Riding Obama’s Coattails, Making a Buck Along the Way

[Idealism]

New York Times
By STUART ELLIOTT
Published: November 23, 2008

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 canonizing Mr. Obama is being sold by companies large and small, institutional and entrepreneurial, familiar (Time Inc.) 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.

Mr. 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 Mr. Obama’s victory on Nov. 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 $686,000 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 Nov. 5 issue of the newspaper.

People magazine sold two million copies on newsstands of its Nov. 17 election issue; at $3.99 a copy, that totaled $7.98 million. A typical issue of the weekly magazine, part of the Time Inc. unit of Time Warner, sells about 1.5 million copies on newsstands.

Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/business/media/24adcol.html?hp

[Tarheel_Dem]

1. Obama may singlehandedly turn around this ailing economy....nt

[Cha]

2. I just happen to go to the store

when that People edtion was the last one there. There was also an USWeekly published by Rolling Stone that has Obama and Michelle on the front with "Their Amazing Journey" that I got my hands on.

It took 8 years of bushits plundering our Blood and Treasure to create the Perfect Storm of an Obama and all he stand for Love Fest and "Obamabilia":fistbump:

"Yes, journalists are biased,” Mr. Stengel said. “They’re biased in favor of a story that makes news and is what our readers are interested in.”