Time's "Mine" magazine: Hit or Miss?

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Davies on April 18, 2009 at 9:56am

The concept isn't new - and I certainly believe it has a future. Its great to see a brand run with it - but as you suggest, the end result really doesn't go much beyond a bundle of partially relevant articles bound together with customized Lexus advertising. Abig issue here I believe is that online personalization systems - like Last.fm or Pandora, Amazon's book recommendations, etc - have set a very high bar for the granularity and effectiveness of such personalization. Therefore the sell (that they will create a print magazine based on your interests) creates an expectation which is very hard to live up to.

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Permalink Reply by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez on April 21, 2009 at 11:53am

A definite miss, I'd say.

From the incredibly generic cover to the completely random and discordant selection of articles to the lazy interior layout, mine is a failure on every level. Instead of my “ideal magazine”, one “designed especially for [me] — by [me]“, it comes off more like a manila folder a casual acquaintance stuffed with a bunch of random articles that they thought I might like, cut out from random magazines they found laying around at their doctor’s office.

The customized ads are clever, but not in a positive way, falling right into the trap of personalization backfiring when you don’t have enough information about your prospect. I’m not the “matching designer luggage” type, nor very likely to hit the Jersey Shore, never mind that I’m totally not Lexus’ target audience, a point Time, Inc. failed to even attempt to determine in their too-clever psychographic questions. I wonder how many of the 31,000 print editions of the first issue went too similarly dead-end prospects?

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Permalink Reply by Mark W. White on April 21, 2009 at 12:21pm

One of the personalized ads in my copy made a reference to me traveling the Garden State Parkway to get to the Jersey Shore. Someone goofed on geography because I-195 is the logical route from my home. Dead Tree Edition, http://deadtreeedition.blogspot.com/2009/04/i-got-mine-but-i-dont-g..., lists various other goofs in the first issue. But give Time Inc. credit for trying something new; it may learn valuable lessons from the mistakes. The magazine should also dispel any thoughts that digital printing cannot produce high-quality work.

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Permalink Reply by Cara Showers on April 21, 2009 at 2:25pm

I would LOVE to be able to weigh in on this one. I signed up for the digital edition over a month ago. I got the confirmation email and everything, telling me I'd signed up. But I still haven't received anything yet.

I emailed them asking where it is.

Twice.

Still no response.

:|

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Permalink Reply by Sherry Chiger on April 26, 2009 at 4:39am

The digital edition was a definite miss, at least as far as I'm concerned: http://catalog-biz.blogspot.com/2009/04/whats-mine-is-yours.html My copy included content that would have been appreciated by my Bizarro World counterpart.

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Permalink Reply by Cara Showers on April 27, 2009 at 9:23am

Still haven't gotten mine. I signed up twice. Once with my work email, once with my personal email. Still haven't received it either place. I have even emailed them twice telling them I didn't get it. Still nothing. What am I doing wrong???

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Permalink Reply by Karen Gibson on April 28, 2009 at 1:50pm

Most definitely, a miss. They didn't honor the magazine selections I had made at the time I ordered the print version, and the articles included from the pubs I did select were very, very weak - I didn't read beyond the first paragraph of any of them. There were gratuitous, huge-font mentions of the city where I live in the Lexus advertisements, as if it would somehow be thrilling to see my city named in a such a way, therefore endearing me to my local Lexus dealership. The issue went right in the recycle bin. Blah.

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Permalink Reply by Cara Showers on April 28, 2009 at 2:27pm

I've seen both the print and digital versions (finally got my two digital versions yesterday—2 weeks after it was promised) and I have to agree with everyone here about the delivery and content.

But I have to say this about that... I think this was a good step forward in the publishing industry. I would love to see publishing move towards this format. I would love to be able to choose my content each month. And having the advertising geared straight towards me isn't a novel idea—print on demand publishers have been doing this for years—but it is still a great feature.

So to have a magazine personalized to my likes, both in content, design and advertising, is what I would like to see our industry move towards. I give Time a thumbs up for testing this out for us all.

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