Citi Ad Aims at Gourmet Non-Cooks

Citigroup, after an $18 billion write-down, has dropped an additional sum, possibly more than $100,000, on a prominently placed two-page color ad in Gourmet magazine in which a young woman tells readers of the cooking magazine, "I don't cook. So I made my eat-in kitchen a fabulous walk-in closet."

The ad on the inside cover and facing page of the Condé Nast magazine's February issue, which costs $112,140 according to the rate card on the magazine's Web site, features a young woman standing in a kitchen that has been converted into a wardrobe for her overflowing closet.

What might to some readers look like a mistake, a Condé Nastwide ad buy gone awry, struck others as a clever, attention-getting ploy.

The publisher of the Journal of Financial Advertising and Marketing, Samantha Wreaks, said that the placement of the advertisement was "cheeky" and almost certainly deliberate.

"I think it is unusual, but I wouldn't think it's a mistake," she said. "The joke is the placement of the ad, featuring somebody who is not domestic in a rather domestic publication."

According to the editor of the Financial Advertising Review, Donald Johnson, the "shock value" of the ad gives it its power.

"It's a win for Citi, so long as they don't turn people off," Mr. Johnson said. "There are some touchy women and touchy cooks out there. Obviously, Citi did some research to make sure that it was a good idea."

A spokesman for Citibank, Mark Rodgers, wrote in an e-mail that Citi's decision to feature "a kitchen with a consumer who is not interested in cooking seemed an appropriately ironic and humorous fit for this publication."

Daniel Simon, the managing director for Cognito, a public relations firm which focuses on the financial industry, said that the ad's placement is "different than one might expect" in an industry that "as a whole, tends to be quite blue and conservative."

"We are definitely witnessing a sea change in the way that financial institutions are marketing themselves both in the retail environment and in the corporate environment," Mr. Simon said. "Financial institutions, while they've had a very traditional outlook, are realizing that they have to step up their game with everybody else." The central idea behind the advertisement is not all that farfetched, according to Melanie Charlton Fascitelli, the president of Clos-ette, a New York City-based company that specializes in reorganizing wardrobe spaces.

"We've transformed entire studios into walk-in closets with a bed," Ms. Charlton Fascitelli said. "In urban dwellings, especially when space is at a premium, you're talking about a lot of women who turn all different rooms of the house into walk-in closets, especially single women. Single women are normally more interested in their Manolos than they are in cooking."