Elle magazine is one of my favorite fashion magazine and it is loved by broad range of international readers, keeping its reputation as the world’s largest fashion magazine founded in 1945. It has survived in the market for over half a century and still stands strong with over a million circulation per month in 60+ countries.

I first encountered with this respectable fashion magazine, and a favorite of mine, maybe about 10 years ago in Korea. My mother used to subscribe it monthly, and as a curious little girl who reads everything and anything that was readable, it was something that I couldn’t resist reading even though I didn’t know half of the things the articles were talking about. It talked about sex, women’s fashion mainly about designers collections, and fashion icon celebrities and their careers and love life. All these topics are what concerns females in majority. Knowing that my mother was one of the target audiences, I could assume that its main target is mid aged- she was in her late 30′s and I think she stopped her subscription after a while, when she had to start tightening her budget for my sister and my education and perhaps she lost her tremendous interest in fashion as well. The advertisements on the magazine has been targeting somewhat upper or middle class females who could afford to buy designer clothes or accessories and I could assume the major age group for the readers of this magazine isn’t too young from that fact- perhaps, a single successful career women or young housewives of a household with middle to high income would be the main audience.

So, I did do a little research and I could find the fact that proves my analytic assumption; The vast majority (82 percent) of Elle’s audience are women between the ages of 18 and 49 and Elle readers have a median age of 34.7 years. Forty percent of readers are single, and the median house income is $69,973.

The reason why they are so successful in keeping the position as the world’s largest magazine is probably their strategies that target well whom to appeal to and what contents to carry to keep those subscribers who take up to 73 percent of the readers.

What to Believe in Media

We live in the fast interacting  global society in which events and crisis happening in other town, state, country, or even continent matter to us as much as those happening in our own little town. Because our daily interaction with people, businesses, organizations, and governments from other places take place in our daily lives, territorial boundary of media has been blurred. And, the media covering news from broader range have become more influential than ever in the past when what happened on the other side of the world didn’t concern us much. For example, if something happens in Arab countries, since they are the suppliers of oil, which is the primary source of energy and transportation today, despite the fact that there are hybrid vehicles, it can affect U.S. economy and individuals who live and drive a car or at least use public transportation for mobility here. If some other state in the country goes bankrupt due to its incapability to overcome continuous and increasing deficit, the state has to borrow money from other states or the federal government has to help them out which affect the rest of us, because that means more burden on us to pay more taxes. This is why the more complex society with lots of interactivity with other regions has more to cover in news. Also, development of technology has enabled us to share information more easily, and there are more tools of sharing information, more newspapers and television stations, commercials ever than before.

This actually made it a little harder for us to choose what to believe in the media since there are more choices for which types of media, which channel or outlet we choose to trust for their interpretation of “the truth” as opposed to having one or two media outlet.  Different medias interpret the truth in different ways, and some may not be as objective than the others but it’s hard to see through their somewhat false objectivity and it’s easy to get caught in their strategies of making people believe what they perceive in media. That is why it’s so important to acknowledge the fact that the media serves a role as a messenger sent by the creator of the messages but not the mirror that reflects the absolute truth. Regardless the hardship and more tricks by media, we all should be thankful that we have more diverse interpretation and more to choose from than before, because at least we can look at things in different angles, not only from one perspective.

For Better or For Worse

Something that I realized about the media here in the U.S. that is different than South Korea is that companies or media persons are not afraid to mention certain products or companies for advertising purpose, which is shown in action of not only dropping competitors’ names or certain products in their lines but also criticizing or comparing to their owns. It is very common in the U. S. to watch television, listen to radio, or read newspapers or magazine and hear about certain brands name description not only on the advertisement but pretty much any time, channel, and any show. In movies or television shows, actors and actresses can freely mention or even describe certain brand-either praise or criticize or wear them for promoting. For example, you can watch or listen to an Ad for an auto insurance company and you hear them mentioning their rival competitor and how they are better than the competitor. And, these were really interesting for me because I haven’t seen something like that back home.

In South Korea,  years before I came back to the states, there was a big change in the law regulating activities in media, no person or company can advertise-simply mentioning the certain brand name or putting pictures or even just showing an actor with clothes  with a big logo on them because than can be used for advertising. Basically, advertising for brand was restricted to only certain areas- professionally made commercial advertisements. I am still not sure why, perhaps a number of reasons caused it. Anyhow, It’s really interesting to see the differences. I can watch Korean television shows and see the hosts and hostesses trying to be careful not to mention the certain brand names and be neutral, and i can watch American shows with hidden advertising tectics everywhere. I don’t know the fact that South Korea started having strict regulation on that was for better or worse but, it is certainly true that it gets really annoying when there are a bunch of sensoring on the monitor or hearing beeping sounds every few minutes.

Are We Really Lying?

Driving at 7 in the morning on 10 or 405 freeway near Los Angeles isn’t the most pleasant thing to do when barely awake, because of Los Angeles’ morning traffic and people cutting each other. Perhaps, it happens in every major metropolitan area and it’s a part of city life. So, many drivers tend to listen to radio during traffic jam as it helps them not to get as mad at the other drivers and scream at them- we definitely are almost used to the scenes of angry drivers yelling at each other using insulting words. Anyhow, for the same reason, I enjoy listening to radio while I’m driving in traffic and when I do so, I encounter many interesting advertisement or radio shows.

One of the interesting radio advertisement I heard on the other day was by Verizon Wireless which is one of the biggest telecommunication company in the nation. It was a male talking about valentine’s day. He was saying when a female says she doesn’t want any present for Valentine’s day, she is lying to you. And, he kept repeatedly saying that, and emphasized on how females don’t tell their true opinion on that, and “YOU”-potential customer who is the target for this new promotion for Valentine’s day- need to buy her this phone for her then she’ll be happy and he’ll also get an extra one with price for one. And, he can take it as well. I thought that advertisement was pretty neat because it created laughter on the part that he was exaggerating and repeating “she’s lying to you”, it reminded me of some funny scene I’ve watched on TV plenty of times, that guys struggle to deal with girls because they say one thing but mean the other. And, also the timing was very important for this Ad, because many professionals who own a vehicle goes on the freeway listening to radio in that time range and they are in the age group where people do have girlfriends or spouses, or looking for one. So, they are aiming at target market where they have money to buy the product. And, it’s near Valentine’s day where the sales increases due to the custom of buying a gift for the loved ones for that day. I could assume that pretty many guys would actually listen to the advertisement and go to Verizon to check it out.

 Through activities in communication 10 class, which we had to find the similarities and differences between different news papers and anylising the reason for those two by figuring out the audiences, I had a chance to take a look at this new paper The Orange County Register.  As one of the typical young generation that doesn’t read subscribed news, the fact that I’m relatively new to California took a part for it as well, I have never read this newspapers. And, I found interesting facts about it. When we were doing the activity of finding the number of female and male names and pictures appeared on the first page of different news papers, I realized The Orange County Register had the equal amount of names and pictures of both males and females. When they had three males and three females appeared in the pictures on the front page, I was thinking it would have been coincidence, since all the other newspapers had dominant number of male figures, names in every section- the difference is significantly smaller than that of 1920′s- and the next, when I counted the names as well, I knew it wasn’t just coincidence. From the brief knowledge I have on Orange County- they are more conservative, wealtier, repblican than Los Angeles- I couldn’t understand why they would emphasize on having the equal amount of names and photographs of both sex which probably would be considered as movement of women’s equal right.

  So, that led me to do a quick research on the newspaper and I found very interesting facts. It carries Republican politicians’ views and position and support them and also conservative which is characteristics of Republican party. But, on the other had it opposed the Iraq war and regulatory laws regarding prostitution and drug use. There are opposite of what Republican views on them would be. Also, it’s for Gay Marriage and was opposed to Japanese Internment during the World War II. These all seem like very interesting mixture. It is probably supporting certain republican ideas but also promoting less regulation from the government which is usually the quality of  Liberaterianism which seeks strong personal rights to life and liberty.

Is Sale really sale?

Even with the affect of depressing economy in these days, during the holiday seasons that just have passed, it was easy to find sale signs everywhere that caught eyes of potential consumers which is virtually everybody. Department stores and other retail stores had signs displayed on the show windows and billboards and the grocery stores and electronic stores had coupons and flyers sent to every household, or at least it seemed like it. It was almost overwhelming but at the same time also very tempting even though I knew my pockets were nearly empty and so did other people feel that way. So, I actually ended up in a department store on west side of Los Angeles to buy small gifts for friends and maybe something for myself. But, when I actually went into the stores I would realize the prices weren’t as marked down as they made it seem like on Advertisements. And, then I realized tiny words underneath the big letters; “selected items only”.

Tricks like that are often found today, all these advertisement are often false or sometimes exaggerated as well. This reflects today’s society and the consumer culture that everybody wants to feel as if they got a good deal on discount and the businesses are also happy that they have not actually lowered the price- they are over-priced usually so when it’s on sale that’s the regular price it’s supposed to be normally and thinking of advertisement cost already included in the price we pay, consumers wouldn’t feel as happy as they would have before- when getting the same effect. Being surrounded by all types of medias pouring advertisements at all time isn’t making it too easy for us. But, there are also still hidden gems in the false advertisements and coupons. That’s why I still can’t just pass by them. “Ah ha Anaheim Ducks Scored 5 goals, coupons for hot wings at hooters for free”

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Driving on busy streets filled with billboards, watching sports games with advertisement banners on the walls all around- not to mention those television Ads popping up in between, going through all the junk mails including e-mails advertising something just to get to your important email everyday, going to the movies and being convinced to watch another movie you saw the preview before the movie starts, being stopped by a bunch of signs for sale when you actually had no plan to buy anything, and going to the particular auto shop whose Ad just went on air on radio are what we became used to experience everyday.

We live in this world filled with advertisements everywhere. I can assure that it’s impossible to live a day without having these advertising tectics comings at you in this world, unless you decide to go into some African jungle where no one can reach you without any thing on your body. Because even cellphone has a logo on it and the clothes you have on also have its brand name either on a tag inside or somewhere on the outside that indicates its brand, and also even a water bottle has all these information about the brand and company. Sometimes, I wonder if it isn’t brain washing all of us consumers. Not just direct advertisements like TV/radio/newpaper Ads but there are tiny Ads that we are not aware of the fact that it’s already convincing us and delivering some sort of message to us. So, it is really hard to truly know if you really want something, or if somebody’s making you believe that you want it and you need it. That’s why I loved the exercises from the communication class which brought it into our attention and analysis what they are doing to us rather than just soaking it up as these ads come to us.