Selling the Stars

Ruffa Aquino

October 12, 2011

English 1A

Paper # 1

Selling the Stars

The purpose of many advertisements is to convince people that buying certain products will transport them from the monotony and routine of their daily lives to a world of boundless glamour and excitement.  To accomplish this, many ads appeal to the innermost and often unspoken needs of average people by portraying the featured product as the key to satisfying those needs.  OK! Magazine, a People Magazine knockoff that bills itself as “The Magazine The Stars Trust,” combines Hollywood news, gossip and advertising into a marketing formula that exploits readers’ needs for sex, for prominence, to nurture others, and to satisfy their curiosity in order to sell products to them.

One of OK! Magazine’s recurring appeals is to readers' need for sex. Women are portrayed throughout the magazine as sex symbols dressed in skimpy and/or tight-fitting outfits that show much more skin than they hide.  A full-page ad for QuickTrim’s “14 Day Metabolic Makeover” features before-and-after photos of two plump, average-looking women suddenly transformed into bikini-clad beauties after losing 40 and 37 pounds, respectively. Standing over them is a sultry-looking Kim Kardashian, QuickTrim’s spokesmodel, dressed in a silky, skin-tight dress that puts her ample cleavage front and center.  The message is clear: If the average woman did as Kim does, she too would be irresistible to men.

The magazine's sexual messages are so ubiquitous that the advertising is almost indistinguishable from the editorial content, seducing readers with an almost seamless parade of beautiful bodies and name-brand products. In a four-page photo spread titled "Celebrity Skin Awards," singer Rihanna is pictured in a skimpy white bikini and identified in the caption as a Nivea spokeswoman whose “secrets to beautiful skin” include regular use of her “personal fave, Nivea Crème!”  Similarly, a full-page photo collage titled "OK Style Week" shows supermodel Heidi Klum both standing on a windswept pier in a revealing gown and sitting on a Mexican beach in a tight miniskirt.  The accompanying article trumpets the photos as an “exclusive look at the photo shoot for [Klum's] new scent” – a perfume called "Shine" that, the magazine does not hesitate to mention, goes on sale in September for $28 per ounce.  

In the article, readers are fed various morsels of information designed to whet their appetites for Klum's perfume.  The article quotes Klum as saying that the secret to her perfume is "the way it makes us feel – playful, sensual and radiant," which is how readers are supposed to feel if they simply plunk down the 28 bucks.  The article also transports readers to an exotic locale by noting that Klum "spent two days in Cancún, Mexico, shooting the ad campaign," and that the setting "was beautiful." Then, after placing readers in this dreamy environment, the article-cum-advertisement brings them back down to earth by noting in its final sentence that Klum "had to be up for hair and makeup at 3:30 a.m. so they could capture the sunrise – then worked until the sun went down!"  By making this real-world connection with readers, the article drives home its central message: You – the overworked and sexually underappreciated women of the world – can (just like Heidi) reach into your pocketbooks, crack open a bottle of Shine perfume, and finally let your sexy out.

In addition to the need for sex, OK! Magazine is loaded with appeals to readers' related needs for attention, prominence, and even procreation.  A two-page photo spread about a baby shower honoring Ugly Bettystar Ana Ortiz offers readers a chance to win a gift bag filled with the same name-brand products –Luvs, Baby JaR, iCandy and Cookie Panache, to name just a few – that “Ana’s celebrity guests received at her baby shower in Hollywood.”  Readers are urged to enter the sweepstakes with this pitch: “Just think: Within months, your little one could be wearing the same bibs and baby clothes as these A-listers’ babies!”  Again, the marriage of advertising and editorial content is clear, as are the various messages being conveyed to readers.  One overriding message is that items as unglamorous as diapers and bibs can be turned into status symbols if Mom simply follows her stars – her Hollywood stars, that is – and patronizes the same brands they do.  

The Ortiz photo spread also taps into mothers' need to procreate and rear children by celebrating every stage of early motherhood, from pregnancy to baby shower and beyond.  Photos of diapers, strollers, candy, toys, children's books, and other baby paraphernalia appear alongside of photos of  Ortiz with her hand on her growing tummy; of Ortiz and her husband holding their 2-year-old daughter and expectantly holding onto an empty iCandy stroller; of Ortiz in a white satin top posing angelically next to one of her co-stars.  Ortiz is quoted at one point as saying that she plans to use the Cord Blood Registry to collect and store her baby's umbilical cord blood cells so that the cells are available to treat any life-threatening blood diseases that the child may later develop.  Throughout the photo spread, the need for attention, prominence, and procreation felt by every mother is channeled into an effective marketing pitch for more than a dozen advertisers of baby products.

OK! Magazine also feeds the very different but equally fundamental human need to satisfy one’s curiosity about the unknown and the improbable. OK! advertisers capitalize on people's natural curiosity to market everything from psychicreadings, which offer “real live answers concerning love, money, relationships, romance, luck, passions, and problems,” to “Bosom Max,” which makes the improbable promise of “larger, firmer breasts without surgery” through the use of treatment creams and an “electronic massaging brassiere.”  OK! also promises to answer questions about celebrities that readers never even thought to ask.  For example, OK! Magazine's readers already know what “Snooki” Polizzi of Jersey Shorefame looks like in her body-hugging miniskirts, but if anyone also wants to know what she smellslike, OK! shows them the way:  All they have to do is pick up a bottle of her "new top-secret scent" when it debuts in the fall.

It seems beyond dispute that OK! Magazine and its advertisers seek to tap into readers' innermost desires for a more exciting, glamorous, and prosperous life by urging them to patronize the same products as their favorite celebrities. It is equally likely that readers who buy these products in the expectation of looking like, living like, feeling like, or even smelling like these celebrities are likely to be disappointed and that the most they might get is a temporary escape from their everyday lives. The sad truth is that not much is likely to change except their bank-account balance.


Works Cited

QuickTrim. Advertisement. OK!. 5 September 2011: 41. Print. 

Celebrity Skin Awards. Article. OK!.5 September 2011: 63. Print.

OK! Style Week. Article. OK!.5 September 2011: 56. Print.

OK! News in Photos. Article. OK!. 5 September 2011: 10. Print. 

Psychic Reading. Advertisement. OK!. 5 September 2011: 78. Print.

Bosom Max. Advertisement. OK!. 5 September 2011: 77. Print.

Can't Wait to Sniff My Scent? Article.OK!. 5 September 2011: 21. Print. 

 

 

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