If the separation between magazines’ editorial and advertising sides was once a gulf, it is now diminished to the size of a sidewalk crack.
Recent issues of Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Time, People, ESPN the Magazine, Scholastic Parent & Child and other magazines have woven in advertisers in new ways, some going as far as putting ads on their covers.
In a medium like TV, a partnership with advertisers is nothing surprising — look at how often plastic bags and containers from Glad are featured on Top Chef.
But in magazines, the editorial and advertising sides have stayed distinct, largely because of the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). The society hands out the annual National Magazine Awards, and its guidelines govern how editorial content and advertising should be kept separate. Cover ads are prohibited.
“Everyone has to be able to tell the difference between advertising and editorial, and if you can’t tell there’s a difference, there’s a problem,” said Sid Holt, chief executive of the American Society of Magazine Editors.
But in this recession, when magazines are losing advertisers, the lines between advertising and editorial content are blurring — with few repercussions from the society.
“ASME’s only real sway over editors was always the ability to essentially say you would not be eligible for the National Magazine Awards,” said Susan Lyne, the chief executive of the luxury firm Gilt Groupe, who until last year was the chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. “And in a climate like this, I think people are really weighing what’s more important to them: being eligible for the National Magazine Awards or making their budgets.”
The recent group of advertiser-sponsored projects vary in how far they push the society’s guidelines.
At one end is a “black-and-white violation of the ASME guidelines,” as Holt put it, in which Scholastic Parent & Child placed an ad on this month’s cover.
Executives of Scholastic Inc defended their choice. Risa Crandall, vice president of Scholastic Parents Media, said she had sold advertising for every remaining cover this year and expected a 10 percent increase in ad revenue this year because of the cover ads.
Elimination from the magazine society’s awards was “not a big consideration for us,” said Nick Friedman, editor in chief of the magazine.
The society has not yet publicly commented on several other potential missteps, like a cover design from ESPN the Magazine. The April 6 issue has a fold-out flap over half of the cover with the words, “You wouldn’t settle for an incomplete cover.” Pulled back, the flap reveals an ad for Powerade.
“We’re certainly conscious of industry standards, and in retrospect, did we push the envelope a little bit on this one? Maybe,” said Gary Hoenig, the general manager and editorial director of ESPN Publishing. “But we keep looking for ways to help our advertisers out, so we’re not going to be unwilling to listen if there’s an interesting idea.”
Entertainment Weekly turned its April 3 cover into a pocket that contained a pull-out ad for the ABC show The Unusuals, after ABC requested an original ad to promote the series.
“All media brands have been challenged to come up with more creative solutions to advertisers’ needs,” said Scott Donaton, the magazine’s publisher. “The ad was separate and distinct from the cover. It was not part of the cover. We don’t believe it crossed ASME guidelines in any way.”
Entertainment Weekly also participated in a special section that ran in five magazines published by the Time Inc division of Time Warner — Time, Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated — in their issues late last month. Opening with a page labeled “Promotion,” the section said: “Time Inc presents the 3-D Explosion.”
What followed was a mix of editorial content and advertising. Entertainment Weekly and Time included editorial photos and coverage of the DreamWorks Animation movie Monsters vs. Aliens, mixed with ads from Hewlett-Packard, McDonald’s, Intel and RealD.
The advertisers were all Monsters vs. Aliens sponsors, and some of their ads included the same movie characters that were shown in the editorial material. Time, Entertainment Weekly and People ran cover lines promoting the section. The ads and some editorial content were produced in 3-D.
David Granger, the editor in chief of Esquire, a Hearst magazine, included advertisers in cover compositions he produced for February and next month, which the magazine society said it did not object to. The February issue had an image of US President Barack Obama with a peel-back window featuring an advertiser, the Discovery Channel. And next month’s shows “mix and match” covers — readers can put Obama’s chin with George Clooney’s nose and Justin Timberlake’s eyes — with the flip side of the images showing History Channel ads.
When he and his publisher began working on the projects, Granger said, “we came to an agreement on certain principles, and one was that there had to be real, viable reader benefit to any of the things we did.”
He said that other cover treatments, like ESPN’s and Entertainment Weekly’s, “are pure advertising iterations.”
“They don’t really do anything to enhance the editorial,” he said.
If the board of ASME decides a magazine has violated its standards, the next step is for the society to write a letter.
“They’re not severe consequences,” said Peggy Northrop, a board member of the magazine society and the editor in chief of Reader’s Digest. “We are not a regulatory body. What we can do is, we have the bully pulpit and we have the ability to withhold” a National Magazine Award.
But that rarely occurs.
“Most people respond quickly and agree that they may have made a mistake or that it was an oversight, whatever — and they agree and don’t do it again,” Holt said.
“If there are repeated and willful violations, a magazine can be barred from participating in the National Magazine Awards,” he said, and an editor’s membership in the society can be suspended.
“That happens, I will admit, very rarely, because things don’t get to that point,” he said.
Asked whether that was an effective deterrent, Holt said that the magazine society was somewhat limited in its power.
“What am I supposed to do, go down there and drag the editor on the street like Sonny Corleone and beat him up on the streets of Broadway?” he said. “We work in a collegial business, and we’re not the advertising police.”
For publishers and editors, the allure of advertising revenue may outweigh the threat of a strongly worded letter.
“If you focus on not being able to get an award, ultimately I think that doesn’t have teeth anymore,” Lyne said. “I think that what does have teeth is thinking about whether this is a short-term solution that is going to end up damaging the long-term viability of your publication. And that’s really what ASME should be reminding people of.”
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