Covergirl is a large and popular enough company that it was able to take a new line extension risk. Moreover, Drew Barrymore was already one of the faces of Covergirl, so to have that consistency from one line to another, along with high brand equity, provided the creators with a belief that the TRUblend products/line could do well. With a few exceptions - there are a handful of makeup lines for men - makeup, especially by Covergirl generally speaks for itself. Covergirl's target market was probably slightly altered for the TRUblend line, but the people buying it are most likely women, starting in the teenage years and going up. With all the work of finding "the right color" gone, the consumer can run into a store, grab all the products with their number and be done. Covergirl is a very famous brand and is sold in almost every pharmacy, providing easy access for women of any demographic or psychographic condition. The speed could be further increased, however, if a consumer was buying TRUblend makeup at Target (#20), rather than at a supermarket or department store. Why Target? Target is the only supermarket/pharmacy/department store/RadioShack/Toys "R" Us/etc. combination platter that consumers of all possible demographic and psychographic backgrounds can (or will) shop at.
The Target advertisement reads almost like a children's book - big bold letters with a product for every letter, but, the alphabet song aside, Target's "booklet" is essentially an eight-page spread consisting of 26 different advertisements for the same store (fun facts still included). For example, the letter Q is shown with a q-tip next to it. The copy reads, “Q-TIPS Inspired by his wife's toothpick-swaddling ingenuity, Leo Gerstenzang invented ready-to-use cotton swabs in 1923 creating a "tipping" point for portable and hygienic tools that's still a top-top design today. 500 ct. $3.19.” This goes on for the entire alphabet, for every kind of product. With all these choices available in one place, it's very possible that someone could walk into a Target and purchase every product listed in the paragraphs previous (services not included - sorry, no airport at Target… yet).
From the amount of information gathered in hand with the amount of time spent searching, reading, researching, and writing, I've concluded that advertisers are, in fact, beginning to focus more on speed. Even from one issue to the next of the same magazine, I was able to gather more advertisements relating to speed than in older ones. Be it the time it takes to use a product/service, get a result from a product/service, make something from a product/service, or buy a product/service, the convenience of speed is definitely infiltrating our lives more and gradually becoming a necessity. I predict that in a few years the convenience of speed will have morphed into a need for speed, especially if technology continues to develop as fast as it has been. To better understand and explain the span of speed-related advertising, I chose to break down the 20 advertisements used for this project: seven are beauty products, one is a business-related service, six are food products, one is a household product, three are medical products, and one is a business and travel-related service. Furthermore, of these 20 ads, six represented the speed of a product, twelve represented the speed of a product's results, and, finally, two represented the speed of shopping for products. Perhaps this paper is not formal enough, but I really enjoyed working on this assignment. It was really difficult to find enough advertisements, and incredibly time consuming, but I had fun breaking them down and taking them apart. Thank you.
