Advertising has for ages used women and more female celebrities to drive their sales, a strategy that has evolved over the ages but holds the primary concept. This strategy stands to date by exploiting many flaws that young women exhibit and capitalizing on them by creating the illusion that if they by the subject’s products they some way parallel the success of the personnel used by the marketer. A recent case suiting this context is the Vanity Fair Holly Wood 2016 magazine cover. The magazine’s cover featured a trifold cover image that was shot by Annie Leibovitz which features Holly Wood Actress and including Jennifer Viola Davis, Alicia Vikander, Charlotte Rampling Lawrence, Cate Blanchett, and Saoirse Ronan, Jane Fonda, Lupita Nyong’o among others.
The Holly Wood personalities in the cover were a representation of the society that cut across a broad spectrum. First, the women on the cover represent people who proposedly have come a long way in acting and have already hit the pinnacle of their careers. The personalities are a representation of success in a male dominated industry and yet have received massive recognition in the industry. Another captivating aspect of the magazine’s cover is the age diversity that was taken into consideration. The personalities in this cover are distributed to target a broader spectrum of their customers. While the tradition has to been to use the young female celebrities who are at the pick of their careers, the editors of the magazine transcended this custom to include the young, middle aged and the seasoned women in acting who have stood the test of time and are still relevant today in the industry. Incorporating elder personalities in the cover communicate purposefully to the young audience but additionally communicates to the middle ages and the elderly. The producers of the Vanity air Holly Wood magazine go overboard with this version to appeal to a larger audience. Consequently, the team magazine attracted larger streams of revenue which leads to the hypothesis that the advertisement of the magazine was quite successful.
Annie Leibovitz who shoot the cover was keen to capture the age distribution of the personalities by placing the three the eldest in the middle and either of the ends of the tri-fold. At the foreground of the cover Rampling poses for the photograph on a lavish couch with a little “Tom Boy” traits. Important to note beside the diverse materials and designs of their attires, they are black in color (Steigrad & Steigrad 1). The elder of the TV personalities is also wearing silver jewelry. Their hair is not over done presumably to avoid the possibility of diverting the viewers’ attention. The cover also considers the racial spectrum of the cover by including renowned personalities in Holly Wood from different ethnicities. This is purposeful to factor in the ethnicities they represent in the audience of the magazine. The cover integrates and takes to account most of the addressed social issues that were the subject of conversation in 2016 and the dusk of the preceding year.
The cover photo is accompanied by attachments such as “Holly Wood Hottest Producer,” “Million Dollar Model fashion,” “Bigger Better sensation” and “The Woman Who Dressed Star Wars.” The captions all imply and refer to the success of the individual they have captured along on the cover. This caption presents the personalities as the success of the models captured as a product that their fans can identify with. The advertisers are in a position to leverage the enthusiastic nature of the fans to sell their products by wrapping them with the glamor of the models. While this has been a very success in the sales made, it raises the question of the psychological engineering that is put in place to drive the sales of the company. Moreover, the culture that the advertisers are inculcating in the young women by exploiting their arrogance.
In this advert, the editor employs ethos for three reasons. First, human beings tend to pay attention to people whom they respect. Using the seasoned, middle-aged and the young actress, the people who idolize. The consumer is convinced to purchase the product as a result of the character of the personalities they represent. Secondly, it is also a human trait to believe people whom they respect.
The consumers are inclined to believe what the magazine publishes using the models as their voices. This includes the captions such as “Million Dollar Model fashion” which implies that the personalities are representing the best that there is to offer in the market. Finally, the actress is associated with success in their respective areas of specialization, every person is attracted to success and would be interested in listening to the models with the authority that comes with their publicity.
The intrinsic nature of the cover is a light gray background and the models dressed in black. Grey has been identified to be a color that represents psychological neutrality while black on the other hand represents the glamor, security, emotional subtleness, and sophistication. Young women who are in relationships or are looking to settle down in one identify themselves with all of these traits. This falls in place with the ethos that is presented in the advertisement. Dressing the actress on the cover in black sends a message of uncompromising success, clarity of intentions and also there is a perception of black attire are slimming. The female audience to craving to attain the social status of the actress thus making purchases of the magazine to look into what is therein.
The adverts lead the audience to exigency, by appealing to their needs such as fitness and grooming. The psychological needs such as belonging and progress are also used by the magazines to push the sales of the magazine. The publisher also appealed to the audiences’ logic given the facts that are held in the covers captions. While not all the captions are objective facts, the publishers use hyperbole which lands the same impact as the facts would. The captions “Million Dollar Model fashion” and “The Woman Who Dressed Star Wars” are presented as facts.
While the first is subjective, “The Woman Who Dressed Starwars” is a fact and is used by the editor to give the characters in the cover an authoritative allure in fashion given Vanity Fair is a fashion enterprise. The caption “Bigger and Better” appeals to the logic of the audience to go for whatever the magazine is advocating for since it proposes a better value will be acquired for the money the items are paid for. Finally, the advertisement appeals to the audiences’ desire to live lavish. The personalities are dressed in designer clothes and expensive silver jewelry.
Vanity Fair magazine as a brand is successful with advertising based on their audiences psychological and physical needs. The cover is then crafted in a manner that appeals to them in line with their needs. As a result of exigence, the magazines make outrageous sales, by doing so they create impressions of that beauty, and success for young women should be. By creating such impression, the brand ends up doing more harm than good since a majority of their audience engage in self-destructive activities trying to achieve this ideal trait.
Work Cited
Steigrad, Alexandra and Alexandra Steigrad. "Vanity Fair Reveals Hollywood Issue With New Publishing Model". WWD. N.p., 2017. Web. 27 Jan. 2017.
