Benefits of Advertising in Cosmopolitan Vs. Seventeen

Benefits of Advertising in Cosmopolitan vs. Seventeen

For Rider Chic.com

I have been granted the important task of finding an American magazine to advertise our company in. Rider Chic.com is a motocross apparel superstore for ladies only and is strictly web based. Anything you need for riding or racing dirt bikes and ATV's is at your fingertips on Rider Chic.com. My search has been narrowed down to two popular publications, Cosmopolitan and Seventeen. Both publications are distributed worldwide in millions of stores and newsstands. Cosmopolitan has a variety of different subjects and articles and also offers excellent and prominent ad space. Seventeen also includes a variety of subjects and appeals largely to the younger teen or "tween" crowd. Ultimately I recommend advertising in Cosmopolitan. The benefits of Cosmo far outweigh those of Seventeen. Having sixty-three international editions, thirty-six languages and distribution in over one hundred countries, Rider Chic.com will be able to reach many others. The older teens and adults that typically read Cosmo are more likely than the young teens who read Seventeen to make purchases online.

The visual design of Seventeen is overly colorful and childish upon first look. The model on the cover is not anyone recognizable and none of the article titles on the cover jump out and catch my attention. A majority of the pictures and articles have photos of young kids and teens. In fact there was a nauseating amount of Justin Beiber in the pages of this publication. This is not something I would look twice at and purchase. When you flip through the pages, you find that there is no distinguishable organization within the magazine. Everything is all over the place and hard to follow.

The visual design of Seventeen is somewhat childish and so is the quality of writing. I was only able to find one article about an actress from Nickelodeon, who is virtually unknown if you aren't in middle school, that was written with the thought of a young child reading it. Most of it was more interview-like than an actual article. The main features (note-not articles) are about hairstyles and prom dresses and flirting. There is even a feature titled "How to Speak Dude". There wasn't anything in the pages that interested me at all, and I ended up flipping through it pretty quickly and putting it down after not getting any inspiration for anything from it.

Our company strives at being serious about motocross in a very stylish and sophisticated way. The target audience that Seventeen has does not fit the Rider Chic type of girl. The main readers are the ages eleven to fourteen and is not the age group that would typically be taking motocross apparel and safety gear seriously. They are more concerned with hair, makeup, and that boy who they want to hold hands with. For example, an article featured is