Why luxury companies are advertising in business publications

Kali Hays of Women’s Wear Daily writes about why luxury companies are placing more ads in business publications.

Hays writes, “Presumably, all of this went into the decisions by Gucci and Burberry to recently work with the Economist, with Gucci placing its digital campaign on the title’s web site for the first time and Burberry going for print in 1843, a sister magazine to The Economist that prints on a bimonthly basis. Seeing a Gucci ad above an article on the political future of Venezuela may seem out of place to someone looking for it, but for a typical reader, the placement likely does little but create an unconscious association between a luxury brand and a different kind of media. And as Robins succinctly put it: ‘That’s what brands want.’

“But brands also want to make good use of their money, and there’s no getting around that an ad with a magazine that doesn’t live within Hearst or Condé Nast is, generally speaking, much cheaper. An outside back cover running one time with The Economist, for example, is set at $73,600 in North America while a premium digital ad is $31,400. Over at The Atlantic, which doesn’t publicly disclose rates, the figures are estimated to be in the same ballpark. At Bloomberg, which only discloses rates for print, a page in Businessweek will set an advertiser back around $115,000. Meanwhile, a page in Vogue as of last year was set at $208,000 and a full page in Elle about $186,000.

“So not only is an ad in a thought leadership publication much less expensive than in a top fashion or lifestyle publication, but it’s going to stand out among other advertisers that typically turn up in thought leadership outlets, like hotels and banks and various consulting groups, and get prime real estate, to boot, like Balenciaga’s back wrap in The Atlantic.”

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