First off, for those of you who don't know what a "media buyer" is, let me explain: it's the BIGGEST CAKE JOB ever! Basically, all you do is say "hmm... Tiffany's is our client and you say that they want to reach young teenage girls who live at home with their parents who earn too much money, but neglect their kids because they are workaholics, so they make up for it with money? Then I recommend placing ads on MTV, in Teen Magazine, and doing some wacky promotion with AOL." Then you call up the whores over at MTV, Teen, and AOL, all who would have already named their first-born after you, and play hard to get, but eventually after much wining and dining, you purchase a few million with the various players. Teen Magazine, being print media is probably the biggest of the whores (because they are print - not because it's Teen). Anyhoo, the rest of the year, you just kick back and let the sales reps at the various media outlets send you all sorts of free stuff and treat you like you are the King of Siam. If I had any interest in doing it, I'd totally be a media buyer.
Back to Victoria's Secret. For those of you who weren't watching CBS last night (and what else were you watching? there was nothing on TV last night), Victoria's Secret aired their Annual Christmas Fashion Show. Seal and Ricky Martin and a few other performed. Heidi Klum was there as were the other Victoria Angels. It was Tyra Banks' last walk down a runway which made it a news story that CNN ran all day (free buzz!). And of course, the commercial breaks were VS commercials. Lots of glitz and glam, shiny and sparkly things. Very impressive.And the whole time, I'm wondering "who the heck buys this media? this is awesome!" I would venture to guess the whole shebang was a cool $15million. And that's probably way underestimating it.
Did you know 1 print ad in 1 major magazine costs around $30k? $30k! And yet there are still starving children in the world. Sigh.
P.S. If you missed it, lots of photos and video on the VS website. There look to be a few yet-to-be-retouched photos there too which is pretty crazy. VS models are still beautiful women without the retouching. Extra props to Heidi Klum for doing a runway lingerie show 2 months after having a baby and making it look good.
