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As someone in the advertising industry, I've been very curious about their decision to run that cover from this aspect.
Clearly, this decision was made to get people talking about Rolling Stone. I remember that shortly before I left my old job, I happened to take a meeting with Rolling Stone—my client had previously run in them but we had not ran with them in some time (I don’t know what the old Director on my account was thinking…it was on a paint brand, why would he recommend Rolling Stone?? But I digress…) I don’t know why it sticks out in my memory, because a lot of my meetings with magazine are a blur, but I remember that the first thing he asked me was “When you think of Rolling Stone, what do you think of?” and I said “Music and entertainment”. He went on to say that yes, while that is the foundation of the magazine, they do also cover news, world and political issues, which is something that people forget and something they’re always striving to get their audience to think of when they think of the magazine. I immediately thought of this conversation when I saw the cover.
What I’m interested to know is if advertisers were notified of the cover beforehand. I’m trying to think back to know if there was ever a time where I was specifically notified about who is on the cover if there was not a specific reason I would need to know. (You do find out in some cases if a magazine thinks it might help them sell an ad; when I worked on an retail account, one of the celebrities who had a clothing line at the store was featured on the cover a magazine so they were sure to let us know in hopes that they would get some business as a result). But it doesn’t always happen. I can imagine that they are going to take a hit financially, not from a subscription/sales standpoint but from advertising sales. Every brand I ever worked on has been EXTREMELY sensitive to the environment they’re being placed in. If some advertisers didn’t know what the cover was going to be, I’m sure they were LIVID once they found out. I can imagine that there are quite a few ads being canceled/media planners are removing the magazine from recommendations. I’m just thinking if that happened to my last client…her head would have exploded.
Then again, most of the types of advertisers that run with Rolling Stone tend to know what they’re getting into, but still.
Sorry this is not really an emotional perspective…just some thoughts I had based on my experience.
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