We don’t follow the energy drink world too closely. We find few things uglier than cool, respected athletes peddling caffeinated sugar water. That said, we had to laugh we we saw the recent article in AdWeek touting Red Bull’s new (in America, anyway) magazine Red Bulletin. No one explains what they’re after better than URB Magazine publisher and Red Bulletin associate publisher Raymond Roker.
“The perception is that there is content and there’s advertising,” Roker adds. “We’re challenging that perception that the media industry is still holding on to. The audience grows up and understands their athlete has brand logo stickers all over the board and the helmet, and that’s OK. If the end result is a good piece of content, parsing where it comes from is missing the point.”
Roker has worked in the music media business for years so we understand why he finds it hard to believe there should be a difference between editorial and advertising, but people should understand that anyone with Roker’s perspective on “content” is definitely working solely in the “advertising” space.
For a better look at where Red Bull’s “perception challenging” eventually ends check out David Foster Wallace’s The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, or Morgan Spurlock’s POM Wonderful presents:The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. It isn’t pretty, but then we’ve been purposefully missing the point for years.
[Link: Adweek]
this is interesting. so, industry mags and others are made up of journalists? (Surfing magazine even printed that they themselves, “are not journalists.” some people just found out that covers, while maybe not for “sale,” are obtainable through hiring staff photographers, and other other relations. do you really believe there is editorial integrity in publishing anymore?
we have been getting this magazine in canada for at least 2 years……. get like a hundred dropped at the shop every month.
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