The Detectors Are Going Off
When a new magazine arrived out of nowhere this spring--seemingly full grown, with the size and heft of a heavyweight glossy--the dance music community was abuzz, almost aghast.
Publications like this don’t come cheap and often have some corporate big daddy to call on for cash. But this bimonthly professed its dance floor credentials, cost nothing to read, and begged to be picked up in piles at dance clubs, coffee shops and boutiques from coast to coast. A whopping 300,000 copies were printed--more than Details magazine at its national launch.
Now on its third issue, it seems like a blessing for a scene long ignored by major media. But the magazine’s lavish color printing and cutting-edge design (which add to its reported $100,000-an-issue production price tag) may involve a smoking gun, so to speak.
Some leaders of the dance scene are questioning the origins of this lush publication, suggesting that its heft owes much to tobacco advertising and the smoking industry’s new attempts to infiltrate their subculture.
Indeed, Sweater is the brainchild of KBA Marketing of Chicago, which in the last few years has pioneered Camel cigarettes’ entree into the youthful counterculture that surrounds nightclubbing.
And while other, more underground dance music magazines don’t accept tobacco advertising, Sweater’s anchor advertiser is Camel cigarettes.
In the wake of the demise of its longtime mascot, the cartoon Joe Camel--who was criticized for attracting preteens to the brand--Camel has a new ad campaign that depicts scenes of smoky, sultry nightlife.
“We’re seeking a 21-and-over market,” says Richard L. Williams, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Camel’s parent company. “One of the reasons we look at age-restricted venues is because it gets our product in the hands of adult smokers. We think it’s a pretty good place to market our product.” Sweater’s publishers say the magazine is 95% distributed in 21-and-over venues.
But it is widely available in under-21 spots, from clubs to coffee shops. The dance music scene, of which Sweater aspires to be an integral part, is young--younger than the more traditional rock ‘n’ roll community.
Many fans--particularly those of the all-night dance parties known as raves--are under 18. And this is the year when so-called electronica (a marketing term for dance music) broke through to the mainstream with such acts as Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers. Sweater has positioned itself to bring this underground phenomenon to the masses.
“It’s another example of tobacco companies going after young people,” says Andrew Smith, editor of XLR8R, a dance music magazine based in San Francisco and the first publication to question the connection between Sweater and Camel. XLR8R does not accept tobacco advertising.
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As part of its “Camel Club Program,” KBA employs teams of twentysomething marketers in 28 American cities who go to nightspots and give out free packs of cigarettes, take names and addresses for mass mailings, and take out advertisements (called the Camel Club Page) in local alternative weeklies, listing the hot dance clubs in town and advertising Camel smokes.
KBA representatives also arrange agreements with the clubs, offering tens of thousands of dollars for the right to sell Camel cigarettes exclusively. The agreements call for the removal of traditional cigarette machines in favor of Camel kiosks that sit on the bars. Camel itself sponsors concerts and tours.
“By operating in the night-life scene, the objective is to reach trend influencers, the people that start and maintain trends,” reads KBA marketing material, according to published reports. “Our association with trend influencers . . . will have a lasting impact on club-goers who will begin to associate Camel with what is ‘cool.’ ”
When asked if Camel is actually behind Sweater’s existence, Reynolds spokesman Williams replied, “I have to find out exactly what our relationship is with Sweater.” He never called back.
KBA--which has other clients, mainly alcoholic beverage companies--says Sweater is not a Camel publication, that it also has several other advertisers.
“In no way, shape or form does R.J. Reynolds Tobacco have any ownership or ability to influence the content of Sweater magazine,” says Michael Blatter, who identifies himself as a co-owner of KBA and who is listed as president of Sweater (records list Blatter’s partner, Kevin Berg, as the owner of 100% of KBA’s stock). “Sweater was created and is edited by young adults who play an active role in the night-life community.”
Blatter acknowledges that “Reynolds has given us the money--as the main advertiser--to get the thing going.” But, he adds, Sweater is already breaking even and “it’s the other advertisers that have made the difference.”
But magazine industry insiders say it is highly unlikely that Sweater is even coming close to breaking even unless it has a deep-pockets sponsor it is not revealing.
Folio, a magazine industry publication, reports Sweater’s ad rate at $4,400 per page and estimates that ads cover about 20 of its 80 pages. That comes in at $88,000--less than the $100,000 KBA says an issue costs to produce.
Blatter of KBA, however, reports Sweater’s ad rate to be $18,000 a page. But John Masterton, an editor at Media Industry Newsletter, says the published ad rates of new publications are almost always much higher than what actually is charged, because publications want to get off the ground without looking like a ghost town.
He also says a publication of the quality of Sweater--full, glossy color on high-quality paper with top-notch design--would likely cost much more than $100,000 per issue.
“A tobacco company backing a magazine and being quiet about it would be nothing new,” Masterton said, asserting that the tobacco industry has had a long history of publishing magazines. He mentioned Unlimited (subtitled Action, Adventure, Good Times), a recently launched publication circulated to 1.5 million young males who are in the Philip Morris Tobacco Co. database.
But Unlimited presumably reaches smokers while Sweater’s audience includes people who haven’t started.
Blatter says editorial control of Sweater is in the hands of Ray Gun Publishing, a firm in Santa Monica that is home to such other youth culture magazines as Bikini and Stick.
But Ray Gun Publishing President Marvin Scott Jarrett--also listed as executive publisher of Sweater--says his company is “pretty much a contract publisher”--an industry term describing companies that put together custom magazines on demand for single advertisers and corporate clients.
“Clearly, Camel is searching for new, replacement marketing channels” in the wake of Joe Camel, says Kirk Davidson, marketing professor at Mount St. Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Md. “They can take some cover in the assumption that everyone in nightclubs is over 21,” Davidson says, “even though you and I know that’s not true.”
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Sweater’s strongest critics are coming from within the dance music community.
“If it was just a part of Ray Gun, no one would have a problem with it,” says a representative for a record label that advertises in Sweater. “But because Sweater has money and editorial suggestions coming from the marketing firm for Camel, that’s where most people’s problems with it are.
“I see club kids--definitely high school age--reading it on the subway all the time, and that’s what the intent is. I’ve seen it in record stores, clubs with electronic music, cafes and coffee shops. It’s just Camel trying to get hip.”
“If Congress gets ahold of Sweater and sees pictures of ravers at Magic Wednesdays (an all-ages club in Hollywood), that could call into question the issue of marketing to kids,” says Raymond Roker, publisher of Urb--one of the country’s longest-running and most-respected dance music magazines. “I don’t like the tobacco companies strong-arming the scene.”
But Roker finds more fault with Sweater’s “carpetbagging” content than with its advertising.
“It’s trying to get a piece of the electronica pie without investing in the core of the scene,” he says. “They dumb it down for ravers. It’s everything rock--and larger white society--does to urban music.”
Jarrett, 37, has garnered the envy of the industry since 1992, when Ray Gun magazine debuted with adventurous design and type fonts that helped make the West Coast a hot spot for cutting-edge magazines. Ray Gun was not famous for its writing or its coverage of dance music, but Ray Gun writer Jason Black, who is now editing Sweater, does garner some praise from the dance music community.
“We’ve always had enthusiasm for dance music and electronic music,” Jarrett says. “With Sweater, we’re trying to combine the best of dance, fashion and pop culture.”
