Magazine Group Activity

I have never really looked through any magazines like we did in class so I was surprised to see the amount of ads in them. In the male magazine, 82.3% of the ads were of dietary supplements which are a crazy amount of them. If I was on a advertising team for one of these supplements I would put my add in all the men’s magazines I could. Coming in second place in the ad count with 11.4% was knowledge systems which makes sense. It is always good to know different workouts or methods to try to work out differently that way the gym does not get boring. The men’s magazine also had some equipment and food advertisements but only accounted for a little over 6% of the magazine. In most of the ads in this magazine they used the theme of positioning the reader as inferior.

In the women’s magazine there was a big difference in the amount of ads placed in it. Dietary supplements only contributed 1.9% of the ads and knowledge systems had 13.2% of the total ads. The majority of the ads were places under the categories of adornment and display of the body. Cosmetics were the main portion of this having 30.2% of the ads and clothes were at 16%. I can definitely see why these advertisements would be put in the magazine, but I am surprised that one of those categories weren’t the highest of them. The other category was the highest with 37% of the ads. The ads included in this category were vehicles and food mainly. Our group found a common theme in a lot of these and we titled it beauty.

There are huge differences in what each magazine is trying to get across to the readers. In the women’s magazine all the girls were smiling and acting like they were having the time of their lives wearing the shoes, make-up, shirts, shampoo and anything the ad was trying sell. This is more of a fun loving and cute way of getting across the ads to the readers. In the men’s magazine the guys are all jacked and intimidating; trying to convey the message, hey if you use this supplement you will look like me and have this inferior look as well to people. These are 2 totally different methods to take when advertising however they both are effective. It just goes to show the differences in mind set between male and females.

The ideal image of a person’s body is definitely evident in these magazines, and they are on different ends of the spectrum. The male body portrayed in the magazine is super muscular, tipping the point of extreme. It is the idea of you cannot get big enough, as long it is with muscle, so that they appear dominant to other males. Some males look fake because of the extreme muscle mass of their bodies. On the other hand the female body that was so repetitive in the ads was very small and skinny. They were tone but no muscles were popping out or none of them were trying to flex to show off what they had. Most of the ads were just trying to catch the models having fun with their item of advertisement, not really showing off their body, but their smile.

By: RJ Hefflinger