Saks Pollutes Children's Book With Marketing
Cashmere If You Can is being marketed as a children's book by HarperCollins Publishers, a unit of the News Corporation. It details the comings and goings of cashmere goats who live on the roof of Saks's Midtown Manhattan store. Not coincidentally, a Saks Fifth Avenue marketing executive conceived the idea, and the department store chain controls the copyright. It's as if In the Night Kitchen had been penned by the National Dairy Council.
Self-described author Fay Weldon tried this once before and it didn't work out so well. And there are signs of further resistance to marketing creep: Several Hollywood unions have come out against "stealth advertising," the integration of commercial products into the story lines of television shows. They claim the practice deceives audiences and forces writers and actors to do jobs they were not hired for.
