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Home > Blogs > Uncorked > Archives > 2008 > April > 17 > Entry
Did Wine Spectator change its ‘advertorial’ policy?
I can’t tell for sure, but it appears Wine Spectator magazine may have made some adjustments to its policies regarding “advertorials,” those print ads that mimic a publication’s editorial content.
Last month, there was a bit of a discussion on the topic in an Uncorked entry entitled Did Wine Spectator intend to deceive? That entry was followed two days later by the magazine’s denial that it tried to mislead readers.
In the May 15 print edition of the magazine (with the Chardonnay cover story), an advertorial on pages 74 and 75 for the wines of Diageo Chateau & Estates is clearly labeled, on the top of both pages, “special advertising section.” And the typeface or fonts used in the piece entitled “Making Scents of Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay” do not appear to mimic as closely the typeface of the magazine’s editorial content to the extent that previous advertorials did.
Those earlier advertorials, however, promoted the wines of a different advertiser, however: A line of wines affiliated with Gallo and profiled through a web site entitled wineeveryday.com. The first page of those advertorials contained the term “Wine Everyday”, with no mention it was an advertisement until the advertorial’s second page — and its design and typeface very closely resembled a Wine Spectator editorial review. (A Wine Spectator logo, by the way, appears on the Wineeveryday site, and a click on the site’s “Where to Buy” link takes you to — ta da! — Wine Spectator’s wine shop search page.)
So it may be that nothing has changed, and that the Wineeveryday advertorials will return in their previous form. But the most recent advertorial from Diageo suggests the Spectator’s editors might have taken a second look at the practice and concluded that it could mislead readers.
As I said in a previous post, anyone who works in print journalism (and I do) lives in far too fragile of a glass house to be casting too many stones over these advertorials, which newspapers, including mine, publish, and which are labeled “advertisement.” But I also think that the nation’s highest-profile wine publication, whose credibility is so important to its wine ratings, would hold itself to a very high standard when it comes to drawing a line between advertising and editorial content in order to protect that credibility.
So if they took some steps in that direction, well — good for them.
Cheers!
Mark Fisher
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Comments
By Arthur
April 17, 2008 1:27 PM | Link to this
Jo: It would take a 5 second phone call to the heads of both divisions from someone, say in Shanken’s position, and those two would chatter away like 14 year old girls. There would be a whole lotta interfacin’ goin’ on, indeed. Arthur Z Przebinda Founder, redwinebuzz.comBy Jo
April 17, 2008 1:09 PM | Link to this
As a PR/Marketing agent, I can honestly tell you that advertising and editorial departments don’t talk. When a client is given a poor score, but has spent money advertising, this tells me that there’s no partiality. I’ve seen this happen repeatedly… They DON’T interface…