Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Customers, not products 2
Got the first issue of Readers Digest today. Good stuff, as anticipated. For instance, a long article on how to keep your voice healthy gets everything right. That's rare even in 'scientific' websites.
A couple of thoughts....
(1) Real paper magazines with real subscribers don't have to use clickbait. There's no way to click paper.
RD doesn't include anything that's purely eyegrabbing. Everything is included with the hope of stirring deeper thoughts or emotions, which will be positive for some readers and negative for some. They're clearly trying to provide info and writing that you can't get on the web.
Online magazines, even when the majority of their content is paywalled, are full of obvious clickbait. Tits and snits, or sexation and vexation.
(2) Real paper magazines with real subscribers respond to their real subscribers because the subscribers are the customers, not the product. I haven't seen this yet with RD but I've seen it with Collectible Automobile, a pure subscription mag with no advertising at all. Last year CA quietly dropped two of its semi-regular departments, assuming nobody was interested. Subscribers quickly instructed CA as to the degree of interest. CA apologized and brought back the departments.
(3) Real paper magazines haven't succumbed to inflation by reduction. CA's page count and 'content volume' haven't changed since its inception in 1984. (I have most of the issues in a bookshelf so I can compare directly.) I don't have a precise comparison for RD, but the new mag seems about the same as the last time I read it regularly in the '80s.
Meanwhile, other consumer products are shrinking fast. This week I noticed two more: aluminum foil is thinner, and the socks I normally buy at WalMart are thinner. 
Labels: Metrology
¶ 5:24 PM
