Free Customized Magazines from Time
What if you could customize your own magazine – combining content from a variety of your favorite topics? And what if they were willing to send it to you for free?
Time Magazine is trying something new – an experiment they have called “Mine”. Basically, they are offering to create a customized publication “especially for you”. You choose up to 5 magazines from their list (Time, Sports Illustrated, Food and Wine, Real Simple, Money, InStyle, Golf, and Travel & Leisure) and have them sent to you digitally or (get this one) in print! They will actually print it out and mail it to you.
I should point out here that this is a limited time offer and they are only accepting a limited number of “subscribers” to this free offer. You can read all the details and sign up at https://www.timecmg.com/mine/.
Will this save Time? Now let’s think about this for a bit. Magazines and newspapers are failing because people are just not buying/reading them in the print version. So, Time decides to allow us to make a “custom” magazine that they will then print and mail out. Is that new and innovative? No.
Allow readers to sign into a site and pick articles and send it to our Kindles! What would be new and innovative would be if they would allow a subscriber to sign in to a site and choose articles from a variety of publications each month. And then deliver a truly customized magazine DIGITALLY to a Kindle (or email).
In this more innovative scenario, Time could have an advertisement or two pop up when you sign on to the selection site. The page where you choose your articles could have advertisements. They could even send an ad with your digital magazine.
And talk about market analysis capabilities! Demographics of all sorts, interests, hobbies, age groups – all kinds of stuff could be tracked. The ability to know its customers desires with that kind of detail would be any marketers dream.
Yet, Time is offering a “customized” magazine that is really just a few previous articles of their choice (you really only get to pick which mags you want – no true customization at “Mine”), thrown together and then printed out and mailed. Please tell me that someone working on this project at Time has more long range vision than that!
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