How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 37)

The Pros and Cons of Magazine Advertising

Magazines offer a wide variety of benefits to advertisers. The truth antismoking campaign benefited greatly from the outstanding color reproduction available only from magazines. Further, by running in culture magazines such as Vibe and Vogue Teen, read by teens of different lifestyles and ages, the American Legacy Foundation could target its audience more precisely. Magazines offer a host of other features too: flexible design options, prestige, authority, believability, and long shelf life. Magazines may sit on a coffee table or shelf for months and be reread many times. People can read a magazine ad at their leisure; they can pore over the details of a photograph; and they can study carefully the information presented in the copy. This makes it an ideal medium for high-involvement think and feel products.

However, like every medium, magazines also have a number of drawbacks. They are expensive, especially for color ads. And since they typically come out only monthly, or weekly at best, it is difficult to build up reach and frequency quickly. For these reasons, many advertisers use magazines in combination with other media---such as newspapers.

Special Possibilities with Magazines

Media buyers need to be aware of the many creative possibilities magazines offer advertisers through various technical or mechanical features. These include bleed pages, cover positions, inserts and gatefolds, and special sizes, such as junior pages and island halves.

When the dark or colored background of the ad extends to the edge of the page, it is said to bleed off the page (see Figure 1). Most magazines offer bleed pages, but they charge 10 to 15 percent more for them. The advantages of bleeds include greater flexibility in expressing the advertising idea, a slightly larger printing area, and more dramatic impact.

Figure 1

Bleed.

If a company plans to advertise in a particular magazine consistently, it may seek a highly desirable cover position. Few publishers sell ads on the front cover, commonly called the first cover. They do sell the inside front, inside back, and outside back covers (the second, third, and fourth covers, respectively), usually, through multiple-insertion contracts at a substantial premium.

Exhibit 2

Junior unit.

A less expensive way to use magazine space is to place the ad in unusual places on the page or dramatically across spreads. A junior unit (see Exhibit 2) is a large ad (60 percent of the page) placed in the middle of a page and surrounded with editorial matter. Similar to junior units are island halves, surrounded by even more editorial matter. The island sometimes costs more than a regular half page, but because it dominates the page, many advertisers consider it worth the extra charge.

Sometimes, rather than buying a standard page, an advertiser uses an insert. The advertiser prints the ad on high-quality paper stock to add weight and drama to the message,and then ships the finished ads to the publisher for insertion into the magazine at a special price. Another option is multiple-page inserts. Calvin Klein once promoted its jeans in a 116-page insert in Vanity Fair. The insert reportedly cost more than $1 million, but the news reports about it in major daily newspapers gave the campaign enormous publicity value. Advertising inserts may be devoted exclusively to one company's product, or they may be sponsored by the magazine and have a combination of ads and special editorial content consistent with the magazine's focus.

Exhibit 3

Gatefold ad.

A gatefold is an insert whose paper is so wide that extreme left and right sides have to be folded into the center to match the size of the other pages. When the reader opens the magazine, the folded page swings out like a gate to present the ad. Not all magazines provide gatefolds, and they are always sold at a substantial premium.

Some advertisers create their own custom magazines. These look like regular magazines and are often produced by the same companies that publish traditional magazines. However, they are essentially magazine-length ads, which readers are expected to purchase at newsstands. Custom magazines have been published for Sony, General Motors, General Electric, and Ray-Ban sunglasses. In 2002, for example, Kraft Foods decided to expand its free, custom-published magazine, What's Cooking. The popularity of that publication even inspired a TV spin-off of the same name.

How Magazines Are Categorized

In the jargon of the trade, magazines are called books, and media buyers commonly categorize them by content, geography, and size.

Content

One of the most dramatic developments in publishing is the emergence of magazines with special content, which has given many books good prospects for long-term growth. The broadest classifications of content are consumer magazines, farm magazines, and business magazines. Each may be broken down into hundreds of categories.

• Consumer magazines, purchased for entertainment, information, or both, are edited for consumers who buy products for their own personal consumption: Time, Maxim, Glamour, Good Housekeeping. The Portfolio Review, "Outstanding Magazine Ads," shows the range of creativity in consumer magazine advertising.
• Farm publications are directed to farmers and their families or to companies that manufacture or sell agricultural equipment, supplies, and services: Farm Journal, Progressive Farmer, Prairie Farmer, Successful Farming.
• Business magazines, by far the largest category, target business readers. They include trade publications for retailers, wholesalers, and other distributors (Progressive Grocer, Packaging World); business and industrial magazines for businesspeople involved in manufacturing and services (Electric Design, American Banker); and professional journals for lawyers, physicians, architects, and other professionals (Archives of Opthalmology).

Geography

A magazine may be classified as local, regional, or national. Today, most major U.S. cities have a local city magazine: San Diego Magazine, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Palm Springs Life. Their readership is usually upscale business and professional people interested in local arts, fashion, and business.

Regional publications are targeted to a specific area of the country, such as the West or the South: Sunset, Southern Living. National magazines sometimes provide special market runs for specific geographic regions. Time, Newsweek, Woman's Day, and Sports Illustrated allow advertisers to buy a single major market.

National magazines range from those with enormous circulations, such as TV Guide and AARP The Magazine to small lesser known national magazines, such as Nature and Volleyball. 

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 481-485*

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