At the US Airways Shuttle lounge in Boston, proof I am happy to have left the magazine business in 1994. These are the giveaways and their cover art– the rags in the bin when you absolutely, positively have nothing to read:
- The Absolute Sound (picture of a stereo speaker!)
- Ebony (Michael Jackson — looking butch)
- HR (Neil Gaiman. Right. Him)
- Pool & Spa Living (a swimming pool)
- Latin Finance (cartoon, dude with a flag)
- Laptop (HOT GEAR)
- PC (Best Mobile Services)
- Dream (A kid)
- Washington (A dude with two women looking pre-kinky)
- The American (that big Chinese basketball dude with the tag “Glo-BALL-ization, get it?)
- Stylus (who knows)
- Real Estate Portfolio (six average white guys)
- Luxury Spa Finder (semi-clad lady in a bathtub)
May your circulation swell and your BPA audit be a smooth one. In the 30 minutes I sat here, only one magazine got snagged — an issue of LAPTOP by two people. Two other people looked and walked away, doubtlessly sad about the trees.
I believe ABC or BPA would file these under “public place copies” and still count them as paid….sureeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…if they get $0.01 from US Air, they count as paid.
Magazine companies are refusing to face up to the obvious fact that their audience is shrinking. Instead they are in this death spiral of replacing true subscribers with junk like this, and hoping to make up the lost subscription revenue with more advertising…trying to raise their rates while their audience gets smaller and less engaged…..okey dokey
No thank you!
There will always be a place for magazines, it’s just that that place is a smaller one then exists right now.
Scale Back and figure out the true size of the business and then re-engineer the business top reflect reality…not the past