Remake, Remodel by Brooke Erin Duffy

Author:Brooke Erin Duffy [Duffy, Brooke Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Media Studies, Women's Studies, Language Arts & Disciplines, Communication Studies
ISBN: 9780252037962
Google: wTvHnAEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 17885357
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2013-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

A lot of times it goes against the brand to say, “Oh, there's a great article on Popsugar [a women's website focusing on fashion and celebrity] or there's a great article in iVillage [a women's blog that was formerly partnered with Hearst].” It seems sort of counterintuitive to want to send your traffic to your competitors…but that's what we're training our brands to do…. We get a fair amount of push-back on that one. [Editors will say,] “Are you guys crazy?” [laughter] “Yeah, we are crazy and still trying to do what's best for customers.”

Milner's comment speaks to the challenge of magazine consumer expectations without the recourse of traditional methods of content control.

In fact, as consumer audiences are afforded increased access to magazine-branded spaces, producers must decide to what extent they will monitor those spaces—if at all. An examination of beauty reviews, a staple of many women's magazines, provides a glimpse into the struggles that magazine producers confront as they try to balance consumer trust and advertiser politics. As an example, I will draw upon a post from Glamour.com's daily beauty blog, Girls in the Beauty Department, titled “The Cheapie Little Bacne-Buster That's About to Become Your New Summer Skincare Must-Have.”35 The product they reviewed, Neutrogena Deep Clean Sport On-the-Go Cleansing Wipes, included a hyperlink that took visitors to the beauty website Ulta.com, where they could purchase the product. Although the Glamour staffers gave the product highly favorable reviews, the reader comments were at times quite critical. As one poster shared, “My skin care specialist told me that Neutrogena acne products are one of the worst things you can put on your skin because of the amount of alcohol in it. The alcohol dries your skin out tremendously. She only recommends their products for people with chronically oily skin. So, no, I won't be trying this out.” Another reader agreed with the comment, while several others provided alternatives, including the tongue-in-cheek response, “Or you could just take a shower after you work out.” It thus appears doubtful that these comments were monitored or edited before they appeared on the website. If they were, Glamour might be hesitant to publish negative reviews of one of its advertisers’ products given the longstanding church-state relations discussed earlier in this book.

At the same time, the inclusion of reader quotes such as these within the editorial content of the magazine extensions raises the question of whether it is beneficial to gain viewer trust by creating spaces in the magazine for feedback—be it positive or negative. The bridal magazine and website brand the Knot is a perfect example of letting consumers participate to the extent that it doubles as a peer-to-peer networking forum. Although it is a commercial site that relies heavily on advertising, recent brides freely rave or rant about individuals and companies that played a role in their wedding. Brianna Brunecz, who was an account executive at The Knot for more than five years, noted that “credibility plummets” if reader comments are not published on the website right away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.