The New Yorker has nothing but Target ads!

Found an article about it here:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2124604/

PBS had a segment on the Target blitz today.

Ah, the Gilded Age of the New Millennium.

What did you learn from the PBS segment?

The Slate article seems to be more a review of Target than anything else.

Naturally, I don't have mine yet...

PBS and Slate are interconnected and share commentary. I think the merchandizing move is unprecedented and the pundits needed some time to assemble their thoughts and analyze them. Meanwhile, they concentrated on Target Through The Ages.

Offhand, I am repelled, but I haven't see it yet..

And, I tend to like Target more than not, but not wholeheartedly.

If there aren't any pundits on this yet, I'll pundit-ify.

I think Target is trying to position itself as the American Ikea. Mass-produced high design, company with a conscience, a place for college students and their professors, too. I think they're doing a pretty good job of it.

They're nowhere close to Ikea yet in terms of design, but there are more and more moments when I am charmed by the combination of appearance and price. Mostly I still go there for the basics, a one-stop in a hurry. A typical trip would be a furnace filter, a cheap t-shirt for me, some gardening supplies, and a few toys for sozlet from the 1-dollar-spot.

The ads themselves are visually interesting and obviously meant to emphasize the design aspect (as opposed to cheap brand-name toilet paper, or whatever). They're all very New York oriented, and further many are The New Yorker-oriented -- some of the same artists, I think. They're black and white with splashes of red. (Even the COVER seems to obliquely refer to all of this, with a Falconer pencil drawing of boys playing with a big red and white striped beach ball, though the background is a sunny yellow.)

Overall I think it's high concept, well carried out, which is a meta-message Target's trying to convey, I think. Definitely packs a wallop. I opened the magazine to see a big artsy two-page spread for Target. Cool. Then flipped to the back (I like the new caption the cartoon thing) and noticed the back page. Confused. Noticed the inside back page. More confused. Flipped through the whole magazine. "WHOA!!" moment.

Found a new article (they're shocked, shocked), can't get as worked up about it:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/lazare/cst-fin-lew19.html

I had absolutely zero doubt that any of it was an advertisement.

Much better article I'd missed in the New York Times, including some of the ads:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/business/media/12adco.html

Interesting. I'll probably not be repelled after all. (We'll see, I still don't have my copy.) I do like Target best of all the big box stores.

I just derailed my weekly schedule and glanced at my copy of The New Yorker (Ordinarily I don't read TNY until I finish the weekly news magazines.)

Unwarrented Outrage:



To my mind the ads fit The New Yorker format--witty, flip and sophisticated--but I don't have any trouble telling ads from editorial content.

Target invested a million dollars (more or less) not so much for the linear advertising space as for the buzz, the sizzle, the sweet smell of sophistication.

I think the investment paid off. Further, I'm very easy to offend with hard-cell advertising. The New Yorker's Target issue amused me.

can't wait for my issue.

Yeah, that whole thing (in the shocked, shocked article) confused me. Including the thing about the page of thanks + illustrators' names, which clearly has the Target logo at the bottom.

I just leafed through it again (have only read one article so far, I gotta move to Texas so I can vote for Kinky in '06) and the overall impression is of luxury/ relief from the ads. I think it was Ms. that went ad-free midway through my subscription, similar feel to it, to not have to deal with all the in-your-face stuff. For this, there are ads, but they're integrated (what the shocks the shocked people, I like) and they all, collectively, have one message. Adds up to a respite sort of feeling.

I think it's brilliant. They accomplished just what they wanted to. Everyone is talking about Target!

Yep!

I always liked Target ever since that English designer brought the modern look to the stores.
Tasteful but affordable.

Interesting chicken and egg question - which came first - the Target-ad'd The New Yorker - or New York with its feature article on Walmart (on the stands at the same time). New York is stealing writers and readers from The New Yorker at a nice clip.

I think both stores are vile, but interesting from business case/marketing case perspectives.

This doesn't feel like a co-incidence.

I got my NYer issue yesterday, and I liked the Target ads as a kind of tour d'force - once and only once, or I'd rather not see that kind of one firm coverage with each issue. And I do mean tour d'force, however you spell that - first rate job/creativity.

Re not wanting to see that kind of thing all the time -
First, I rather like the usual small ads in the back. And, though I thought some of the ads in the middle were especially fabulous, and had no trouble discerning what was advertising and what wasn't, all in all it was fairly distracting from the text, what with the lack of variation in color and subtlety; I know some of that is because I am used to the usual bigger ads and ignore them.

I don't usually see New York magazine, so I don't know about that situation.