The Product Is You, No. 7

[The Product Is You is an occasional Murketing series collecting advertising that is aimed at advertisers: Magazines or television networks packaging up their consumers — that is, you, the potential ad target — in ways designed to attract advertisers. Previous installments here.]

This somewhat recent summation by Seventeen Magazine of who its readers are, and why advertisers want to reach them, is a model of the form. The first page panders to the marketing-world viewpoint that today’s teens are incredibly difficult to understand, practically another life form, and whatever “your idea of teens” is, it’s wrong. Then page two brushes aside the entire notion that teens are scary aliens — or at least the teens who read Seventeen aren’t. In fact, they are consumption machines. They have money to burn, and you need to get your brand in their face right away. By advertising in Seventeen, of course.

After the jump, a second ad from the same campaign further reassures potential advertisers that not only is the Seventeen reader jarringly shopping-mad, but so are her friends — and she works hard to make sure they follow her example.