New York Times: For the first time in the 80-year history of The New Yorker magazine, a single advertiser will sponsor an entire issue.
The Aug. 22 issue of The New Yorker, due out Monday, will carry 17 or 18 advertising pages, all brought to you by the Target discount store chain owned by the Target Corporation. The Target ads will even supplant the mini-ads from mail-order marketers that typically fill small spaces in the back of the magazine.
The Target ads, in the form of illustrations by more than two dozen artists like Milton Glaser, Robert Risko and Ruben Toledo, are to run only the one time in the issue. They are intended to salute New York City and the people who live – and shop – there.
“We try to do breakthrough things in many different places,” Minda Gralnek, vice president and creative director at Target in Minneapolis, said in a telephone interview.
” ‘Expect more. Pay less’ is our mantra,” Ms. Gralnek said, quoting the Target slogan, “and this is part of ‘Expect more.’ It’s not ordinary.”
Positioning A Target
From Slate’s Bryan Curtis, some interesting details on what techniques Target’s founders, the Dayton brothers, employed to position the brand to “exude the mild pretension of a low-end department store rather than the folksiness of a high-end dime stor…