Some Major Advertisers Step up the Pressure on Magazines to Alter Their Content, Will Editors Bend?
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THE by Russ Baker SOME MAJOR ADVERTISERS STEP UP THE PRESSURE ON MAGAZINES TO ALTER THEIR CONTENT, WILL EDITORS BEND? In an effort to avoid potential conflicts, s there any doubt that advertisers reason to hope that other advertisers it is required that Chrysler Corporation mumble and sometimes roar about won’t ask for the same privilege. be alerted in advance of any and all edi- reporting that can hurt them? You will have thirty or forty adver- torial content that encompasses sexual, I That the auto giants don’t like tisers checking through the pages. political, social issues or any editorial pieces that, say point to auto safety They will send notes to publishers. that might be construed as provocative problems? Or that Big Tobacco hates I don’t see how any good citizen or offensive. Each and every issue that to see its glamorous, cheerful ads doesn’t rise to this occasion and say carries Chrysler advertising requires a juxtaposed with articles mentioning this development is un-American Written summary outlining major their best customers’ grim way of and a threat to freedom.” theme/articles appearing in upcoming death? When advertisers disapprove Hyperbole? Maybe not. Just about issues. These summaries are to be for- of an editorial climate, they can- any editor will tell you: the ad/edit Warded to PentaCorn prior to closing in and sometimes do take a hike. chemistry is changing for the worse. order to give Ch ysler ample time to re- But for Chrysler to push beyond Corporations and their ad agencies view and reschedule if desired. As ac- its parochial economic interests by have clearly turned up the heat on edi- knowledgement of this letter we ask that demanding summaries of upcoming tors and publishers, and some maga- You or a representative from the publi- articles while implicitly asking edi- zines are capitulating, unwilling to risk cation sign below and return to us no tors to think twice about running even a single ad. This makes it tougher later than February 15. “sexual, political, social issues”- for those who do fight to maintain the -from a letter sent by Chrysler’s crosses a sharply defined line. “This ad-edit wall and put the interests of ad agency PentaCorn, a division is new,“ says Milton Glaser, the New their readers first. Consider: of BBDO North America, to at York magazine co-founder and cele- + A major advertiser recently ap- least fifty magazines brated designer. “It will have a dev- proached all three newsweeklies- astating effect on the idea of a free Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News-and - press and of free inquiry.” told them it would be closely moni- Russ Baker is a free-lance writer who Glaser is among those in the press toring editorial content. So says a lives in New York. His last piece for CJR, who are vocally urging editors and high newsweekly executive who in the March/April issue, was about publishers to resist. “If Chrysler was given the warning (but who the Food Lion v. ABC trial. achieves this,” he says, “there is no would not name the advertiser). For 4 + A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR the next quarter, the advertiser Kurt Andersen, the former New York ing. “IBM is a stickler-they don’t warned the magazines’ publishing magazine editor-whose 1996 firing like any kind of controversial arti- sides, it would keep track of how the by parent company K-III was widely cles,” says Robyn Mathews, formerly company’s industry was portrayed perceived to be a result of stories of Entertainment Weekly and now in news columns. At the end of that that angered associates of K-III’s Time2 chief of makeup. She negotiates period, the advertiser would select founder, Henry R. Kravisnonethe- with advertisers about placement, one-and only one-of the magazines less says that he always kept adver- making sure that their products are and award all of its newsweekly ad- tisers’ sensibilities in mind when not put near material that is directly vertising to it. editing the magazine. “Because I critical. AT&T, Mathews says, is an- + An auto manufacturer-not worked closely and happily with the other company that prefers a soft c& Chrysler-decided recently to play publisher at Nezu York, I was aware mate. She says she often has to tell art director at a major glossy, and the who the big advertisers were,” he advertisers, “We’re a news magazine. magazine played along. After the says. “My antennae were turned on, I try to get them to be realistic.” magazine scheduled a photo spread and I read copy thinking, ‘Is this go- Still, the auto companies appar- that would feature more bare skin ing to cause Calvin Klein or ently lead the pack in complaining than usual, it engaged in aback-and- Bergdorf big problems?’ m about content. And the automakers are forth negotiation with that adver- National Review put a reverse spin so powerful-the Big Tluee pumped tiser over exactly how much skin on the early-warning-for-advertisers $3.6 billion into U.S. advertising last would be shown. CJR’s source says discussion recently, as The Washing- year-that most major magazines the feature had nothing to do with ton Post revealed, when its advertis- have sales offices in Detroit. the advertiser’s product. ing director sent an advance copy of After The New Yorker, in its issue + Kimberly-Clark makes Huggies a piece about utilities deregulation of June 12, 1995, ran a Talk of the diapers and advertises them in a num- to an energy supplier mentioned in Town piece that quoted some violent, ber of magazines, including Child, the story, as a way of luring it into misogynist rap and rock lyrics- American Baby, Parenting, Parents, buying space. along with illustrative four-letter Baby Talk, and Sesame Street Parents. And Chrysler is hardly the only words-opposite a Mercury ad, Ford Kimberly-Clark demands-in writ- company that is aggressive about its Motor Company withdrew from ‘the ing in its ad insertion orders-that editorial environment. Manufacturers magazine, reportedly for six months. these ads be placed only “adjacent of packaged goods, from toothpaste The author, Ken Auletta, learned to black and white happy baby edi- to toilet paper, aggressively declare about it only this year. “I actually torial,” which would definitely not their love for plain-vanilla. Colgate- admire The Nezu Yorker for not telling include stories about, say, Sudden Palmolive, for example, won’t allow me about it,” he says. Yet afterwards, Infant Death Syndrome or Down’s ads in a “media context” containing according to The Wall Street Journal, syndrome. “Sometimes we have to “offensive” sexual content or mate- the magazine quietly adopted a sys- create editorial that is satisfactory to rial it deems “antisocial or in bad tem of warning about fifty compa- them,” a top editor says. That, of taste”-which it leaves undefined in nies on a “sensitive advertiser list” course, means something else is its policy statement sent to maga- whenever potentially offensive arti- likely lost, and the mix of the maga- zines. In the statement, the company cles are scheduled. zine is altered. says that it “charges its advertising + Former Cosmo Girl Helen Gurley agencies and their media buying Brown disclosed to News&y that a services with the responsibility of Detroit auto company representative pre-screening any questionable me- t is the Chrysler case, though, (the paper didn’t say which com- dia content or context.” that has made the drums beat, pany) asked for-and received-an Procter & Gamble, the second- partly because of Chrysler’s heft advance copy of the table of contents largest advertising spender last year I and partly because the revelation for her bon voyage issue, then ($1.5 billion), has a reputation as about the automaker’s practice came threatened to pull a whole series of being very touchy. Two publishing neatly packaged with a crystalline ads unless the representative was executives told Gloria Steinem, for example of just what that practice permitted to see an article titled her book Moving Beyond Words, that can do to a magazine. “How to Be Very Good in Bed.” Re- the company doesn’t want its ads In the advertising jungle Chrysler sult? “A senior editor and the cli- near anything about “gun control, is an 800-pound gorilla-the na- ent’s ad agency pulled a few things abortion, the occult, cults, or the dis- tion’s fourth-largest advertiser and from the piece” a dispirited Brown paragement of religion.” Even non- fifth-largest magazine advertiser (it recalled, “but enough was left” to sensational and sober pieces dealing spent some $270 million at more salvage the article. with sex and drugs are no-go. than 100 magazines last year, behind Cosmo is hardly the only magazine Kmart and Revlon are among those General Motors, Philip Morris, Proc- that has bowed to the new winds. that editors list as the most demand- ter & Gamble, and Ford). Where it Squeeze 29. I leads, other advertisers may be How many magazines will reject tempted to follow. ‘I WAS AWARE Chrysler’s new road map? Unclear. The automaker’s letter was mailed WHO THE ,BIG Lalli says he has not found any to magazines in January 1996, but publisher or editor who signed and &d not come to light until G. Bruce ADVERTISERS returned the Chrysler letter as de- Knecht of The Wall Street ]ournnl un- WERE. I READ manded. “I’ve talked to a lot of pub earthed it this April in the aftermath lishers,” he says, “and I don’t know of an incident at Esquire.