Ad tricks

In her article Sex, Lies and Advertising, Gloria Steinem describes the gender manipulation and bias in today's advertising. She tells how certain products are links to a particular gender. Food advertisements are associated with females because they are the primary clients for these products. However, it is becoming more offensive for food advertisements to be linked with recipes because it suggests that women must work for these meals. These associates of women and recipes are becoming more of a turn off for a working mother. They do not like to be reminded that despite their outside career, they are expected to be the one who cooks for the family. On the other hand, electronic advertisements are geared towards men. Steinem states that even when women buy electronic products, they consult their male partners before making the purchase.

These are the reasons behind the reasons for the advertisements, but how do they fit into the magazine industry? While interviewing my Uncle's staff at a magazine company, I discovered their reasoning. My uncle, who is the senior vice-president at AOPA Magazine, brought me to his office so that I could have the opportunity to learn about the various processes that go into the production of a magazine. The one man who stood out the most during my experience described the reasoning behind advertisements. Advertisements essentially pay for the magazine because it is a large source of income for the company. However, the company chooses where to place the advertisements to increase their sales. He said that the company places quite a few advertisements before the table of contents page so that it takes the customer a while to find the page numbers for the articles. What usually happens is a person picks up a magazine while waiting in-line at a store. While they are attempting to sift through the countless advertisements, they find themselves at the counter before discovering the article they were looking for initially. Therefore, they buy the magazine so that they can find the articles at home. I tested this theory the next time I waited in line at the grocery store. Sure enough, I did not find the desired article before it was my turn to check out. The more I browse through magazines, the more I find that this is true. The magazines I have found the most advertisements in were my bridal magazines. Have you every looked through a bridal magazine? Some are over four hundred pages! Do you know how much is actually information versus advertisements? Only about one hundred pages and that is being generous in some occasions. In this respect, it is the advertisement industry that is funding the magazine production in more ways than one.