Frugal in the Fruitlands

In the shoujo anime series Hana Yori Dango (”Boys Over Flowers”), the heroine declares herself a “no-brand woman” when faced with the elitism of her wealthy high school.

I saw the beginning of HYD, fansubbed, over five years ago but I still remember that turn of phrase.

You may have noticed that I’m very anti-advertising. In brief, I begrudge the mindshare it seems to demand. Branding is one of the many tools advertisers have in their arsenal. It’s the process of creating a heuristic - a shortcut - for the product you’re selling. A brand is thus the series of emotions and associations you have when the name of a product is mentioned.

All of this may lead you to ask: “But Lise, don’t you work for a marketing firm?”

In fact, I do (and one that specializes in branding, to boot). I’m not sure if the fact that it’s educational marketing makes it better or worse, on a relative scale. On one hand, college is arguably a more useful thing than a pair of overpriced name-brand sneakers. On the other hand, it’s a bigger expense, and the stakes are higher. I’m just a data monkey, but are there students out there who have been convinced to spend more than they can really afford on college by some research I did? I’m honest in my statistical methods and my reports. I homogenize my variances and cross my t-tests! - but I can’t influence what the client will do with the data once we’ve handed them the report.

Interestingly, outside of the physical realities of my day job, there are also entities who prey on emotion - luckily, I have more control there. I’ve been contacted a few times in the past month or so with solicitations for guest posts, links, and advertisements/sponsored posts from what at first glance seem like fellow bloggers. With ten minutes of research, however, I discovered I was hearing from a corporate entity whose blog is there to generate advertising revenue. (I won’t mention who they are because that would be giving them the free publicity they so desperately want - but bloggers should do their research before hosting a guest post from an unknown).

I shouldn’t even have to say this, but I do not accept guest posts, links, or advertisements from corporate entities. If I go to your blog and there’s not an about page with your profile - if there’s more ad space than content - if a Google search of your website’s name brings up only press releases and sponsored posts/reviews… you’re not worth my readers’ mindshare.

I blog because I love it. This blog is about my own financial journey, as crooked a path as it sometimes is. It’s also about my fiscal ethics, not coincidentally; and that does not include letting other businesses dictate what my blog is promoting.

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In my hand I hold the December 2007 issue of Real Simple. At roughly $5 a pop, it’s not a magazine I frequently buy. Or ever, really. But back in November, I was stuck in the Cleveland airport for an ungodly amount of time, returning from a business trip, and I decided to pick up a copy. I’d been meaning to take a deeper look at this magazine, which at first glance struck me as not particularly real or simple. I figured that, if nothing else, my $5 investment would net me a good Spendthrift Sunday article.

I was not disappointed.

First of all, like many magazines, it’s in large part ads. 215 of the magazine’s 396 pages contained ads - most of those 215 ads were whole-page or multiple page ads. That’s right - 55% of the magazine was advertising. This is not counting the inside back and front covers, which were also ads; or the fact that most of the articles, were, in fact, product recommendations. Let’s take a look at some of these articles:

“How sweet it is” gives details on holding a cookie decorating party. This party is incomplete, of course, without bakery boxes ($1.30 a pop), copper cookie cutters ($13 a pop), and for that very special holiday cheer, Wilton cookie icing ($4.50).

“Your days are numbered,” a feature on using your calendar effectively, featuring ‘Real Simple picks’ such as a $31 “6-inch personal pocket journal.” But wait! It can be embossed! And has city maps!

“Black magic,” a fashion spread of “little black dresses” - including one for $1,130, and several in the $400-700 range.

Let us not forget the ever-helpful “Real Simple To-Do” list at the back (2 1/2 pages), which offers a handy-dandy guide to all the advertisements found within the pages. This is followed by another four pages of “Simply shopping,” with even more items to lust after, such as a device to “scan, read, and organize” your receipts. Because I guess, if you’re reading this magazine and buying $1,000 dresses, you need to be clipping coupons, amirite?

In case you’re wondering who is behind this drivel, look no farther than Steve Sachs, the publisher of Real Simple. Apparently he’s been quite good for the company. Of course, some of the articles about him highlight what Real Simple is really about:

One of Sachs’s biggest successes has come in an area that most consumer marketers are finding difficult to tap into: Partnership marketing. As Real Simple’s consumer marketing director, Sachs oversaw the development of partnerships with companies such as Coca-Cola, Pottery Barn, and Whole Foods-partnerships that netted the magazine more than 200,000 new subs.

Partnership marketing. Who is profiting from my $5 “investment” in this rag? Not only Steve Sachs, apparently, but Coca-Cola, Pottery Barn, Whole Foods, and others. Unsurprisingly, you find advertisements for all three of these in the pages of December 2007’s issue.

Since I work in advertising, in my own way, I love taglines. Real Simple’s tagline is “life made easier.” This life appears, then, to be a life of unitaskers - a world where no product can stand in for another; where we need exactly the “best product for dry skin,” exactly the right cleaning products from Target, exactly the right cookie icing. However, it is telling that none of these articles say much about where to store your cookie icing when you’re done with it, unless it’s to sell you a cookie icing organizer. It doesn’t mention that you’ll need to dust that new tchotchke, except, perhaps, to recommend an environmentally-unfriendly, non-biodegradable product with which to dust it. The entire magazine is based on the premise that stuff will make your life easier; but doesn’t recognize the kind of escalation that results from this attitude, that ultimately, you will need more stuff to solve the problems the stuff caused in the first place.

Interestingly, the average American doesn’t need to turn to a $5 magazine to tell them how to simplify their lives. Voluntary Simplicity, the seminal work of the VS moment, tells the stories of many individuals who managed to simplify their life. In large part they did it by turning of the stuff machine and tuning out the advertising drivel.

But that isn’t as sexy, and doesn’t sell slick magazines, does it?

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It’s happened to most of us before - we’re commuting to work, listening to the radio and the sound of our stomaches grumbling, when we hear a commercial. Maybe it’s for a candy bar, a breakfast sandwich, or the newest latte - but suddenly we start craving whatever it is being advertised.

Or maybe that doesn’t describe you at all. Maybe you’re savvy to the way advertising works, and you just say to yourself, “Meh, I can have a (free) cup of coffee when I get to the office and some oatmeal.” You drive on, smug in how you avoided the trap that millions of others fall prey to.

Most advertising, though, is more insidious than this; it preys on emotion more than base needs. I work selling colleges to high school students and their parents, and I know that what we aim for is not to sell facts - 13:1 student:faculty ratio, hands-on learning experience, study abroad opportunities - but the idea that a student will fit in there; that it will feel like home.

Advertising fills your mind and heart and displaces your values. That may sound extreme, but hear me out:
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