The cultural economy of the luxury brand
Yesterday I looked at the copy content in the launch of Standpoint, the new politics/business monthly magazine edited by former Telegraph associate editor Daniel Johnson, with launch articles from a number of neocon names and Telegraph writers that did nothing to support Johnson’s claim that it is a magazine of both the Left and Right.
The launch of Standpoint and its claims to bipartisan intellectual curiosity stirrred some thoughts around the rise of the “intellectual magazine” in the recent couple of years, and what this is saying about both the magazine market and the economic and political context in which magazines operate. My view is that the recent glut of “intellectual magazine” launches–such as Prospect, Monocle, The Economist’s Intellgent Life–is a battle for territory that has less to do with intelligence and more to do with economic prosperity and worldview dominance for its owners and advertisers. Which, of course, is nothing new in the media (see this overview), and thanks to Johnson, is neither hidden nor subtle in Standpoint’s stated goal:
to defend and celebrate Western civilisation.
That is, Johnson knows that in the time of the credit crunch, it’s not the lower and middle classes who prosper but the rich. So let’s create magazines for the ‘intellectual’ where ‘intellectual = rich, and politics = capital’.
It doesn’t take a great leap of intellect to work out that the magazines that are going to do best in this time are those that support this brand chain of command. Monocle goes from strength to strength on this model, as Vanity Fair expands across Europe, In the UK, Grazia grows onwards, and The Spectator has increased its sales, according to James Robinson reporting in The Observer, by
strengthening its financial coverage and introducing articles on luxury living, which attract a new set of advertisers.
But let’s begin with Standpoint.
The political economy of the magazine market
Standpoint enters the market to compete with The Spectator (18% growth, 75,000 sales), Prospect (new and growing, 27,000 sales) and the New Statesman (”rumoured to be selling as few as 23,000 sales” down on its ABC figures).
It’s backed by a few multi-millionaires, including Times RichList 100 shipping millionaire Alan Bekhor (and Executive Committee Member for the Forum of European Philosophy at LSE). Which perhaps gives an important insight into the issues of ownership and control of the political magazines, which remain influential even with small sales. As Johson suggests, their ‘plateau of 20-25,000 sales’ is an initial target for influence and survival rather than profit. As The Observer notes:
unlike newspapers, [political magazines] are not ‘trophy assets’ that automatically confer status on their proprietors, but they do guarantee them a powerful voice among opinion-formers, and some social cachet to boot.
As Johnson himself suggests, the magazine with the most obvious parallels is not The Spectator, whose audience it hopes to steal, but Encounter, the magazine published between 1953 and 1990 founded by “early neocon thinker Irving Kristol, at the forefront of the ideological battle between capitalism and communism during the cold war” (The Observer). So it is about the politics, but politics as the mechanism by which the economy is ‘defended and celebrated’.
And the capitalist economy
Which brings us back to this ideal of “defending and celebrating Western civilisation”. Johnson identified the examples of “free speech, the dignity of the individual and the rule of law” as his causes, but the backbone of Western civilisation is liberal capitalism, clear to Kristol, and it is this which, above all else, I imagine Standpoint will defend (Tim Congdon’s article on “don’t blame the bankers” etc).
While the credit crunch crunches, the super rich and the super brands continue to make money (from money - yes, do blame the bankers). Someone working in this area, looking at film and fashion theory, is Pamela Church-Gibson at the University of the Arts, London. She is, currently, analysing the role of celebrity and costume in popular film, such as Marie Antoinette and Pirates of the Caribbean (the most financially successful film franchise in history). Her argument, if I followed it correctly at a recent lecture at the Sunderland University Media Department’s research day last week, was that we don’t know Angelina Jolie for her films (Alexander? Kung Fu Panda?) but from her modelling work for luxury brands such as St. John. And that it no longer matters for a film that Keira Knightley can’t act; but, boy, can she dress.
This is important and worth addressing, because celebrity culture and the desire for the luxury brand is, Church-Gibson argued, driving up unprecedented levels of (predominantly female) personal debt. And magazines are at the centre of this luxury nexus. Grazia readers recently voted to have the best new handbag every three months rather than their debts paid off. Which is concerning, as a survey from More magazine at the end of 2006 showed that:
women between 21 and 25 have an average pounds 3,830 in credit-card debts and most never save. More than half still live with their parents, and the magazine’s editor, Donna Armstrong, says: “The idea of a mortgage is a distant dream.” Instead, they aspire to the lifestyles of celebrities and keeping up with the Joneses, “shopping and partying with their friends”. Sixty-five per cent of them dismiss the idea of a pension as a joke. (reported in the The Independent)
The Mail has even noticed:
Weekly fashion and lifestyle magazines such as Grazia, First and - the newest addition - Look, are positively groaning with the latest must-have handbags. Suddenly, you don’t have to read Tatler or Vogue to be made painfully aware of what you should aspire to carry.
And the promoted links on the BuyHighReplica.com website for replica handbags? Links to Pay Day Advances loan companies…
Celebrating the luxury brand
Standpoint’s defence of Western civilization equates to defending the rights of the consumer to ‘aspire’ to the ownership of the luxury brand. Which tallies nicely with the advertising strategy to bring in, err, luxury brand ad spend.
What this says to me is that the association between popular culture and the luxury brand, that is now the focal aspect of popular film and the magazine press, is the next tweak to the performance engine of late capitalism, which drives and thrives on the widening gap between super rich and the growing middle class.
The brands that have done best within an economic downturn are the luxury brands, which drive both their own sales and those of the grey-market and high-street replicas. That is, the high street needs the aspirational brand to become more obvious, more aspirational, not less, to drive its sales. For example, BMW was famous through the 1980s for driving its low end model sales by advertising the high end performance models. Car adverts are perhaps the continuing best example of this method.
And the poor? Don’t even mention those living in poverty, as they’ve been dropped long ago, their last pounds squeezed from their tracksuited pocket by Burberry replicas and fake Nike. Savings? Non-consumerism? No chance.
Last words: the other Standpoint
Because saving is what people want to do when intererst rates are high and the economy is in recession, but that doesn’t support the film franchises, the clothes brands or the magazine publishers. People need to spend, spend, spend, because as we know, capitalism is a growth system. No growth means death.
The Sociologist Lever-Tracy looks to the 1970s for today’s consumer roots, and explains how that “the crisis of profitability” of people having enough that is, at levels of full consuption, was “overcome by accelerating the turnover time of capital and technlogy” and the development of branding, marketing and advertising. She quotes David Harvey, who wrote back in 1989:
the postmodern aesthetic celebrated difference, spectacle, ephermerality and fashion… The temporary contract in everything is the hallmark of postmodern living. (Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity).
And this is the cuture we have today, where our stars are famous for their fashion, which drivers the consumer market.
But. A small hope. I believe in the force of language to undo abusive hegemony and economic regimes, and I am encouraged by the fact that the other magazine that could credibly call itself Standpoint would be a magazine of feminist theory that employed Standpoint Feminism to
situate women and men within multiple systems of domination in a way that is more accurate and more able to confront oppressive power structures. (Wikipedia)
So come on theFword: if you hate Jeremy Clarkson, you’ve got to loathe this too. The Standpoint we have hitting the newstand is a magazine of the hegemony of Western phallocentric power, riding on and driving capitalism, by pushing the aspirations and debts of the middle classes even higher while always keeping satisfaction just out of reach, and getting some political clout to boot. We need its counterpoint, and quick.
Viva la civilisation l’ouest?
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Alex - from Oneworld - is that you?
Came across this whilst doing some research. A refreshing analysis. Will come back for more.
Ann