Advertising
People magazine is flooded with celebrity gossip. In any given issue, the magazine panders to the Hollywood ideals for male and female beauty and social behavior in the content of its articles and its advertisements. Advertisements follow several themes. Regardless of the products being peddled, the tone and imagery used in the print ads in People reflect the caliber of the magazine itself. For example, most advertisements in People emphasize physical beauty and materialism. The focus on material culture is evident in the preponderance of advertisements for clothing and jewelry. Few of the advertisements for clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, or cars are for luxury items. The intended audience for the advertisements in People is working class Americans of both genders, with a greater emphasis on female readers than on male given the greater number of ad placements for feminine cosmetics and jewelry. However, male bath products and clothing also appeal to the large number of male readers too. Advertisements in People assume their readers are enamored with the Hollywood images of idealized beauty and wealth.
The advertisements use a variety of rhetorical techniques to sell products including ethos. Because the magazine itself is about celebrities, the advertisements often use celebrity endorsements. Product manufacturers assume that their audience will trust a celebrity spokesperson. Ad placements for charity donations almost always use a celebrity endorser. Gender is a major theme in People ads, which pander to stereotypical images of males, females, and heterosexual relationships. Men and women from different ethnic heritages are featured in the People ads, albeit with far more images of Caucasians than any other group. Beauty, though, seems standardized: both men and women are slim, trim, physically attractive and dressed in trendy clothing.
Consumerism is the main theme shared in common by all the advertisements in People. Regardless of the actual product being pushed, all the advertisements suggest that the reader's life will not be complete without a certain product. The reader might also learn that he or she will not be cool or hip without a certain product too, and therefore the reader is compelled to shop in order to live up to the celebrity images that permeate People magazine.
