Esquire magazine creates flap over flap advertisement
There’s buzz in the world of magazine design over this ad placed squarely on the front of the current issue of Esquire magazine:
What’s ths issue (heh)?
Jeff Bercovici, the media columnist at Condé Nast’s Portfolio, explains:
ASME is the American Society of Magazine Editors, which maintains a set of guidelines for keeping advertising and editorial separate, including a dictate that the front cover is strictly “editorial space” and should be a sponsor-free zone. ASME’s only real source of clout is that it administers the National Magazine Awards, but that ought to be leverage enough for Esquire, which usually wins a couple of them each year.
Bercovici quotes Sid Holt, CEO of the ASME:
I don’t think this advertising execution violates ASME guidelines, but as one of our members said, it puts us at the top of a slippery slope.
Not to be snarky or anything, but this particular example makes us smile. Folks are upset about an ad on the cover. Which might obscure editorial matter on the cover.
And what was the editorial matter on this particular cover? Artwork similar to what was used for advertising posters in the recent presidential campaign.
We on the newsprint side, of course, have been dealing with page one ads for six or seven years now. The New York Times and the Boston Globe recently began running display ads on their fronts.
And don’t even get us started on those sticky-note ads…
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:34 pm
What I found annoying about the flap was that when you opened it you didn’t get anything much inside. A weird ad for the discovery channel and some random quotes and a preview picture of the half naked women of the issue. I really like the Fairey illustration artwork plus the Esquire-style teaser squished type, but was ticked that what might have been a nice cover had this trapdoor in it. I much preffered the Time Person of the Year version of the Fairey illo. Now if the trapdoor contained some kind of witty commentary about what was going on inside Obama’s head, then maybe it might have made sense!