It's said that sales is not a science but an art. No one really believes that salesmen are only as good as the product they're pushing. They basically sell themselves. Their art is the art of self-promotion, and often the product is beside the point.
Things get really hairy when the product is intangible, like advertising. An ad salesman has to convince a potential advertiser that his publication has an audience the potential advertiser wants to access. Normally, we tend to think it's the size of the audience that matters -- the circulation, the ratings -- but a really good salesman will make a customer see beyond the numbers.
Ichiro Kishida, editor of the men's magazine Leon, talks more like a salesman than a writer. In a profile in the Oct. 11 issue of Aera magazine, he explains that his publication has absolutely no "intellectual" content, nor does it attempt to give "lifestyle advice." Most men's magazines do both, because their editors want to convey a measure of respectability, which Kishida believes is a load of nonsense. Men can "see through" such editorial content, he says, since all they really want to do is get laid.