September Lands with a Thud

fall-fashionAn inside look at the weighty issue of the September titles and what it tells us about fashion advertising.

You know it’s September when the all-important fall fashion issues hit the newsstand. And they are hitting this year with a big thud.

Caysey Welton in Min takes us through the top 10 magazines in the glossy high-fashion niche.

“September has long been a big month for fashion and beauty magazines. And while times have changed, September still carries a lot of weight for fashion brands,” Welton writes.

“But how much weight exactly? Well, we decided to find out by putting 10 of the most notable fashion and beauty magazines on a scale,” Welton continues. “In fashion, bigger isn’t usually better, but for the September issue, size and weight matter. Together, they create a literal ‘thud factor.’”

Leading the pack in bulk is Vogue, weighing in at four pounds and measuring 25 millimeters of spine thickness and continuing their growth trend. Harper’s Bazaar follows in second, with Elle coming in third.

“Together, the 10 magazines weigh in at just over 20 pounds and the stack is 5.5 inches thick. So we don’t suggest stuffing them all in your tote bag on the way to the beach,” Welton quips.

Clearly the fall print issues remain critically important to the major fashion labels, with hundreds of pages of advertising. What we don’t see a whole lot of is consistent digital integration with the printed ads.

“David Cooperstein, advisor to programmatic platform PebblePost, said that marketers haven’t caught up to retailers when it comes to multichannel efforts,” notes Hilary Milnes in Glossy.

“They think of a magazine as a silo, and then they go with what’s familiar,” Milnes quotes Cooperstein as saying. “Marketers still think that capturing a reader with a visually interesting ad will be enough to leave an impression that will get a potential customer to return later,” Milnes notes.

There is a nod to a multi-channel approach in these September issues, with a handful of ads using hashtags, scannable images, calls to action and social identifiers.  While Cooperstein sees the lack as a negative, maybe brands understand the incredible engagement of a good print ad, and are giving the reader the luxurious, lean-back experience they crave in their fall fashion mags.