Esquire Cover Flap

February 5, 2009

'Esquire' Cover Flap

Is the cover window on the Obama issue an exciting print innovation, or a threat to editorial integrity?

Whatever you think about the February issue of Esquire, it won't take long to find somebody who thinks the opposite. Or thinks both. Or doesn't know what to think. Called a cover window or trap door, what it is, is a large flap that, when opened, reveals edit on the right and an ad on the left.
     Soon after the issue appeared on newsstands, ASME was asked whether it violated the Guidelines for Editors and Publishers. The Advertising Guidelines Committee, chaired by Eric Schurenberg (now of MoneyWatch.com) and the ASME Board of Directors quickly concluded that it does not. A clever and audacious use of print, yes; an attempt to disguise advertising as editorial or compromise editorial independence, no.
     Still, there are ASME members who are worried that innovation will lead to abuse. Their concern is that editors will soon find themselves altering the covers of their magazines to satisfy advertisers. Who better to address these issues than David Granger, the editor-in-chief of Esquire?
    David has put together his own FAQ to address the questions that have been raised by ASME members and in the media.

 

 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions About the February Cover of 'Esquire,' Compiled by David Granger

Let's just get right to it: This is a total sell-out, right? Bending over to accommodate the desires of an advertiser.

We've gotten the sense that some of the people who have reacted to the cover have assumed that the window we created in the cover was something that an advertiser suggested, but this was an editorial idea. It's one of the several manufacturing gimmicks I presented to my publisher about a year and a half ago as things I would love to do if we could find a way to pay for them.

Where did the idea come from?

About three years ago, I got my writers and editors together and tried to inspire them to find unconventional ways to think about making a magazine.  There's a quiz I give that generally spurs rabid discussion.  After that initial discussion, I had lunches with people from various departments at the magazine—production, photo, fashion—and asked each of them to think of unexpected ways to use our medium. And then we started playing with the form, first in small ways and then in larger ways. We started running illustrations in the margins, a la Mad magazine from way back. We rethought how we were doing fiction—started assigning it. We mashed up all the elements that precede the beginning of the magazine (masthead; editor's letter; contributors; letters from readers) into a single entertaining section of the magazine. We ran a piece of fiction entirely in the bottom margins of the magazine. We found ways to do certain editorial projects both inside the magazine and, at the same time, in ways that found expression outside the magazine.

After several months of this kind of experimentation, I did a presentation for our manufacturing department—including giving them the original quiz—and I asked them to show me what a magazine could do that had never been done before. They called in their top five or six vendors—specialty printers, mostly—and I gave them the same presentation. Then, over the next six months, each of them came back to me with examples of innovative things that could be done with paper. Some of them had been used in direct mail or in greeting cards or in catalogs, but never in magazines. Some were entirely original.

I chose five or six I thought might grab readers' attention and showed them to my publisher. He shared them with his ad staff.

Why would you do all this?

Two reasons.

First, don't you ever have those days when you get your first-bound of your magazine and you think to yourself, "Yeah, it's good but is that it?"

Second, I got sick of reading about the demise of print, which is the best, most rewarding medium ever, and I got sick of all forms of print being labeled "old media." Yeah, print has been around for a long time, but that's because it works really well. Both aesthetically and as a business—which is more than one can say for most forms of "new media." So we've been trying to find ways to get people to reassess the print medium.

But don't you think this violates the sanctity of the cover? Advertisers are constantly trying to intrude on the editorial —interrupt it. Aren't you just encouraging that?

I'll be interested to hear if readers interpret it that way. But I don't think so. I find this less intrusive than some of the cover ad formulations that are standard—both gatefolds and reverse gatefolds or Z-folds or whatever they're called when the cover opens from the left to reveal a gatefold. The intention here was literally to offer a window on the contents of the issue, to explain what we meant by putting an illustration of President Obama on the cover with the question "What Now?" We began to answer that question, right on the cover.

I'm much more concerned that the adhesive that allows readers to seal the cover back up won't be strong enough to deal with repeated openings and closings.

How much influence did the advertiser have over what you did with your cover?

They did not have any. They didn't see the cover until it was shipped. Their only responsibility was to come up with the unique creative to make use of the inside of the five-inch-by-five-inch window. And the agency for Discovery did a great job of making it work.

Some editors are concerned that their publishing side will use the "Esquire" cover as a way of pressuring editors to acquiesce to more aggressive forms of interruptive advertising. Isn't this just the top of a slippery slope that will lead to a blurring of what is advertising and what is editorial—or at least to compromising the editorial experience?

Two responses to that.

First, the slope is already really slippery. It's a publisher's job to do all he or she can to bring in advertising. When you consider that no other medium is the least bit bothered by interruptive experiences, let alone wholesale product integration, you can understand what magazine publishers are up against. I mean, look at Mad Men—those little lead-ins from the commercial to the show with fun facts about advertising that happen to relate to advertisers on that episode? Or the Budweiser Hot Seat on ESPN. If your publisher isn't bringing you things that make you uncomfortable all the time, he or she is not doing his job.

Second, it's our job as editors to say no whenever necessary. When the line between what is editorial content and what is advertising is blurred or crossed, we have the power and the duty to say no.

But beyond that, we have the opportunity to take the initiative. Instead of allowing innovation in print to happen only from the advertising side, we can innovate to make the editorial experience more rewarding for our readers. That's what we did here and I hope we can find exciting new ways to do it again in the future.

Click below to read stories about the February cover of Esquire in The New York Times and portfolio.com

'Open Here' to Peek at Esquire's Articles and Ad
Does 'Esquire' Cover Ad Sell Out Everyone Else?

To comment, please e-mail asme@magazine.org. Comments will be edited before being being posted. Please include your full name and day-time telephone number. Names withheld from publication if requested.