Real Life Stories...Really?

Today we had SUPERBRIEF THURSDAY (4 briefs, 1 hour per brief), which turned out to be SUPERBRIEF FRIDAY’S evil twin. Nobody was in particularly good form and the day was generally spent feeling frustrated at how bad we all are. So what do you do when you have a bad day? Well we tend to forget about it, put it behind us and make up for it next time. However there was one brief that I just couldn’t let go. Bella Magazine.

Basically we had to advertise this magazine to women of all ages. So far so good. The proposition was that Bella was about “Real life stories, rather than aspirational, celebrity news”. Still good. Bearing in mind we only had an hour, in-depth research wasn’t an option so we were given a short paragraph describing the product:

“Women’s magazine, combining practical issues and real life. Bella combines stylish practicals with fascinating, insightful real life stories to deliver one of the best quality women’s weekly magazines available. Its contemporary design and content reflect its true understanding of women today.”

Now if we’re totally honest we’ve never heard of this magazine let alone read it so that paragraph is all we had to go on. We liked the idea that this magazine didn’t focus on “Brangelina” “Cheryl” and “Jordan” week in week out. We were pleasantly surprised that a magazine existed for women that talked about real life issues. Our idea was (and we’re very aware that it’s not the next Cadbury’s Gorilla, but cut us some slack, we did it in about 5 mins) was to say that Bella Magazine represents real life issues so well that it’s what the celebrities use to connect with the real world (as they don’t live in it).

Here’s my problem (sorry it’s taken so long), this magazine isn’t about real life at all! Some of the stories in this magazine are titled “He was 16 but I couldn’t help myself…” “Mum watched TV while I gave birth in secret” and my all time favourite “I like to pleasure myself with my vacuum cleaner”, ok I made that last one up but that’s the sort of BOLLOCKS this magazine prints…every week! There was somewhat of an uproar when the tutors said that the magazine isn’t really about real life stories, it’s more reading about other people’s rubbish lives to make you feel better about your own. 1) That doesn’t say much about women’s self esteem these days and 2) how the bleep are we supposed to know that going by what the paragraph says.

You may think I’m having a go at the tutors but I’m not, I’m having a go at Bella Magazine who apparently pride themselves on talking about real issues yet actually talk about utter crap. To bring this all back to advertising, the question you should ask yourself is that if Bella came to you and asked you to advertise their magazine, would you carry on falsely claiming the “real stories” thing knowing is was a rubbish idea or would you tell the truth? I know which one I’d prefer to do.