So, I picked up two magazines last week, one American and one Italian, and I noticed some stark differences between the two. I do not normally read global magazines, but I was intrigued to pick up Vogue Italia last Friday. The American magazine I picked up was StyleWatch.
I immediate saw a difference in the magazines, as I know they are for different readers, but I was still surprised to see how vastly different the two were.
Something I found really cool that Vogue Italia did was use an actual model for the cover, rather than intriguing people to buy the magazine using celebrities. American culture really heavily focuses on celebrities, so a lot of times if we do not recognize who is on the cover of the magazine, chances are we will not buy it!
Taking another look at the covers, we can also see how much more marketing the American magazine uses… screaming at the buyers to “FIND YOUR SUMMER STYLE!” ” 186 STEALS UNDER $100!” while the Italian Vogue simply says “New Vision.”
By me stating the obvious differences of the covers does not mean that I like the Vogue Italia cover more, because I actually enjoy the StyleWatch cover much more, but I do not know if that is just me being the American buyer that I am because I am used to covers like these, or if I actually genuinely enjoy the cover more.
After taking a further look into the magazine, I can also see that Vogue Italia continues their more simplistic style. Vogue is known for being mostly ads and editorials, so this is nothing new to see this. But their ads are completely different from ads that you would see in an American magazine, even American Vogue.
This ad is seen in Vogue Italia:
vs.
This ad seen in American StyleWatch:
Look how different these two ads are! While they are both fashion magazines, one is showing fashion and the other is showing an ad for birth control. I think StyleWatch is marketing to their readers by having ads such as the one above, while Vogue Italia is attempting to market the clothing using a creative approach.
Maybe if I had picked up American Vogue, I would not being seeing the birth control ad, but I would still see ads for shampoos, and I am not seeing that at all in the Vogue Italia.
A lot of StyleWatch’s articles are about “How to get this celeb’s look for less.” I LOVE these articles because being in college, I cannot afford the drastic prices they pay for clothing, but I still want to rock the same look as them. StyleWatch is actually one of my favorite magazines, and that is because they are attempting to market to young women, just like myself.
After taking a look at Vogue Italia’s media kit, I saw that they are targeting an older target market than myself. They are attempting to target women 25-44, who are “upper levels of the population” meaning they want upper class women who can afford the clothing they are advertising! (AKA…not me!) But this doesn’t mean I don’t love looking at the beautiful clothes across their pages.
Something both magazines doing a better job at than they did before is their use of who is shown in their magazines. Vogue Italia does a good job with incorporating women of older ages and StyleWatch does a good job of incorporating a ton of diversity, yay for doing things they should be doing!
I haven’t written anything like this article before, but if you would like me to continue to talk about different magazines from around the world, let me know @Danieminor13 on social media!
