I’ve seen sales data for OK! from twenty newsagencies to the close of business last night which suggests the title is tracking well. On average, after three days trade, a 20% sell through. The peak is a sell through of 75%. The strongest sales, for the stores providing such data, were yesterday.
OK! is a very different weekly and it will take time for consumers to warm to this. In my own shop, where I can get into the guts of the data, I can see that OK! has sold more than NW and Famous. I’d expect it to pass WHO. 30% of the time it’s been sold alone, meaning 70% of sales have been with another product – usually another weekly magazine.
I suspect one outcome of the launch to be a shift in on sale days for at least one other weekly, maybe two. But I’ve predicted that before and it didn’t happen. Maybe I am projecting because of the real-estate, promotion space and labour challenges.