogue's publisher Tom Florio tried to diffuse the situation but actually revealed how bad the situation actually is. "We'll have over 400 pages of advertising," he told the NY Post.
As Jezebel said, 400 pages is a considerable drop from the 727 ad pages they had for the 2007 September issue, and the 607 pages last year.
People are quickly beginning to question whether this is a result of the economy, or whether it shows that Anna Wintour is losing her touch.
What do you think?
ELLE editor-in-chief Robbie Myers has everything to smile about. Not only has the magazine's circulation gone up after last years 'Stylista' and it's involvement with 'Project Runway', but also Forbes has announced that they have beaten American Vogue in advertising numbers.
So far in the first quarter of the year, ELLE beat Vogue by 14 pages, which is the first time this has ever happened. What effect this has, I'm sure will soon become apparent.
