And it is. Many of us went to journalism schools in which the separation between editorial content and sales was a line that was drawn with blood and shall never be crossed. And that's true. Editorial is not in the business of selling ads, but there is no reason it should not be in the business of better educating its sales team on the value proposition of the product they are selling. Nor should it mean that editors and salespeople shouldn't brainstorm on ideas that might be beneficial to both advertisers and readers. The line is still there — a reader should easily be able to distinguish content that is editorially driven without advertiser input and ads or advertorials.
Which brings me to two semi-related items: Both Paste magazine and Bon Appetit recently tried two new ads out that seem to be straddling that line. In Bon Appetit's case, Starbucks purchased the masthead in the May issue, and alongside the masthead's names were quotes from that person about Starbucks products. The page was labeled promotion and was made to look like a Starbucks chalkboard.
The second is Paste magazine, which ran BMW ads down at the bottom next to the page number, in the place where normally a magazine's folio information would go. The ads featured a BMW and a fact that coincided with the page number that ad ran (i.e, on page 32: "Inches of legroom in the rear of the all-new BMW 1 Series Coupe.").
I wonder how comfortable any of you would be if approached by an advertiser to run this type of promotion or how you feel about working with your sales staff.
Labels: Advertising, Bon Appetit, editorial, Forbes, Paste magazine
