Shopping is everything, or is it?
- Posted by Kati on October 21st, 2003 filed in Lifeblog in english
Quote from the Internet Advertising Bureau daily newsletter i got today:
“Advertising Age gave its Magazine of the Year prize to “Lucky,” the shopping publication that essentially invented a genre. Ad Age applauds the way the magazine cuts to the chase, offering its target demographic access to the products it wants without distracting with articles unrelated to shopping.”
I find this remark (underlined) very very disturbing. It suggests that the target demographic, which i suspect is 16-30 females with lots of disposable income, does not and SHOULD NOT care about anything else than shopping. I know, the alternative for Lucky is to distract its users with make-up, what to wear to a leopard-print thong, and stuff like that, but still, surely these people don’t have VISA logos in the place of their eyeballs?!
OK, i should rephrase: I find the remark not just disturbing but insulting, on behalf of Lucky’s target demographics. Of course, knowing the current and foreseeable domination of consumerism in society i am probably just applying my own mindset over things that are in an entirely other realm, where shopping IS the alpha and the omega of existence.
Further quotes from the AdAge article that just make things worse and worse:
{A magazine, as one senior-level editor at another title puts it, that sees the world as “a series of products to be consumed.”} Now, that’s a mission statement.
A quote from the founding editor in chief: {”I can see why people would think that it means the magazine world is going to hell when this really hot magazine is a magazine without paragraphs,” she says. “I get that. At the same time, all I ever tried to do was to fulfill a need, and by doing that I wasn’t trying to squash anything meaningful in our culture.”}
{Nevertheless, even Ms. France, (…), sounds slightly scared at what her Lucky has wrought.
“Does my jaw drop in focus groups where women look at the ‘Ask the Editors’ column” — a relatively straightforward question-and-answer feature — “and say, ‘I don’t want to read that page because there’s too much text there’? Yes. That freaks me the hell out.”} Well, then, what about looking up the word “responsibility” in the dictionary Ms France and giving it some thought? You are a decision maker and you have the power to influence this.
And a last quote from her regarding people expressing thei concerns on the magazine: {”I don’t care so much. I know I’ve got the readers, and that community respects me.”}
Well, if that’s the standard you decide to live by, enjoy.