of the contemporary world by situating them, that is, understanding them as the result of a deep and underground communicative dynamic whose fundamental foundations evolve very slowly. It is therefore a particular undertaking, not that of communicational genetics, but rather that of a precious communicational genesis, to better identify precisely what is changing and what is not changing.
The work of media historians reminds us of the fundamental and intrinsic nature of the media’s link with advertising, the official voice of brands. This link largely guarantees the sustainability of the media company.
The cross dependencies between advertising and the press in particular illustrate that the two bodies must collaborate, but also differentiate themselves so that the relationship with readers is not damaged. Zola (1980), an actor and attentive observer of the press, announced this independence, particularly in L’argent. Nicole D’Almeida, in a chapter on “recited and reciting” companies, recalls that:
Shaping the press and intervening with journalists to get rave reviews from them is not a sufficiently effective approach. Saccard in his crazy company has a radical approach, he believes that “the dream would be to have all the newspapers to yourself”, “knowing that “having a newspaper is a strength”. (D’Almeida 2007, pp. 166–167)
From the work of communicators on journalists to the work of communicators in journalism, however, there is an important step in terms of lines of sharing functions and professions. From the balance of power for visibility in journalistic spaces to the struggle for journalistic enunciation itself, the marker moves.
This empowerment is driven by the relatively low entry barriers to produce a publication, given the high cost of advertising pages in the media.
It is a way of freeing the advertiser from the constraints of instituted mediations, which impose costs on the advertiser and a certain dependence on both advertising and space purchasing agencies. It is also, of course, the desire to configure ad hoc an ideal communication medium to enhance the attributes of its brand.
Other historians’ works, such as Catherine Malaval’s (2001) on business press in the 20th Century, testify to an ancient appropriation of media auctoriality with the creation of customer magazines, that appeared at the end of the 19th Century.
The first initiatives of autonomous branded magazines, for example Meccano Magazine at the end of the 19th Century, or the Almanach de l’Abbé Chaupitre in the 1930s, among other examples, show that there are many sectors, or types of activity attempted by this type of mediation. I am talking about mediation and not simply the relationship, because we will perceive, with the careful observation of this type of cultural production, to what extent the media relationship is thought of as integrated into a set of possible practices and relationships between the brand and the individual1.
Abbé Chaupitre is a brand of homeopathic medicines that was taken over by Arkopharma in 1996. In its almanac, which is very similar to branded magazines, the practical function of the medium was the management of daily life, as the documented points of view and testimonials on health make the document a tool and a reference. The documentary dimension of brand media is the basis of their authority and we will return later to the question of both the material and generic nature of these particular documents bearing the brand statement.
The authoritarian claim of brands by this type of approach affects the place given to said brand in the symbolic space of media statements, both in relation to other titles on the same issues, themes and solutions brought to readers but especially in relation to communication made about competing brands. Creating a dedicated media production for a brand when its competitors do not have one is like being “one step ahead” in the field of discursive competition. And when this production already exists, a competing brand will not let it monopolize the genre, and will counter its existence by creating another world, organized around and for its own brand.
Over time, symbolic competition has contributed to the creation of a true category of media. Difficult to accept at first by the designers of “actual magazines”, institutional recognition has gradually been achieved, even if branded magazines have not managed to establish themselves entirely as real magazines. This recognition is demonstrated by the creation of a specific category within Diffusion Contrôle2, for example, where advertising rates are based largely on the quality of the target audience reached, but above all on the size of the audience generated by the medium.
For brand professionals, one of the virtues of this mode of insertion is the possibility of merging advertising content into editorial content, for an adaptation to reading imagined as an activity threatened by discontinuity and rupture. What is invested is the possibility of suspending, even in a very ephemeral way, the player’s possible resistance to the advertising regime, which results in lighter attention or zapping. This fleeting deception can be described as concealment and manipulation to be contained or prohibited, but can also be described as rhetorical skill with little impact. The probable interference of the “receiver’s waiting horizon” with this generic drift implies an epoch, a suspension of disbelief, conducive to bypassing the brakes and resistance to advertising discourse and getting a message across3.
Adaptation involves adopting the forms of the host medium: adopting the graphic convention, iconic and linguistic style, and integrating as relevantly as possible into thematic “zones” of the medium that are compatible with the theme of the info-promotional text. Gilles Lugrin (2002) highlighted this adaptation, regarding the advertising editorial that he described as “chameleon advertising”, which was addressed in a broader way by Valérie Patrin-Leclère with her in-depth analyses on advertization.
In her work, Valérie Patrin-Leclère specifies the way in which the media arrange their productions to welcome advertising like a “showcase” and to encourage the motivation of advertisers who need to be “careful”, two major aspects of advertization. Moreover, more than an adaptation, it is often a question of integrating this constraint into the global chain of media manufacture, from design to manufacturing to reading. At the same time, advertising is the visible indicator of the media’s dependence on advertisers, which can reach, from a budgetary point of view, impressive rates, even absolute dependence, whereas the general tendency of the press is to value above all its fact-finding mission, even if it means willingly overlooking its commercial activity4.
The researcher explains the media’s temptation to deny their dependence on advertising, which is thought of as a “congestion”. She raises the question of the reading contract, a notion that refers to a theorization that has crossed both the field of research and the professional field of the media, thanks in particular to the work of the sociologist Eliseo Verón, initiated when the researcher was working for Sorgem. The analysis of this contract reveals the denial of advertising material, even though it contributes significantly to the reading atmosphere and the reading contract, if it exists. This denial is established in social speeches about the incidental nature of advertising, even though it is economically essential.
In her thesis, Valérie Patrin-Leclère (2004) demonstrates a permanent tension, inherent in the media financed by advertising, perceptible in their constitutive hybridity between the fact-finding mission and economic needs. Relationships are forged, integrated, and avoided, and at the same time power games are played around and in the media, leading to the development of journalism to better protect the advertiser.
This particularity of the media makes them vulnerable to pressure from advertisers, but also quick to seize opportunities to attract the same advertisers. They adapt their television program formats, their choice of sections, themes, layout, their models, etc. (Patrin-Leclère 2000). In the case of publishers, the researcher reports a desire to erase the “semiotic break”.
This erasure of the semiotic gap is, by its very discretion, the proclamation of the force of the media jurisdiction. To appropriate the media, in a fragmented way, through advertorial reporting, or more generally, through the production of a media around a brand, is to implicitly recognize the strength of the media without necessarily deconstructing or exposing in detail the foundations