Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which wooed cost-conscious shoppers to become the world's largest retailer, is setting its sights on deeper pockets.
Readers of the September issue of Vogue magazine, which hit newsstands Tuesday, encountered eight pages of ads for the discount chain. Sandwiched between spots for high-end designers Emanuel Ungaro and Roberto Cavalli, the ads show a mom, a martial artist and other women wearing Wal-Mart clothes. Each ad lists the featured woman's "style profile" and the city where "her Wal-Mart" is located.
Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., is part of a growing trend: Retailers known for low prices are launching ad campaigns to lure big spenders.
Minneapolis-based Target Corp., which is already attracting shoppers with products designed by the likes of Isaac Mizrahi and Michael Graves, bought all of the ad space in the Aug. 22 edition of the highbrow New Yorker magazine. Target also has eight ad pages in the September Vogue.
John Fleming, Wal-Mart's chief marketing officer, said Tuesday that the company's Vogue campaign was intended to highlight the chain's continuing effort to improve its apparel. Fleming said he hoped the ads would prompt more of the 120 million customers the chain averages per week to visit its clothing aisles. That assumes, of course, that Wal-Mart's current customers read Vogue, which sounds like a stretch until Fleming says that 93% of all households include a person who visits a Wal-Mart at least once a year.
Fleming acknowledged, however, that "there would be some customers who read Vogue who have never been in a Wal-Mart store."
The median annual household income of Vogue's nearly 1.2 million readers is more than $59,000.
Vogue said its in-house ad agency approached Wal-Mart's media buyers. For the magazine, where a full-page ad in color goes for $104,490, it was a chance to "make something happen for the world's largest retailer," said Vogue's associate publisher, Deborah Cavanagh, who oversees the magazine's marketing.
Cavanagh said the 802-page September issue -- which at nearly 4 pounds is the magazine's biggest -- will reach the "change agents" of fashion, along with the masses, so it makes sense for Wal-Mart to be seen with the likes of Gucci and Louis Vuitton.
Wal-Mart also bought a dozen ad pages in Vogue's December issue, plans to buy 48 more pages over the next year and has agreed to sponsor the Fashion Adventure segment of Vogue's syndicated "Trend Watch" TV show, the magazine said.
