We’re pretty sure Target (TGT) CEO Brian Cornell would take any phone call from British chanteuse Adele (preventing her from having to call a thousand times) if only to say thank you for a welcome sales boost during the holiday season.
The discount retailer sold 1 million copies of her new album, 25 in the first 10 days of the blockbuster’s release, a company spokeswoman told Fortune. That is a record for Target.
Adele’s third CD sold 3.38 million copies in the U.S. in its first week, a new record, and is now up to 4 million sold, meaning Target accounts for 25% of the album’s total sales. And, as Billboard reported, sales of 25 have been evenly split between CDs and digital, so Target is behind half of the physical sales of the smash album.
As per a tried and true marketing tactic the retailer has used with previous hit albums, notably Taylor Swift’s Red, Target was offering three extra tracks in its exclusive edition of 25.
Target was selling its version of 25 for $12.99 online and $15.99 in stores, meaning sales have come in so far between $13 million and $15 million. That’s a drop in the bucket for a retailer with $72 billion a year in sales. But the CD also brought much needed traffic into stores on the busiest shopping weekend of the season, Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
As Cornell told Fortune last week at a store in Jersey City, N.J.: “Adele dropping when it did, the weekend before Thanksgiving, really helped bring in people.”
