Canadian House & Home does a flip book to promote a line of cleaning products
Just what the heck is "sponsored editorial integration"? Apparently this is the description Canadian House & Home magazine uses for a "flip book" promotion whereby its back page becomes an upside-down alternate cover for a multi-page special section promoting Procter & Gamble cleaning products.
It's called Clean Style and features publisher Lynda Reeves prominently. This is complemented by a dedicated online micro-site that features a $20,000 contest where, to qualify, the reader is asked to drag various P&G products into the room of a cutaway house where they might be used. (Thanks to Media in Canada for the pic.)
This comes a couple of months after Canadian Living did a similar "flip book" fashion promotion in association with L'Oreal, the cosmetics giant.
It's probably not completely coincidental that the current industry ad:editorial guidelines are being re-examined in light of changing circumstances (including, for the first time, covering both business-to-business magazines as well as consumer titles). And not a moment too soon, given that the above-noted initiatives skate close to, or right over the edge of, the current guidelines. [Disclosure: I have been asked to sit on the committee reviewing the guidelines.]Labels: ad:edit
posted by D. B. Scott at
12:01 pm
5 Comments:
Glad to know you are on the committee D. B.! Please keep us posted on the issues, debate and progress. Publishers are asking/forcing editors to do some really crazy things. So crazy that even now guaranteeing an adjacency ad to a related page of editorial is not seen as a big deal in their eyes and is done all of the time. And maybe this is where we can start talking about the ethics behind that May cover of Chatelaine/Joe Fresh.
I find it interesting that Linda is personally endorsing both Tide (in the flip part of the magazine) and Method Laundry Detergent (page 42). These two brands insist on "maximum advertising separation" and consider themselves major competitors. However they are both advertising in the issue so maybe that's why she's endorsing them or is this "editorial integration". Who knows what's real and what's not? Is this the new norm? Currently advertisers are paying for editorial integration, how long before it's just "added value"? Publishers have gone down a slippery slope- soon enough agencies will expect this for free. Then what?
For coming up with "sponsored editorial integration," CHH should be awarded a special prize for the Euphemism of the Year Award. I'm sure the inventor of this weasel description was quite proud. What also amazed me was that there were so few comments.
You guys just don't get it. Editors, writers, freelancers...it's your/their job to write and produce what their told to by the publisher (who's paying the bills). When they're paying the bills they can do whatever they want. Wake up or enjoy your editorial objectivity from the unemployment line!
This is an independent publication? Likely means it doesn't have synergies with sister pubs or economies of scale. This flip ad stuff does sound like a desperate gambit for ad $$. But this smaller co. has to do whatever to survive the techno. sea change. Its not surprising home decor mags, which tout a kind of grasping materialism, aren't doing well at a time we're embracing "green" (consume less!)Interesting to see wheneconomy revives if expensive homes jammed with fancy furniture and souless knicknacks will return.
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