GAY TITLES IN FASHION: Apparel and jewelry advertising in gay print media increased at more than twice the rate of ads placed in gay publications overall in 2004, climbing 39.2 percent to reach 618 pages, up from 444 pages in 2003. That’s according to the “2004 Gay Press Report,” published by gay media placement firm Rivendell Marketing and Prime Access, a multicultural ad agency.
By comparison, the number of ad pages placed in gay publications last year advanced 17.5 percent, totaling 39,561, versus 33,681 ad pages in 2003.
The growing number of locales sanctioning gay civil unions and the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts spurred much of the growth in fashion advertising in gay magazines and newspapers, said Todd Evans, Rivendell’s president and chief executive officer. Apparel ads accounted for 369, or 60 percent, of the 618 fashion placements tracked in the April 2004 editions of 139 gay titles, while 249 jewelry ads made up the difference.
The fashion category’s ad increase marked the ninth-largest percentage gain among 16 sectors with double-digit increases in ads in gay titles in 2004, a group led by health, fitness and grooming ads, which tallied 3,179, up 87.2 percent from 1,698 in 2003. Asked to assess the timing of fashion advertising placed in gay titles — once heavily skewed to gay pride month, in June editions, and holiday, in December issues — Evans said: “Fashion ads have become pretty consistent year-round, which has contributed to the increase. April is a very average month.”
COLLEGIANS’ CHOICES: Nordstrom is number one on their gift card wish list, eBay is the online shopping destination they visit most often and bill payments are the leading source of their spending.
They’re college students, ages 16 to 25, polled by Buzz Marketing Group between March 3 and April 7. The 620 survey subjects, who constitute a nationally representative sample of college students, hail from such institutions as New York University, Temple University, Auburn University and the University of Indiana at Bloomington.
At first blush, it may seem surprising that college students would favor a gift card from Nordstrom over all other stores, but Tina Wells, chief executive officer at Buzz Marketing, attributes the preference to a broader trend of spending on upscale items among today’s collegians. “IPod helped launch [youth] spending on high-end items,” said Wells. “I’m surprised a lot of people in college spend on things like Louis Vuitton bags. Their income is limited.”
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Nordstrom rated as first choice for a gift card among 38 percent of those surveyed, followed by Best Buy, with 24 percent; Target, cited by 22 percent; Urban Outfitters, 14 percent, and Barnes & Noble, 2 percent. “I have heard from a lot of teens that they may replace H&M with Target, in terms of [where they spend] their fashion dollars,” Wells related.
Nearly three-quarters of the college crowd, or 72 percent, shops online, and 52 percent do so most often at eBay. Amazon ranked as second favorite, named by 32 percent. Next were the shopping sites of Victoria’s Secret, most popular with 11 percent; Best Buy, 4 percent, and Nordstrom, 1 percent.
More than one-third of collegians, or 42 percent, spend most of their money paying bills, while 33 percent devote the biggest part of their budget to eating out and entertainment. Seven percent said they shell out most of their funds for fashion; 5 percent spend most heavily on cell phone costs, and 2 percent allocate the most money to CDs and electronics.
COLOR MATCHING: People’s preferred colors overall tend to also play out as their favorites for only one category of products: apparel. Most popular, in that sense, are blues, fiery reds and black, according to a new study, “Consumer Color Preferences,” co-sponsored by BuzzBack Market Research and Pantone. Those also are the hues in which more than half of the country’s teens and adults, or 54 percent, feel most confident, with red considered an attention grabber; black, slimming, and blue experienced as ego gratifying.
The findings are based on a representative sample of 2,769 Americans, ages 13 to 64, who were probed online for their reactions to 44 colors and their opinions about the use of those colors in 19 categories of products.
Despite the close match between people’s favorite colors in general and those they most like to wear, Carol Fitzgerald, president of BuzzBack, acknowledged variances can manifest because of the prevalence of particular items that are in fashion at any given time and the offer of different items and colors in different locales.
A shade of black designated as limousine black by Pantone is seen as the must-have color for this fall, named by 21 percent of the study’s respondents, and it was also the color cited by 31 percent as most popular to wear to a job interview and by 30 percent as their first choice to close a deal.