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hardly over for Bride's
Now leads in ad pages, as slump claims biz titles
By Jeff Bercovici
Looking at the list of magazines that led the publishing industry in advertising pages last year is an exercise in nostalgia.
The only thing more staggering than the page totals the leading books racked up in 2000 is the rate at which they plummeted to earth this year.
But there is a notable exception: Bride's.
Last year, Condé Nast's wedding guide came in fifth, behind The Industry Standard, Fortune, Business Week and Forbes.
This year, Bride's is the top consumer title, with 2,966 ad pages as of the end of September, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
While that figure represents a 4.7 percent drop from the same period in 2000, it is far exceeded by the stone-like falls of last year's top titles, notably The Industry Standard, which folded in August.
Bride's is no fluke. Its similarly telephone book-sized competitors, Modern Bride and Bridal Guide, are, respectively, flat and slightly up in pages--and this at a time when pages for the industry as a whole are down more than 9 percent.
With marriage as an American institution as inevitable as death and taxes for so many, it is no wonder the ad categories of the bride's titles are seen as all but recession proof.
Bride's publisher Nina Lawrence says that bridal advertising stays strong in a down economy largely because wedding spending itself stays strong.
If love is blind, as the saying goes, it is especially blind to matters economic, and people are in fact famous for deciding to marry in the worst of economic times.
"In tough economic times, when it's hard to find a consumer who's going to walk into a retail store and put down a credit card and spend significantly, the bridal consumer becomes the über-consumer," says Lawrence.
"In contrast to the rest of the population and to her peers, when she gets a ring on her finger, a process starts that is unstoppable."
Robyn Borok, publisher of Modern Bride, says that she has seen jewelry and travel advertising pick up of late as marketers in those sectors pull their dollars from other, less dependable, media outlets.
"These folks know that this is a consumer who's in motion and who'll stay in motion," says Borok.
"The honeymooner is still a traveler. At times like this, it's almost like, 'Thank God there is a honeymoon market.'"
Even if a genuine recession should develop, it won't affect the number of weddings that take place next year, and it's unlikely to have much effect on how much people spend on the events, says Thomas Curtin, publisher of Bridal Guide.
"It's a once-in-a-lifetime affair, hopefully," says Curtin. "Is there going to be less extravagant spending? I think if it's for the reception, maybe somebody will shave a little bit here, a little bit there. But I don't think what people are willing to do for honeymoons and where they're willing to go is going to change measurably."
But that doesn't mean that the bridal magazines themselves will escape the pain of an ailing economy.
"The bridal industry is recession proof, but the industries we work in are not 100 percent bridal," says Bride’s Lawrence.
Those advertisers that are not, especially in the travel sector, will be reining in their budgets for next year, causing Lawrence to predict a mild decline in overall advertising in 2002.
Both Curtin and Borok agree that many advertisers have been taking a wait-and-see approach to spending for next year.
"It's only been about six weeks since the attacks," says Modern Bride's Borok. "People are still in shock and they haven't really seen the effects of what's going to happen at retail for Christmas."
"I think it's going to be a tough year for everybody," says Bridal Guide’s Curtin. "Some of the people who are more aggressive marketers are holding their own and in some cases increasing, but some people have a bunker mentality."
But with the average engagement now lasting 14 months or more, the nature of the marketplace doesn't reward advertisers who hesitate, says Curtin. After all, people reading bridal magazines next year may not be getting married until 2003 or 2004, by which time the recession will, hopefully, be no more than a dim memory.
"You gotta be in front of this audience," says Curtin. "It's a revolving door."
November 2, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jeff
Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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