Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Barack Obama may have figured out a way to stimulate the economy even before taking office: by being elected. Merchandise commemorating, celebrating and — in some instances — practically canonising Obama is being sold by companies large and small, institutional and entrepreneurial, familiar (Time) and not so (the American Historic Society).
Consumers have already spent perhaps as much as $200 million on Obamabilia, two months before he will be inaugurated as the 44th president and another tidal wave of tchotchkes will be unleashed.
Obama “has been the best-marketed presidential candidate, with the most sophisticated branding since John F Kennedy used television to get elected” in 1960, said Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of Landor Associates, a corporate and brand identity agency that is part of the WPP Group. “So it’s no surprise that once Obama was elected, people would try to cash in.”
First came newspapers and magazines that reported on Obama’s victory on November 4 over John McCain. They were followed by spinoff stuff from publishers like posters, plaques and press plates of front pages; books; coffee mugs; and reprints of articles.
The Los Angeles Times, owned by the Tribune Company, has sold $6,86,000 worth of Obama items. Sales of merchandise by The New York Times, which is devoting part of its online store to the president-elect (nytstore.com/obama), “are between $1 million to $2 million,” a spokeswoman for The New York Times Company, Catherine J Mathis, said last week; the figures include revenue from reprints of the November 5 issue of the newspaper.
People magazine sold two million copies on newsstands of its November 17 election issue; at $3.99 a copy, that totaled $7.98 million. A typical issue of the weekly magazine, part of the Time unit of Time Warner, sells about 1.5 million copies on newsstands.
A People sibling, Time magazine, published what it called a “commemorative issue,” dated November 17, which was followed by a book, “President Obama: The Path to the White House,” in hard cover ($19.95) and soft cover ($12.95). More than 5,50,000 copies of the book have been published, said a spokeswoman for Time, Betsy Burton. “It could go higher.”
There are similar books being sold by the news media that include Life, another Time brand; Newsweek, part of the Washington Post Company; and USA Today, owned by the Gannett Company, in collaboration with the ABC News division of the Walt Disney Company.
After the news-related products came Obama e-cards, from companies like Hewlett-Packard, which is inviting computer users to “celebrate the Democratic victory with a free greeting card” from the HP Creative Studio, available at hp.com/create; T-shirts from Web sites like ivoted4obamatee.com; and coins “layered in pure 24 karat gold” from faux mints like ecoins.com and the New England Mint.
