Shop til you drop your guard

A question about "cover wraps" at a Magazines West seminar was whether they should be considered; I said generally no. But in a case of extreme synchronicity I now find an article in the Wall Street Journal about Hearst's Shop Etc. magazine selling its entire cover to Target stores.

Its August issue is going to half a million subscribers with a cover paid for by retailer Target. Complete with Shop Etc.'s masthead in its regular top-of-the-page spot, the cover is dominated by a picture of designer gift wrap. The word "advertisement" appears in small print above the masthead.

"Dubbed a 'cover wrap' by Hearst, because the ad extends across the front and back of the magazine, sale of such premium space is the latest sign that magazines -- facing increasing competition for ad dollars from other media -- are becoming more flexible about the types of ads they will accept," says the Journal story (sub req'd).

"There are too many ads out there, and it's a sea of sameness. You have to be creative," says Cynthia Lewis, Shop Etc.'s vice president and publisher. "I don't think any one of our subscribers will feel that they have been misled by this cover." Copies of the issue on newsstands won't include the cover wrap. The magazine's third page functions as the regular cover.

Target paid a premium and bought a full-page ad at the end of the magazine though Hearst wouldn't comment on the price of the package.

"Shop Etc. may have gone further than other publications, but some magazines aren't far behind," said the Journal. "H. Bauer Publishing's In Touch Weekly helped design a back-cover ad for PepsiCo's Diet Pepsi that looked remarkably like the magazine's front. Instead of featuring a gossip-page regular such as Jennifer Aniston, the mock cover in the July 3 issue starred a Diet Pepsi can complete with cover lines ("The Diet Pepsi Can Spills All!").

"Similarly, the June 19 issue of OK! Weekly sported an ad for Diet Pepsi -- designed to look like OK's cover -- as the magazine's third page.

"OK!, a recently launched U.S. offshoot of a popular British celebrity magazine, has accepted other ads from Pepsi that look like content. In the pages of the June 26 and July 3 issues of OK!, a can of Diet Pepsi appears in photographs that look similar to an adjacent spread of celebrity snapshots, complete with caption. In one shot, the can relaxes on the beach.

"We want to have integrity, but we also want to have a point of difference, to say that we will work very hard for [ad] business without confusing or misleading our readers," says Melanie Danks, publisher for OK!. Finding ways to make ads more subtle and part of the magazine-reading experience is becoming more important, says Russell Weiner, vice president of marketing for colas at Pepsi-Cola North America.