Ad Comparison

This was assignment from another class, but since it was in a similar column style format, I thought I'd add it since it is sort of interesting!


Gentlemen Prefer Taste While Writers Prefer Earth Friendly

Ads-they can be annoying, informative, intriguing, and even entertaining. When it comes to magazine ads each ad has a different look and emits a different message, even when it comes to ads for the same product. I examined ads for American Spirit cigarettes in GQ and Script Magazine to see how a company varies their ads from one magazine to another and found some drastic differences in their approach to market to these two fairly similar audiences.

The American Spirit Tobacco Company is a comparatively ethical company in the realm of big tobacco companies. With additive free tobacco, earth friendly farming techniques, and organic free tobacco American Spirit is, if it’s possible, a breath of fresh air for the tobacco industry. With such an commendable reputation, one would the think the only way they would need to market their product would simply be to inform the consumer of their environmental and additive free tobacco efforts, but that isn’t the case at all.

In GQ, the American Spirit ads boast one thing and one thing only: natural tastes better. The ad itself is a 6” by 8” card inserted between the glossy fashionable pages of the magazine. One side is bright red with two packs at the top, a small blue barn nestled amongst tobacco leaves and sunflower is tucked into the left bottom corner, and in the middle is the message “Natural Tastes Better” with an offer for a $20 gift certificate below it. On the other side is the same message about taste at the top with a small paragraph explaining the company’s philosophy and practices with a line-up of their products in the middle with the same offer at the bottom, along with a surgeon general’s warning and similar company warning. All of which again is on a solid bright red background without any images of nature like on the other side.

The typical GQ reader is urban males, concerned with men’s fashion and style. Being concerned with the environment isn’t exactly fashionable since it is associated with being a hippie, which is quite the opposite of being a metro-sexual man. With this in mind, American spirit only gave hints of nature and focus instead on the good flavor and therefore better quality of their product in attempts to appeal to a culture that has to have the best of everything.

In the Script Magazine American Spirit ad has an opposite message: that their cigarettes are natural and their company promotes wind power, earth friendly and organic growing techniques and reducing their ecological footprint. Both sides of the ad are a blotchy, grass like green. The front has a large picture of a blue barn with tobacco leaves, sunflowers, and a few wind-power generators dispersed over the page with a brown wooden sign saying “Natural Tastes Better”, the other side saying “It’s only Natural”. Both sides have the $20 gift certificate offer and the back has four paragraphs explaining their efforts and mission to provide quality products, with two wind-power generators.

Identifying Script readers is a little more difficult. Since writing is a difficult profession to break in to, those who are writers tend to have a less superficial attitude when it comes to clothes and their consumption since they don’t really have the time or the funds to be fashionable chick magnets. Accompanying the laid back appearance usually allows writers to care more about the product when they do actually have the money to buy it, since money can be sparse if your work doesn’t sell often. This leads to writer to want to purchase products that are less trendy, better for the environment, and try to avoid buying things they don’t need. American Spirit plays up their eco friendly efforts and additive free tobaccos to grab reader’s attention and give them a cigarette they can feel good about smoking while they’re transforming their latest idea into the next great movie of our time.

So why are people so different? In a consumer driven society, the masses are concerned with their enjoyment of products and don’t care where they came from and what the true price of the production of their products. Boasting care for the earth can get a company labeled as a ‘liberal hippie’ type which doesn’t fit with mainstream culture and mass produced products. American Spirit literally had to trick GQ readers into trying their products by changing their ads drastically from a publication with more open minded readers. Hopefully more environmentally conscious companies will take this approach as well to promote a change in our cultures support of more eco-friendly companies for a more natural tomorrow.


MELISSA KILMER