This month, Spain’s top-selling and most venerable weekly gossip
glossy, !Hola!, spawned a sister magazine in France, Oh-la!, causing
more than a few ripples in the marketplace. The German publisher, Gruner
& Jahr, also chose to launch a gossip magazine at the same time called
Allo!, prompting !Hola!’s publisher to go to a Paris court in an attempt
to clarify ownership of the !Hola!/Hello! brand name.
!Hola! is king of the many gossip mags in Spain, serving up a frothy
cocktail of society news, celebrity lifestyles and gala state occasions,
elaborately illustrated with full-colour glossy photos. In a country
greedy for celebrity news, gossip weeklies occupy six of the top ten
places in Spain’s magazines sales tables. Their popularity has been
attributed to the fact that, until very recently, Spanish newspapers did
not include the social diaries or gossip columns that feature in so many
British and US dailies.
Unlike its more glitzy rivals, !Hola! avoids the sensational and paints
a rosy picture of life in its coverage of the social whirl. It firmly
sticks to the rules laid down in 1944 by its founder, Antonio Sanchez
Gomez, who insisted that a subject must never be embarrassed and a
reader never offended. !Hola!, still in the grip of the founder’s
family, does not accept second-hand reports, declines to print lurid
details of private lives or sexual scandals. But it does chase and
publish first-hand confessions, a recent spread on the Duchess of York
being a good example. The popular belief that you are a social nobody
unless you have appeared in the pages of !Hola! and the intimate
cosiness of its pictorial reportage have contributed to its appeal.
With a paid circulation of more than 600,000 - a very high figure in a
country in which the leading newspaper only sells an average 440,000
copies daily - and a readership estimated at 3.2 million, !Hola! is
directed at women of all backgrounds, although its core market is the
monied and middle classes. This is reflected in the advertising which is
dominated by perfumes, cosmetics, fashion, champagne and clothing
companies. The top six advertisers, each with an annual input of around
dollars 1.4 million, are the Estee Lauder Group, L’Oreal Group, El Corte
Ingles (Spain’s biggest department store chain), Puig (Eaux de Colognes
etc), the LVMH Group, and the Swatch Group Espana.
!Hola! has come a long way since its scissors and paste beginnings in
Antonio Sanchez’s Barcelona flat 54 years ago, but it still remains a
family business. Antonio’s widow Mercedes, 76, is chairman of the board
and his son Eduardo Sanchez Junco, 54, manages, publishes and edits the
magazine. Carmen, Eduardo’s 27-year-old daughter, is in charge of
special editions and frequently contributes articles on fashion, travel
and cuisine.
The family is fiercely protective of its privacy and Don Eduardo spends
any free time playing tennis or shunning the public glare in the
seclusion of his sprawling farm near Burgos.
!Hola!
Cover price Pta250
Guaranteed circulation (Dec 1997) 633,425
Current ad rates: colour full page pounds 10,871
Current ad rates: mono pounds 9,129
