Branded Journalism
Part magazine, part catalog, the magalog is either a logical extension of the
brand or a threat to journalism. Take your pick.
By Rick Poyner
|
|
Click
on any image to access the original plate.
|
|
The
idea that a catalog could create a stir would once have seemed a
laughable proposition.
 Catalogs
were useful as a service for those who preferred or needed the convenience
of buying from home, but as news stories? Forget about it. To command
attention and become a publishing event, the catalog had to mutate
into a new form, still at root a sales tool, but with the extras
needed to turn a product list into a cultural phenomenon. Enter
the "magalog," part magazine, part catalog, a boundary-blurring
hybrid that fuses functions-advertising and journalism-traditionally
regarded as fundamentally different publishing activities.
Abercrombie
& Fitch (A&F), the hugely hip purveyor of outdoor clothing for the
college crowd, launched A&F Quarterly in 1997. The first issue,
designed by Shahid & Company, featured a piece entitled "Drinking
101," offering concoctions such as "Sex on the Beach" that infuriated
advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Right on target:
controversy, publicity, sales. The "Naughty or Nice" Christmas 1999
issue,
which had, in truth, rather mild sexual content,
was entirely true to form. The Chicago city council passed a resolution
"imploring the public and parents especially" to boycott A&F until
it cleaned up its advertising; politicians in Michigan, Missouri,
and Arkansas added their outraged voices to the pro-tests. The $5.95
magalog was already shrink-wrapped; now, to prevent the publication
getting into the hands of "impressionable" minors, buyers at A&F
stores needed to show a photo I.D. It was another brand-building
coup for A&F. The furor only added to its cachet with the 18- to
22-year-old college set, not to mention high school teens.
Looking at
it today, the 300-page issue (which sold out) radiates confidence.
The pages flip effortlessly and the matte paper feels lovely to
the fingertips; it's a lot nicer to handle than many a newsstand
glossy. First thing you see is a double-page shot of clouds.
 Cut
to a couple of tepees and a lone horse. Now we are inside a tent
decorated with Bob Marley and Einstein posters, Indian rugs, an
old portable TV, a bow and arrows, an acoustic guitar, a Christmas
tree (well, it's the season), and a Harvard banner: an unlikely
collection of signifiers, but it works. In the next spread are the
kids, two guys and a girl-cool techno-nomads reclining on a rug.
One has a cell phone; the others are looking at a laptop. There
are no labels in evidence yet-just artfully disheveled A&F models.
The outdoor
location pictures, shot by regular A&F Quarterly photographer Bruce
Weber, run through the entire magalog-in muted earth colors, old-time
sepia, and newsy black and navigation_elements/white. The men have taut, washboard stomachs,
the women, long, untamed hair. These flawless specimens of American
youth ride, climb, play ball, kiss, cuddle, roll on the grass, or
just stand there looking young and soulful for page after page.
In this wholesome idyll, their perfect bodies aspire to a state
of Edenic oneness with the natural world. They wear A&F's sweaters,
paratrooper pants, and mountain fleeces casually-half on, half off.
Sometimes they wear nothing at all. A naked girl leans back on a
horse, her hair tumbling down its hindquarters. Some of the clothes
are fraying and torn: their hard-living owners have loved them to
death.
Catalog pages
with the prices are interleaved with Weber's pictures, as are the
interviews and stories, all of them written and edited to fit exactly
one page. The typographic style is tasteful but unembellished-a
functional sans serif with generous line-spacing and small, centered
headlines, picked out in green. The stories are alternately "Nice"
(a 10-year-old genius) or "Naughty" (ubiquitous porno star Jenna
Jameson). Sophomoric humor is only to be ex-pected when many of
the uncredited authors are, like the readers, college students.
A&F Quarterly's fantasy photoworld of achingly desirable youth is
brought down to earth by articles about everyday popular culture:
film stars, relationship bust-ups, computer games, and "hot pick"
CDs. Not far below the alluringly shot surface, it's a stylized
variation on the content of any newsstand consumer title aimed at
the same group.
In reality,
the divide between editorial and advertising has rarely been absolute,
especially in the fashion and shelter titles. "Some years ago Henry
Wolf, the magazine art director, took a copy of Vogue and attached
a colored thread to every ad that related to some editorial mention
within the issue," says Milton Glaser, editorial designer and co-founder
of New York magazine. "When he was done the results looked like
a small Persian rug." In 1997, Glaser withdrew his nomination for
the Chrysler design awards following the revelation that the company
had instituted a policy of asking magazines to submit articles for
screening before deciding whether to run its ads. Writing in The
Nation, he saw this meddling as "an insidious attack on the principles
of a free press." A statement at the time from the American Society
of Magazine Editors warned that the requirement to submit tables
of contents, texts, or photos to advertisers for prior review could
"at the very least create the appearance of censorship and ultimately
could undermine editorial independence."
In the past
decade, the principle of editorial independence has been under repeated
attack. Last year at the Los Angeles Times, in a move that was heavily
criticized by journalists, former chairman Mark Willes- whose previous
line of business had been breakfast cereal-brought to-gether the
editorial and advertising sides of the business in a dubious way.
In one notorious incident, the paper ran a special issue of its
Sunday magazine about the Staples Center, a new sports arena in
L.A., having agreed to split the profits ($600,000) with the building's
owner. The deal, brokered by then-publisher Kathryn M. Downing,
had been struck without the knowledge of most of the paper's top
editors. A furor ensued inside the newsroom, prompting an in-house
report later published in the Times. In it, staff writer David Shaw
revealed how business considerations impinged on journalism and
how the advertising staff had demanded favorable coverage for certain
advertisers. "A wall is im-pregnable," reported Shaw. "A line can
be breached more easily."
Principled
journalists may try their best to patch up the cracks in the wall,
but the balance of power has decisively shifted. "In this age of
hypercapitalism and thus also hypermarketing," says Kurt Andersen,
former editor of New York magazine and now co-chairman of inside.com,
"all the old lines between editorial content and advertising-like
those lines between high art and pop culture, and between news and
entertainment-are blurring and breaking down." At the same time,
Andersen notes, even reputable publications devise sections with
the primary purpose of attracting advertising dollars. "As the most
prestigious organs create new sections that are significantly, if
not overridingly, advertising-driven-whether those sections are
nominally editorial (the New York Times's Circuits) or nominally
advertising (the New Yorker's travel sections)-the signal goes out
to the whole advertising, marketing, and magazine world that, further
down the media food chain, fuller crossbreeds of ads and editorial
are permissible."
The crossbreeding
in all media is accelerated by the Internet, where, as Andersen
points out, there are no preexisting protocols to determine how
"editorial" and "advertising" roles are assigned. If a company with
merchandise to sell wants to offer commissioned content to make
its Web site "stickier" for visitors, it can. Increasingly, as Naomi
Klein shows in her blistering book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand
Bullies, companies see themselves as alternative providers of content.
They can now shape the environment in which their advertising is
delivered, enabling them to further reinforce their brands. The
magalog, Klein tells me, represents "a growing impatience in the
corporate world with the traditional role of the advertiser as the
commercial interrupter, intruding on 'real' culture. Now, the brand
wants to be the cultural infrastructure, not an add-on, or an interruption.
Magalogs are an important part of that: rather than associating
with a lifestyle, represented by Rolling Stone or the New Yorker,
magalogs allow the brand to be the lifestyle, their products the
essential accessories."
Sony style,
launched by the electronics giant last fall, is one of the most
fully realized and convincing examples of the genre to date. At
first sight, with jazzy design, cover lines, and come-hither cover
stars like Jennifer Lopez and Milla Jovovich, it looks like a typical
newsstand title. At no point in his replies to my questions does
Ken Dice, Sony's director of corporate marketing communications,
refer to it as a "magalog." It's a "magazine" throughout, produced
for Sony by Time Inc.'s custom publishing division, with designer
Terry Koppel-former partner of Pentagram's Paula Scher-as creative
director. "Our ultimate goal," explains Dice, "was to evolve our
old catalog into a new publication that would help readers understand
today's technologies. Catalogs depict products. Manuals demonstrate
the basic operations. But nothing out there today brings to life
the possibilities of today's products and tomorrow's technologies.
Sony style attempts to fill that void."
Sony's obliging
void-filler is divided into four parts: short profiles, showing
creative uses of technology; new products and longer stories, often
with a Sony theme; a "Manual for digital living"-tips on using Sony
products; and a catalog selection. Time Inc.'s editors provide direction,
make contact with Sony personnel for specific input, and develop
stories as they see fit, always bearing in mind the marketing goals.
"We are trying very hard," says Dice, "to present the convergence
of technology, entertainment, and design not through the eyes of
Sony, but rather through the eyes of end-users." Koppel's lively
page designs are crucial to the impression that this is indeed a
publication about Sony rather than a communication from on high.
Although it remains, in essence, a corporate message, its journalistic
look and language are intended to smooth its acceptance as a magazine
like any other-one that just happens to focus on the Japanese giant.
It even has a few ads for other companies: Ford, Toyota, Oldsmobile,
the Gap.
As Klein suggests,
the purpose of a magalog like sony style is to establish the brand
not merely as an adjunct to one's personal lifestyle-one input among
many-but as the lifestyle itself. Magalogs deliver a concentrated
hit of brand essence that could never be achieved by placing ads
among the many competing signals projected by a traditional magazine.
"Unlike most magazines," says Dice, "where content-editorial and
de-sign-is developed with a specific demographic or psychographic
in mind, sony style was developed with the intent of re-aggregating
people around the concept of new digital lifestyles." In plain English,
they don't go looking for you on someone else's turf-they provide
the turf. In the controlled environment of a magalog, says Klein,
"brand lifestyle" can be displayed "with as much texture and nuance
as possible, in its Utopian habitat-outside the studio and in our
lives." Of course there would be little point in reading each new
issue (print run: approximately 400,000 copies) without this degree
of commitment to the brand.
"While magalogs
aren't yet direct competitors to traditional magazines," notes American
Demographics, "their mere existence attests to the changing and
fragmented media landscape." Magazine publishing has probed every
last niche, and magalogs seem set to do the same. Teenage girls,
checking out the latest fashions, have MXG and its Web site; art
collectors can keep track of coming auctions with Christie's Living
with Art; lovers of sparse Scandinavian interiors can explore Ikea's
Wallpaper*-ish space. Urban moderns with refined tastes and bigger
pocketbooks might prefer Room, started by former House & Garden
style editor Amy Crain.
As a confirmed
believer in independent journalism with no strings attached, the
only publication that comes close to persuading me that magalogs
might have something useful to offer, in an editorial sense, is
Kinko's Impress. Launched this year, it's the creation-on the printshop
chain's behalf-of another magazine-industry heavy hitter, Forbes.
If the aim is to convince you that the brand enshrines the ideal
of effective communication ("Sometimes it's not just what you say,"
declares the cover, "but how you say it"), then the first issue
strikes the right note with advice on text type, business cards,
the elements of good writing, e-mail etiquette, tailoring your résumé,
and giving strong presentations. There's an article on luck by Slate
editor Michael Kinsley, an interview with Web guru Jakob Nielsen,
and a brief introduction to the work of Pentagram's J. Abbott Miller
by an associate editor of Any magazine. Forbes Inc.'s design (with
art direction by Ellen Swandiak) is clear, engaging, and completely
unpretentious, reinforcing the impression that Kinko's knows what
it is talking about. It's about as far from being a catalog as a
magalog could be.
From a business
point of view, magalogs represent an entirely logical development
of the brand. Like the interactive megastore, the magalog turns
brand meaning into a tangible experience, one beyond the buying
and owning of the product itself. Advertising's impact is fleeting.
You view a print ad or a TV commercial and quickly move on. The
magalog sucks you into the brand's universe, keeps you there for
longer, entertains and diverts you, forges a complex network of
personal associations and connections, and gives you reasons to
keep coming back. A&F is not just a nice line of clothing-it's a
natural way of living for shiny, beautiful people. Sony is not only
a provider of stylish camcorders and DVDs-it's a way of thinking,
playing, and growing through technology. Kinko's is not simply your
local copyshop-it's a super-enhancer of all forms of communication.
From a journalist's
point of view, though, the rise of the magalog is cause for concern.
Their existence on equal terms, especially on the newsstand, makes
it harder to defend the idea of the wall. Brands have effectively
bulldozed the boundary line and built on top of it, often by calling
on the services of publishers, editors, writers, and designers who,
for at least some of the time, also offer their talents to publications
where lip service is still paid to the need for the wall. They may
draw a distinction in their own minds between the two kinds of publishing,
but to many readers, and to advertisers once held at bay by an unyielding
barrier, such hair-splitting counts for little. Former Benetton
creative director Oliviero Toscani claims that journalism's economic
dependence on advertising means that it is fatally compromised.
Most editorial, he insists, is "advertising" of a kind.
Toscani's self-serving
argument perfectly illustrates the risk of blurring commerce and
comment. He didn't speak as an independent voice, but as a highly
paid employee of Benetton. A magalog's primary task is to represent
a brand's commercial interests, to win converts and move the goods,
and this is no substitute for the ideal of skeptical, questioning,
impartial journalism, however hard it might be to achieve. The fact
that so many magalog buyers seem untroubled by such considerations
reveals the degree to which corporations, advertisers, and publishers
have succeeded in merging and confusing channels of communication
that are best kept firmly apart.
Will readers
see through the magalog? "The hopeful view," suggests Kurt Andersen,
"is that only magazines that have a distinct and valuable point
of view and/or provide distinctly valuable information and analysis
will survive." With new magalogs arriving by the truckload, though,
the outlook is muddled at best. "The consequence," says Klein, "is
that the concept of edi-torial is eroded and journalism is transformed
just as advertising has been transformed. Whether it's sony style,
Spin, or Wallpaper*, producing a maga-zine has become the same as
producing any other product. Advertising looks more like editorial,
editorial looks like advertising, and pretty soon these distinctions
begin to look to everyone like petty semantics." |
BACK TO TOP
