Chrysler Media Responds To Our Periodical Observations

Yesterday, we made an observation about a picture of the new Challenger in certain magazine racks at the Memphis airport. Our take on the picture, which came from Chrysler's The Firehouse blog, was somewhat satirical. To their credit, Chrysler responded with their own commentary on the subject. That response below.

This comes from Ed Garsten, Manager of Electronic Media Communications for Chrysler, who has nothing to do with the fictional Ed Gersten in the piece:

A full row of magazines with the Challenger winking from their covers isn't just dumb luck. It's part of a periodic tweaking of marketing strategies.

Indeed market research shows that the theory of "alliterative display," as I call it, could very well spread to other aspects of airport newsstands such as grouping all newspapers together with names that begin with "the." It's breathtaking to imagine the boost in sales by displaying THE New York Times, THE Detroit News, and THE Sporting News consecutively in the same rack. Anecdotal evidence tells us that this would not only reduce confusion for those who find it hard to differentiate between newspapers, but would further popularize the article "the."

Alliterative display is somewhat subtle, but downright strategic and we salute Jalopnik for having the marketing chops to call it out.

If only Al Gore would have promoted the Internet thusly, it might have caught on.