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Unsuitable Advertisements In The Magazine (Fortean Times)

Are some of the adverts in FT unsuitable, and are you offended by them ?

  • Yes, I find a lot of the adverts offensive/in bad taste.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Most are OK, but 'Faces of Death' takes the biscuit.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • They are all OK.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • I don't care about the content of the Ads.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The ads are mainly crud but 'F.O.D.' is also vilely offensive, possibly to the point of illegality

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    0
  • Poll closed .
I have the solution!
What we do is take the adman out and have him flogged while we film it then we can sell the video through the magazine raising pots of cash from outraged readers seeking retribution for their damaged sensitivity.

You can thank me all later.


You know, a card or something.


Maybe a new spikey collar.


Decide amongst yourselves.
 
To be perfectly frank, the only time I've felt uncomfortable reading FT (and I've read EVERY issue) was the photo collection of siamese twins a few issues ago.

They made my heart bleed.
 
Niles Calder said:
I'm sure there are also some 'alternative' drinks manufacturers, producers of Mead and simular beverages, who might be interested in advertising in the FT.
God yes, the amount of mead downed by FT readers must be phenomenal.
Thanks for your honesty Anthony.
 
Those annoying hydroponics and dope adverts' remind me of annoying porn popunders/ups etc...... Just filling the pages with repetative and badly designed crap!
"Hangon...20 seconds on paintshop should do it "dude"!!"

I don't read the ads' but it irritates me having to turn pages to avoid them. Put them on the last few pages!
(I know the intention is to be seen so that will never happen!)


Oh aye.....the "fake" guns and swords................No comment!

The mobile phone logos...."Hangon...20 seconds on paintshop shou......."


*Cough*

Si thi all ;)
 
A serious and hopefully useful sugestion.

Problem 1: Scanky pot 'ead adverts.

Problem 2: Publishers of books on the paranormal have a very low advertiseing budget.

Solution? : Fortean Times would probably be one of the most profitable places in the world to advertise books on the paranormal because it would be seen by up to 70,000 (I belive that is circulation atm? ) of the people you are most likely to be able to sell to.
Well if a gardern centre or some bloke soking most of his profits can affoerd to advertise in those sl.ots why not off er said slots to fortean publishers or maybe even large second hand book shops that also often have large paranormal sections.

That might work... if not why not reduce the size of some of the adverts to fit more on page and therefore reduce cost per advert and offer thease smaller adverts to legitimate companys or small publishers... selling a page of smaller ads probably gives more money for that page over all anyway as well

all that said, I'm not in the adveriseing industry so all those things i mentioned had probably been tryed before anyway.
 
Dark Detective said:
was there some kind of Golden Age of FT advertising that people look back to with misty eyes? What was advertised back then?

Yes there was...

*flash puts on a cd of the rouseing music from jurasic park when they first see the dinosaus and everyone is in aww of the magnificent beasts*

back when FT was undoubtably at the height of its popularity dureing the eary series of the X-files, Walls advertised it's new Solero rip off, but tasty, ice cream on the back cover.

(there were still loads of scanky pot 'ead adverts and fake ID adverts in the mag though :rolleyes: )
 
Bottom line is I'm turned off by adverts for drug paraphenalia and all that stuff, but it's been in every issue for god knows how long, and advertiseres wouldn't keep advertising if people weren't buying.

The t-shirts, now some of them annoy me to buggery cos they're obviously aimed at twats...

I agree though, more stuff like DVDs, books, travel etc would be a good thing, but I do 100% appreciate it's a difficult mag to pitch.

(Hello, by the way. :blah: )
 
Re: A serious and hopefully useful sugestion.

*******************************
Originally posted by Lord_Flashheart
Fortean Times would probably be one of the most profitable places in the world to advertise books on the paranormal because it would be seen by up to 70,000 (I belive that is circulation atm? ) of the people you are most likely to be able to sell to.

*******************************

Depends what you mean by “circulation”. Our newsstand sales do fluctuate with each issue, but total sales (including modest sales outside the UK) are around 28,000. When trying to sell ad space, the assumption is that for each mag sold, two or three people actually see it.
 
Big hugs to all at Fortean Towers for listening to us, it's hugely appreciated.

I quite like the ads for courses and talks and seminars and things which you find in mags like BBC Wildlife. Other than that, how about things like Jelly Belly Beans? It sounds a bit daft, but there must be quite a lot of 'cult' brands like that which have a rather generous ad budget and would be appreciated by weird nerds like us.

As long as FT never resort to T&A on the front cover, I'm happy to put up with pharmaceutical paraphernalia adverts.
 
See? Candy IS a good idea!

Believe me, if I could afford to, I would buy up the newsstand FTs around here and distribute them to all my friends and family. :)
 
Hello there adman, I have had some practice in helping start-up companies with their need to focus advertising revenues and in the case of FT I think the guys are exactly right in stating that you have a quite specialised readership who are loyal to the topic of Forteana in its myriad flavours.

They are unlikely to be influenced by ads from outside their core areas of interest, but on the flip side are likely to be interested in ads that offer them more of what they already like - ie Forteana.

I would suggest we consider what way there is to persuade the suppliers of books, DVDs, games and other relevant products to produce a catalogue of goods pretty much along the lines of what we are asking for.

for example - speak to a DVD supplier who already has a good price differential ( eg Play.com in the UK ) and get them to put together a page of DVDs especially for FT - things such as The Wicker Man, Magnolia, Ghost Watch, Faces of Death and so on, plus have links to other areas of common interest for such a group - things like the Star Trek series, The Simpsons, Monty Python films ...

for books you should speak to one of the online book sellers (you probably already have a few you link to in the reviews section ) and send them a list of books rated highly in the past book reviews section of FT. Expand the reviews section of the website to cover these and add the webpage link and a list to the magazine.

Emperor mentioned and FT travel link - great idea. Find a travel agent who covers places such and ask them to make an advert at an attractive price plus do an editorial to cover many of these places split over many months - repeat adverts, good materail for the mag and a chance for some desk jockeys to make an easily booked holiday at the lift of a phone.

One small area on lowish profit to FT which I would dearly love to see back is the republication of back issue compliation books as well as the Fortean Studies. Perhaps on the back of any success with a link up to a book seller you could get them to subsidise the production if they get exclusive right to sell for the first 6 months.

The readership of the website is very active, capable and willing to help so use them to help the very think they love to read. Get us to work on Scanning in / proof reading back issues and build a database of old articles that you can make available online.

Last, but not least, look at the US market in more depth if the success in the UK materialises.

I hope that is of some help.

thanks

Iain
 
With the issue of the offensive t shirts etc being discussed , I thought it was a mildy amusing piece of what appears to be self censorship by the sellers that the advert for a female massager could not bring itself to use the complete word "orgasm"......
 
One small area on lowish profit to FT which I would dearly love to see back is the republication of back issue compliation books as well as the Fortean Studies. Perhaps on the back of any success with a link up to a book seller you could get them to subsidise the production if they get exclusive right to sell for the first 6 months.
I would certainly buy these!
 
Rrose Selavy said:
With the issue of the offensive t shirts etc being discussed , I thought it was a mildy amusing piece of what appears to be self censorship by the sellers that the advert for a female massager could not bring itself to use the complete word "orgasm"......
I don't mind the word "orgasm" used of a "female Masager," I don't even mind the word, "dildo", used in it's proper place.

I do mind the Fred and Rose West T-shirt, square spoilsport that I am.
 
Lots of good ideas - although I hear Wimbeldon Common is getting a little cluttered due to your slacking off ;)

UncleBulgaria said:
I would suggest we consider what way there is to persuade the suppliers of books, DVDs, games and other relevant products to produce a catalogue of goods pretty much along the lines of what we are asking for.

for example - speak to a DVD supplier who already has a good price differential ( eg Play.com in the UK ) and get them to put together a page of DVDs especially for FT - things such as The Wicker Man, Magnolia, Ghost Watch, Faces of Death and so on, plus have links to other areas of common interest for such a group - things like the Star Trek series, The Simpsons, Monty Python films ...

for books you should speak to one of the online book sellers (you probably already have a few you link to in the reviews section ) and send them a list of books rated highly in the past book reviews section of FT. Expand the reviews section of the website to cover these and add the webpage link and a list to the magazine.

The FT has a vast back catalogue of reviews they could make use of. Amazon offer an affiliate service (with branches in the US, Canada, France, UK, Germany, etc.) and it might be possible to hook into that (I've already investigated it for another project and it is doable) and possibly forge a relationship with them -where they have an ad with a page of recommendations (pos. with an accompanying page on their site - they already have recommendation lists) and we link through to them from a reviews area here (and get a cut of sales in return).

and:

UncleBulgaria said:
One small area on lowish profit to FT which I would dearly love to see back is the republication of back issue compliation books as well as the Fortean Studies. Perhaps on the back of any success with a link up to a book seller you could get them to subsidise the production if they get exclusive right to sell for the first 6 months.

The readership of the website is very active, capable and willing to help so use them to help the very think they love to read. Get us to work on Scanning in / proof reading back issues and build a database of old articles that you can make available online.

I think I've mentioned this elsewhere in a couple of context - in a nutshell:

1. If the Fortean Studies, etc. are in a suitable format (Quark, PDF, etc.) then we could take advantage of the latest print-on-demand technology. Basically adavances in printer setup mean that people cn order very small runs of a book and the printer can easily run them off and bind thm and send them out. It would mean small bookshops could get the whole range in or the FT for their site. I know someone in the industry as I was picking their brains over this a while back and can get more deatils if needed.

2. We could have a subscription area of the site where all the back issues of FT were available for download (as PDFs) - we could certainly do a group effort on preparing the material (say free access for doing a whole issue).

Both would rely on an expansion of the website and I'm not sure what the desire is for that but in the end closer integration of a magazine and its site is the way forward ;)

In the end both things would be win-win as far as I can see although I don't know the techncial issues (like the format the books are stored in or who holds the rights).

Emps
 
Part of the anchor for demand for this kind of thing is a good base of reviews culled from the magazine over the years. FT have started to add new reviews from the current issues and I have added reviews culled from isses from the earlier issues ( 100-130ish) which have been scanned in and converted to text.

I am happy to go on and produce more back issues review extracts for the site for free if they want to use the material to build their database. I also think there are lots of other people out there who would be happy to help in scanning in and proof reading magazine in their entirity over the coming months if there will be something done with them.

We need someone to co-ordinate volunteers, probably by email, and to check everything is done within a framework to get the articles produced. There are quite a few volunteers for the discussion board monitoring who may want to help, and I am available too.

As Emperor said, if there are issues with copyright etc then please let us know and we can at least rest knowing the situation.

Fortean culture is full of willing volunteers so use them wisely and you can let us help keep alive the magazine we hold in such high esteem.

thanks

Iain
 
UncleBulgaria said:
Part of the anchor for demand for this kind of thing is a good base of reviews culled from the magazine over the years. FT have started to add new reviews from the current issues and I have added reviews culled from isses from the earlier issues ( 100-130ish) which have been scanned in and converted to text.

Yep they are a great basis for leveraging some kind of relationship with an online seller.

It would be interesting if people could add their own comments to the reviews too.

Also there are plenty of books that FT will never have reviewed (older, obscure, etc. ones) and it would be interesting to give some FTMBers a crack at adding their review. It would mean we could actual aim for a really comprehensive coverage of the books in his field.

Emps
 
sod all to do with advertiseing but...

Why don't FT publish an index and summry book of all the book reveiws they have done over the past 30 years? It neadent be a republishing of the reveiws just tital, publisher, authour, what fortean topics the book covers and its rateing.

nothing would have to be rewritain it would just be a case of colecting the info from out of print magazines. (if I get a copy of the out of date mags and a name check I'd be happy to do that for no monitary payment (HINT)).
such a book would be an invaluble referance tool for anyone reserching a topic or just looking for good books to read from libarys or secondhand bookshops.
 
L-FH: Its a great idea and would probably work better online than in a printed form (you could search it, etc.).

Emps
 
Wouldja believe? The current Radio Times (Billie Piper cover) has an advert for "hydrophonics"! - Page 136
 
I always get the impression that FT ads are aimed at chronic couch spuds - ads for mensa, pot paraphernalia, smart-arsed t-shirts, computer games, buffy dvds etc.

What about the more outdoorsy aspect? With all these FT writers going off running around St. Petersburg or the Congo, or Mexico, how about getting into bed with some holiday companies (like Lastminute.com) and running a competition to the same location as the article (win a trip to St. Petersburg!) and then working with the travel agency to advertise the highlighted destination?
 
Emperor said:
I also wonder if it would be possible to get something like sponsorhsip for some sections - in the FT travel section we could say have a box saying something like: "this section sponsored by...." and get some travel company offering unsual travel or bespoke arrangements.

Someone like Weird Wanderings perhaps?:

http://www.fabuloustravel.com/ww/

[edit: I was interested to see the link at the bottom of the page: "globtrotting" but it appears not to be some great globster-related tour or even something to do with trotting globsters or globsters with the trots?]

Emps
 
Originally posted by blather
[

What about the more outdoorsy aspect? With all these FT writers going off running around St. Petersburg or the Congo, or Mexico, how about getting into bed with some holiday companies (like Lastminute.com) and running a competition to the same location as the article (win a trip to St. Petersburg!) and then working with the travel agency to advertise the highlighted destination?

It kinda might be nice if we had say some adverts for Fortean type destinations cheap holiday accomodation etc even more local like Glastonbury or beyond with maps and article about what to see maybe.
 
Rrose Selavy said:
It kinda might be nice if we had say some adverts for Fortean type destinations cheap holiday accomodation etc even more local like Glastonbury or beyond with maps and article about what to see maybe.

I agree with Pete the Younger - its a good idea.

I think ultimately if we aren't satisfied with things then we need to make an effort to help change things. I'm sure some of our talented FTMBers are up for the challenge. It wouldn't have to be much more than the current travel piece but with a sidebar with some more practical information - how to get there, good places to stay, some links to the local tourist information places, etc. If someone is writing something they can ask for help on the board and I'm sure there are plenty of people with ideas, resources, etc. that they can throw in.

So anyone got any ideas? Glasto has been mentioned - anymore?

Emps
 
Emperor said:
L-FH: Its a great idea and would probably work better online than in a printed form (you could search it, etc.).

Emps

Ah but if it were in printed form, like a book, ft could make money off it. Unless you're selling stuff you can't make money off a single website, especilly one as specilised as a database of fortean books, advertiseing may, if you're lucky, pay for the site but you certinly won't be coining it in.

Books can be searched too... I remember when I was doing my degree there was an ingenious tool usully locacted at the back of reference books or maps. It was called an index.
 
Lord_Flashheart said:
Books can be searched too... I remember when I was doing my degree there was an ingenious tool usully locacted at the back of reference books or maps. It was called an index.

A 'novel' concept but it'll never catch on!! :p

Emps
 
I once got a 'goatsucker' t-shirt from one of these companies which was well cute. However, despite my ticking every box I could I ended up getting really offensive porn catalogues through my door every week. I was really relieved when I moved house. I'm never going to buy from those 'alternative' companies again.
 
Just realised this thread was here after my previous rant on the weapons galore ad.

I'm very sorry adman. I did go off on one rather. I know that I don't have to look at it and that a full page ad keeps the costs down. One thing though I didn't find the C*nt tee-shirt a problem, I thought it was very funny and bold of FT to print it.


I would like to see adverts for the things that I like. Candy and sweets, as mentioned before, Apple computers and Smart cars.

Can we have free gifts too, like in the days when you used to get a drumstick lolly or a sherbert dib dab stuck to the front of Wizzer and Chips?


But maybe thats just me. I'll go and be quiet in a corner.
 
I noticed a big increase in the quality of the ads in this months issue. Well done Adman.
I'm surprised that the circulation is only 28 000, I've noticed a huge increase in the number of places selling FT in Manchester.
 
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