Wednesday afternoons in the Campaign office are something of a
guilty secret. After the thrilling adrenaline high of an average
Campaign press day, we turn our attention to matters less lofty.
This means surreptitious flickings through the office batch of weekly
magazines - Hello!, OK, the odd Radio Times if you’re last in the queue.
Best of all, though, the National Enquirer.
And now it’s after your clients’ money. The National Enquirer, the
biggest selling weekly magazine in the US, is now available to UK
advertisers.
So what can your average UK brand expect from this prospective
partner?
Well, there’s nothing subtle about the National Enquirer. With cover
lines like ’Stars’ fat thighs, the good, the bad and the flabby’, this
is a magazine that tells it like it is. And who can resist a whole
feature on whether Cindy Crawford’s thighs are bigger than Demi Moore’s,
particularly when it begins ’The Cellulite Monster is attacking
Hollywood’?
Find out how a ’red hot sex scene’ changed the life of Gillian
(se)X-Files Anderson and why some churchgoers like to bare a whole lot
more than their soul at the chapel in Wild Wood. My favourite bit is the
double-page spread at the back on the fashion hits and misses of the
stars.
Throw in the cheap paper and the fact that it’s the sort of title you’re
tempted to secrete behind a copy of the Star, and the National Enquirer
is unlikely to endear itself to your average advertiser, particularly
when the ads in this week’s issue include Maximum Strength Haemorrhoidal
Cream, John McDermott’s Danny Boy album and a triple set of John Wayne
videos. Still, it’s such a nice change from Hello!.
