Judging the Book by the Cover: www.jolique.com

It's not often that a consumer is confronted with an advertisement in which the intended target is conspicuously apparent. Just the other morning, while lazily nibbling her tartine and thumbing through The Wall Street Journal that she had propped up against the coffee pot, Jolique came across an advertisement placed by Allen Edmonds, a men's shoe retailer. The advertisement was simple—a photograph of three leather shoes, each stacked on top of the other, with short captions in block letters above each shoe. The first shoe, the "Halsted," was a plain loafer with a thick sole and a large brass buckle off to one side, presumably adjustable to accommodate the instep of its wearer. Above this shoe was the caption "Saw the Movie." Beneath this shoe was another—the "Cassell"—a tasseled loafer with a treaded sole similar to the "driving loafer" one might in a J.P. Tod catalog. Above this shoe was the caption "Read the Book." Finally, beneath both of these shoes was a third shoe, the "Sterling," a cap-toed alligator loafer. Its caption read, "Wrote the Book."

So who is the intended target of this advertisement? Well, although Allen Edmonds' motto is "For All Walks of Life," Jolique is fairly certain that it's really only talking about the bipedal kind. She's also fairly certain A-E is appealing to male bipedals, though nothing in the advertisement states this explicitly. But just to be sure, let's consider the venue of the advertisement—TheWall Street Journal, that staid journalistic establishment reporting on the "masculine" world of big business since 1889. I say "masculine" because the WSJ reports on companies and countries owned and/or run largely by men. And even if you don't think "big business" is run by men, The WSJ's advertisers certainly do. On the day during which the A-E advertisement ran (January 22, 2001), the following other advertisements were also featured:

-2 rare coin ads
-2 liquor ads (scotch and vodka)
-30 business service ads (incorporating images of cartoon gorillas, Neil Armstrong's lunar landing, and a man with a AT&T logo painted on his head)
-1 fitness equipment ad (featuring a woman clad in spandex on a treadmill)
-2 office equipment ads
-2 air charter service ads
-13 vacation ads (featuring golf, skiing and fishing)
-2 book ads (featuring titles such as Blown to Bits, Strategic Renaissance and The Genius of Robert E. Lee)
-1 women's jewelry ad ("Unlock Her Heart With Our 14kt Gold Greek Key Bracelet")
-1 furniture ad (teak garden furniture)
-1 direct marketer ad (featuring a woman clad in a white terry robe)
-3 magazine ads (all for the same magazine, Barron's)
-1 mattress ad (featuring Aage Kristiansen, the "'father' of the Tempur-Pedic Revolution, which has fundamentally changed the way people sleep' by "transform[ing] NASA's experimental anti-G-force cushioning into an ingenious sleep-science breakthrough")
-1 department store ad (featuring "corporate" gifts, such as a silver-plated computer mouse, a crystal sculpture, and a desk clock)
-1 men's watch ad

Of the advertisements in which humans were featured, those that featured women displayed them in something other than business attire (a bathrobe, exercise clothing...oh, yeah, and one ad of a woman in waders with a tight L.L. Bean grin holding up the salmon that she just caught on her vacation in the Queen Charlotte Islands).

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