Opinion: On the Campaign Couch ... with JB.(client satisfaction)(newspapers )(customer involvement in the advertising process)(Column)

Q: I manage the PR for my agency and I have constant calls from the three main industry magazines, who always want the lead story. How do I ensure that I give equal coverage to each magazine, even though only one can run the story at each time?

A: You might as well write: I manage business development for my agency - how do I ensure at least one new-business win every week? Or: I'm an executive creative director - how do I win more awards than anyone else?

It's what you're paid for, ducky.

Q: Take one look at the shelves in a newsagent and you'd be forgiven for thinking the middle and top shelves have merged into one. And what about some newspapers - namely the Star and the Sport - which splash with 'crotch shots' every day? Sex obviously sells. So why don't mainstream advertisers buy pages in Razzle, Club, Hustler and the like?

A: Thank you. This is an interesting question. When people say that sex sells, they seldom differentiate between sex selling sex and sex selling, for example, a denture fixative.

Certainly, sex sells Razzle. That's what Razzle's for. But here's a funny thing. Of all the millions of copies sold of Razzle, Club, Hustler and the like, how many have you spotted being read in public? Exactly. People are judged by the company they keep; and for all the new permissiveness, most people prefer not to be seen reading Razzle. There may be other reasons, of course, behind this preference for privacy - but top-shelf sex remains in the tacky/furtive quartile of your media planner's Boston grid.

Brands, too, are judged by the company they keep. That's mostly what qualitative media planners go on about. However competitive the readership figures and space costs may be, denture fixatives, detergents, fast-food restaurants, people carriers and COI see no commercial advantage in associating themselves with the tacky and the furtive. So they choose not to.