Present anyone with too much of something and I promise you that they will grow to resent it. Big Cat have been presented with a “few” boxes of chocolate in preparation for an event we are organising for Mars. We are now discovering that even chocolate isn’t exempt from this rule.

Print advertising is self destructing.

The same rings true for print advertising. This morning I rummaged through a few lifestyle Magazines that had been delivered to me. One of them boasted ‘exclusive fashion show pictures’ and, naturally, this is the one I analysed first. There were three pages of advertisements before the contents page appeared, and a further 15 pages of advertising before the first Article (which reeked of press release).

Sales of Magazines have suffered recently. They are clearly losing out to the internet, which can provide answers to any question, and smart phones, which can give you access to those answers via the touch of a button.  Unfortunately, magazines have been combating this loss of revenue by selling more pages to advertisers and the impact of print advertising has been diluted as a result.

Many predict that print will, to some extent, return as a valuable medium for advertising. This is most likely to happen after media buyers turn their back on saturated publications as this will separate the serious publications from the ones driven by money.

Until that day comes, advertisers will have to find even more creative ways to reach their customers should they choose to continue print campaigns.

Here are some of the more noticeable ones that have caught my eye recently;

Everything in this advertisement is hot – from the Dali style objects that are melting in the heat, to the attention grabbing front girl and this makes the beverage seem very refreshing.

Surprisingly, this one isn’t advertising tools. It is a Hooters advertisement camouflaged. The reason for this (according to the copy) is; “so your girlfriend doesn’t know you’re attending happy hour”. This is an interesting approach but wouldn’t this just get overlooked in a magazine that is saturated with advertisements?