Is "mine." the future of printing?
Published on 05/14/09 10:18AM by Donna KaplanRecently, there has been a lot of hype over Time Inc.'s variable data magazine entitled "mine." Time, Inc idea behind mine. is "my magazine > my way." I had heard a lot about this personal magazine, so a few weeks ago I went onto their website and ordered my one. Basically, Lexus is sponsoring this and because of their sponsorship it was free. The catch is, you had to be one of the first 31,000 respondents to receive a print copy, otherwise you become one of 200,000 who receives it via e-mail.
When I signed up for mine., I entered my basic information (Name, Address, E-mail, etc) and then it asked me to choose 5 magazine's that I was interested in. I chose five random ones because I was just curious to see the articles that they would include for me. I chose Travel and Leisure, Real Simple, In Style, Sports Illustrated and Golf Magazine. The articles are chosen at random by the editors, and I will recieve 5 issues over the course of ten weeks.
What was interesting was the four completely obsurd questions that they asked me before I submitted my order. I later found out that helps Lexus with the variable data portion of their ads. There are 56 editorial combinations in all. In one instance, an ad for the new Lexus discusses their new "Heads-up Display for keeping your eyes on the road because Route 6 can be tricky on your way to Cape Cod." That was, by far, the best use of variable data in the piece because some research actually went into where I lived. The other ads featured my name, the town I live in, or utilized the answers to those obscure questions to personalize.
By now you're probably wondering what those questions were? Well, check out www.timecmg.com/mine/ to see them for yourself.
The question is, is this the future of printing? We already know that on-demand is our future, but with the economy the way it is and the cost cutting nature of businesses' now, are magazine companies going to stop printing complete magazines and offer you just the content you want? It's an interesting proposition because most people don't read magazine's cover to cover - you read what you want, so why not be able to choose it?