Magazines on the iPad: Please Consider Your Loyal Subscribers

Dear Time Inc, Hearst, Conde Nast, Here Media, Meredith, and all the rest of the magazine publishers moving to the iPad,

I get almost a dozen magazines delivered to my door and read almost every issue cover to cover, coveting old issues until I have time to go back to them.  Conde Nast, Time Inc, Here Media Inc, I am your ideal customer, your fanatic, and the person who said that no matter how thin the issues get and how much the media world suffered, I would always find a way to get my New York and New Yorker on Mondays, as well as another magazine almost every other day of the week.   I'm one of the magazine readers that boosts "the average time a person spends with a magazine is 45 minutes" statistic (as well as a bevy of other statistics).  I take all your surveys, I renew on time, I talk about your finest articles, and I feel cheated.

Time, Wired, and a few others who have moved to the iPad, you are leaving your subscribers out of your media revolution.  Wired Magazine's June issue has reached the iPad for $4.99 and after they had to go back to the drawing boards because of Flash incompatibility issues, I'm dying to know what it looks like.  Not only because I'm a Wired fanatic, but because I care about the future of publishing and want to know what at least a part of the future is becoming.  

I do not though, believe that I should have to subscribe to the print version of the magazine and then buy every issue from the app store at newsstand prices.  I understand that the app needs to make money and we're trying to teach people that good journalism is not free.  These are important points, but did you completely forget your loyal subscribers when you moved to the iPad?  What happened to acknowledging and rewarding the customer who has paid to be a part of your brand for years?

Maybe I'm out of line.  Maybe I should have to pay full price for every version of the magazine that I read but I won't.  In my ideal world, when I got my iPad I imagined having the flexibility of a tangible magazine first thing in the morning and last at night, with the portability of access to the same words on my iPad on the go.  I imagined that I would be able to enjoy your media property as a full brand experience that just gets better as technology advances.

But now I must choose.  

Instead of having me on both sides, reading the magazine like I have for years and then showing off the crisp reading experience of Wired on the iPad to everyone I ever see, I'm frustrated.  I'm your loyal fan, your influencer, the customer who will spread word of mouth recommendations to people who trust me, and you just lost me a little bit.  

There's still a chance to change.  Email your subscribers a promo code for a certain number of free issues on the iPad, give us a loyal customer benefit for digital/iPad access the magazines we happily pay for in print.  Use us to bolster your app download numbers, let us spread your enthusiasm and help you through this tough time.  Give us that 360 degree brand experience and value us the way it felt like you did for years.  I'm telling you, you'll keep us forever.  

Choose to ignore us though, and you'll force us to choose.  And if it gets to that point we'll both be losing something important.

Signing off with a hopeful Always,

Lauren Proctor

 

 

 

Posted via web from LaurenProctor's Thinking Posterous

Murdoch Changing Another Media Model?

According to The Guardian and Mashable, Murdoch plans to start charging for online news and he expects to make a profit. If he does, of course all media will follow like they did when he created his first profit horse business model and transformed the nature of news into entertainment.

I wonder what Murdoch is really thinking? Perhaps he figures that traffic volume isn't that important? So many people interact with News Corp owned media that if it reduces by ten, twenty, even fifty percentage points then who cares? 50% of Facebook readers is still 15 million people.

Meanwhile, Digg seems to be embedding semi-incognito advertisements in content. People can still vote ads up or down meaning bad ads will get buried quickly, but is this the future or a blur between product and content that crosses the line?

I'm going to read Chris Anderson's Free by the end of the week and I should have more ideas on the future of media, but for now I thought I'd share Murdoch's intentions and Digg's plan so we could see what comes of it together.

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Stephen Shiffman and the Land Of No will release their album in ten days. It will be well worth a listen.

Nothing Is a Vault

I learned yesterday that Twitter keeps any single person's 3,200 most recent tweets and then poof, it's gone. I feel stupid for not knowing this and particularly distressed (in a not really distressed and I realize I'm being dramatic sort of way).

I suppose 3,200 is a lot, but to think that in an age when storage costs virtually nothing, Twitter isn't playing the Google card of unlimited storage? I thought we had finally found something that would put moments in a vault and help us remember the time when we picked out all the marshmallows in the Lucky Charms to see if there was enough in a box to fill an entire bowl, and then spent the rest of the night snacking on the sweetest part and wondering if we were Lucky, Charmed, or both.

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If you like Postal Service, Vampire Weekend, and/or Ra Ra Riot you've got to check Discovery.

Discovery - "I Want You Back" (Jackson 5)

Triumph For Pack Rats

I'm a pack rat, and not just the kind spouses complain about when it comes time to clean the garage. I'm the pick-up-everything-in-sight-because-one-day-this-moment-and-object-could-define-my-life sort of pack rat. In other words, my compulsion for keeping is really. really. bad.

Then I discovered the hard drive. I picked up fewer rocks and started collecting music and then words and pictures. I still pick up especially beautiful rocks here and there and often find myself slipping objects in my pocket so that I can hold a moment forever, but the tendencies that probably would have buried me in objects has shifted toward the computable intangibles.

When I started getting tangled up in the web I transfered my pack rat tendency toward the world of links. I tried to collect them in browser favorites but of course most are lost. Many of the sites would be changed or expired by now even if I had all those links, but the ones that are left would serve as a sort of continuous time capsule diary for what I found relevant and profound at the time. I would love to look back on the sites I adored back when the internet chugged along dial up telephone lines at 56k, but alas, all that is gone.

I'm going to sound like a blatant product promotion here, but the moment I found Read It Later I knew that I'd found another brilliant tool to cure my satiated bookmarks bar and the sorrow of losing old Favorites. I no longer needed to send myself links of articles I didn't have time to read at the specific moment when I found them and I knew that I'd never have to write a URL on the back of my hand again. Instead I use Read It Later, a site that stores every article I haven't had time to read and archives the ones I've checked off.

Convenient, of course. But that time capsule of a diary I wrote about a second ago. I can finally make it. And someday when I'm navigating the web on whatever is going to come a couple generations after Google Wave (a tool that's supposed to change our way of using the internet) I'll look back and laugh.

"You were concerned about DDoS attacks on Twitter and figuring out why the biggest growth demographic for tweets was not teenagers, but adults," I'll say. "Because really, the important thing all along were the rocks that made the ground you're standing on."

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Miike Snow's music will capture you faster than you could read any description I could give. Check the trio out here.

Miike Snow - "Animal"

CBS Sunday Morning

I opened my eyes slowly this morning to a slight tinge of regret. I had missed yet another CBS Sunday Morning, and not just because I slept in late after a Fourth of July packed with Jenny Lewis, Conor Oberst, 40,000 fireworks shells (1,200 per minute for 26 minutes), an Apples to Apples marathon, and loads of food. It wouldn't have made much of a difference when I woke anyway, because I don't have a television or DVR. Buying one or both would probably be for the sole purpose of witnessing Charles Osgood and the crew's thought provoking journalism, but I just can't justify it. Every now and then I catch a few clips and video recaps on the CBS Sunday Morning website but I miss Osgood's narration and I want the ability to sit down and feel the comfort of watching an entire episode ceremoniously from start to finish.

I know internet television advertising isn't as profitable as traditional broadcast (which I think is twisted based on a number of reasons including the sheer volume of target demographic that is starting to actually prefer watching television online), but I know a gaggle of New Yorker reading, non TV owning people like myself who wish they had a way to catch up on Sunday Morning on their computer and after the fact. So give me Flanagan and give me Osgood. Bring me politics and show me pool prodigies. Move into multimedia, Osgood, and let's move soon. It will certainly help me wake up every Sunday morning without that haunting tinge of regret.


Until you can catch CBS Sunday Morning at least you can listen to some tunes. Check out Anya Marina. Her style varies from Karen O like boldness to quiet and silky and pure danceable. "Vertigo" has had me red in the face and dancing for weeks.

Anya Marina - "Vertigo" (This video is really quiet so the version on the link above is better, but I figured I'd add this for pure convenience.)

So Wanna...Know What Lauren Proctor Studies in Graduate School?

"What is it that you're studying at NYU?" The question in and of itself sounds simple enough. It's a non threatening way to make small talk, but the simple inquiry catches me off guard every time.

For starters, when people ask what other people are studying they usually expect an answer that can be given within a single breath. Marketing, English, Economics, or even Electrical Engineering. Simple, accessible, telling.

I, on the other hand, am affiliated with a program that's title alone contains enough syllables to make you dizzy. When I tell some people that I belong to the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies I see their eyes glaze over in what is either disinterest or absolute confusion. Those that stick with me through that part usually want to know what that means, and I used to think that actually knowing what I was studying would help me describe it to an outsider.

Now I realize that even though I'm beginning to solidify my topic of study, the good ole' twelve second elevator pitch simply leaves people confused and wondering again why I go to NYU. I'm tempted to print out business cards and hand them a link to my blog saying, "If you're really interested read this guide. If not, don't worry about it and thanks for asking."

For everyone who is still reading, here is why I go to NYU:  Within the next year and a half I want to become one of the leading scholars in how brands can make meaning in the modern media landscape.

What exactly, does that mean?  I'll talk a little bit about my theories this evening, but you can rely on periodic (or at least semi periodic) updates on my research right here.  All my posts will be filtered under "Apex Beat," as well as something like "Graduate School," "Marketing," "Brands," "Media," or something along those lines.

In the meantime, I'll tell you the foundation of my studies.  I am convinced that the new digital world in which we live is changing how we live and communicate (to a certain degree).  The media landscape is different than it was in the past, and this transformation is forcing brands to change how they relate and connect to people.

I'm not arguing that traditional TV spots and magazine ads will disappear, but lately I have seen the emergence of a new trend.  People are redefining how they relate to brands, and brands need, in part, to redefine how they reach people.

I want to be part of this revolution.  Not only that, but I want to help foster new ways for brands to create positive, meaningful relationships with consumers.  People shouldn't have to endure advertising, they should be able to enjoy it.  The push, pull of advertisers vs. consumers should be over, and the consumer should always win out.

That is, until brands figure out how to create positive communities and loyalties based on what they offer their consumers.  I believe that in the new digital world the best brands will succeed by creating content driven ideas that engage people at the core of their being and the essence of their passion(s).  In a relevant and meaningful way, brands will become the indispensable facilitator of the type of success people seek, and in doing so everyone will win out.

Brands will send messages in ways that connect consumers, and consumers will get what it is they want.  At least that's the goal formula I plan to crack in a year and a half.  

Stay tuned, and stay aware.  I'll keep you updated right here on this blog, again, under the tag "Apex Beat."

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Academic breakthroughs should be matched with ethereal beats.  Check out Dri, a chilled out female vocalist whose voice swims in the clouds above a dreamy set of musical landscapes.  Think Enya meets M.I.A in the most soothing, underground artsy way possible.

Dri - "You Know I Tried"

Magazine Meltdown

Radar Magazine recently folded (see Print Is Dead party invite to the left). Time Inc. cut 600 employees, Conde Nast endured a round of layoffs yesterday, Portfolio is struggling, and Men's Vogue just died. The economy is bad but this is the worst time ever in what was once the mostly recession proof magazine industry.

I want to know where the glamour of the magazine industry went. It's certainly not online because no one really knows how to monetize Internet based magazine type content effectively, and I'm not seeing it anywhere else. Apparently it discintegrated in the mist.

I've been told that magazines work better than any other media in the three B's (the beach, the bathroom, and the bedroom). We might be moving toward a Kindle like device that stores video, books, the electronic version of the New York Times, and all your necessary feeds, but you probably wouldn't ever take your Kindle to the beach. If only for that reason, and that reason alone, magazines should continue to thrive.

You can give me the recession but please don't take away my magazines. The best will undoubtedly survive, but when they do I hope these media empires leave room for an aspiring hard worker and dedicated fan.

Always a reader,

Lauren Proctor

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A Fitting Music Recommendation

Tobias Froberg (Bjorn Yttling Remix) - "A Brickwall"

The Root of Violence

Violence on college campuses used to be the rare exception to the norm, the lion in William Blake's poetry that people fear even though they're unlikely to ever encounter their dread. I'm not sure how it happened, but I feel like our society suddenly regressed and now we live in a world where violence on campus is everywhere.

The sixth victim of the Illinois College shooting died just hours ago and the eighth grader who was shot in Oxnard, California earlier this week was declared brain dead. Fortunately he was taken off of life support today, but nothing can erase the damage the shooter has done. Locally at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the latest rage is the lacrosse team violence and recent stabbings that have taken place in the past week or so. A year ago as an RA I began to see the violence rising as I was increasingly awoken to blood spattered walls resulting from pointless drunken, ego driven feuds.

These young people are supposed to be our leaders. They're supposed to be the increasingly involved voters in this upcoming election, and the ones who reverse the climate crisis. What is it though, that makes them so violent? More important, how do we reverse this trend of increasing violence? Is violence going to become the norm or is this something we can stop before more damage is done?

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On a more cheerful note, I found yet another modern British marvel. Let Scouting for Girls take those worries of violence away with their staccato sounding and youthful pop. Laden with handclaps and beautiful timing, this band is incredibly catchy.

Unfortunately the sound quality of this video is poor, but if the keyboard intro makes your heart flutter for a second then check out this group's Myspace page. They're a great time.