Magazine Eyeballs Its Subscribers

No_Weak_Heart writes "Talk about 'know your customers' -- the NY Times has an interesting article about Reason Magazine's upcoming June issue. Each of the print magazine's 40,000 subscribers will receive a copy of the mag with their name and a satellite photo of their home on the cover!" Although described as a "cover stunt", the magazine's editor "said that the parlor trick could have profound implications as database and printing capabilities grow."

slow news day?

[Shakrai]

This is your rights online? I guess it must be a slow newsday. It might be useful for showing John Q. Public exactly how powerful these systems have become but somehow I doubt that will happen. The article even states this:

In some respects, Reason's cover stunt is less Big Brother than one more demonstration that micromarketing is here to stay. "My son gets sports catalogs where his name is imprinted on the jerseys that are on the cover," Mr. Rotenberg said. "He thinks that's very cool."

On the flipside I suppose this justifies my paranoia in continuing to use a P.O. Box for all my mail. And to think I only got the P.O. Box because I was worried about my neighbors stealing my mail. I wonder if my copy would have the Post Office circled?

usually, I am paranoid, this though? no.

[garcia]

BFD. I routinely get the coordinates for addresses (usually geocaches [geocaching.com] but sometimes business addressses and residences) and make both standard Mapquest maps and aerial/topo maps of the location. Terraserver [terraserver.com] is quick and easy to use if you don't have access to some of the scripts out there for this...

How does this have far reaching implications? The information is freely and easily accessible. As databases grow? The information is out there now... It's not exactly as if magazines selling your name/address to others is a new/novel idea. It's been going on for ages.

Perhaps if they had your name and your CURRENT, exact, location on file I would be more concerned...

Visual representation

[BWJones]

Of course the data itself is not new and there is nothing controversial about this per se. The real issue is in the visual representation of your geographic data which demonstrates to you specifically that your home location is *known*. Of course the magazine has always *known* where you live because they mail the periodical to your house. But for some reason, showing folks information in a graphical or visual format makes it more real. Therefore, I would not say this is a gimmick, but that it would enforce the idea to those who may not think as much in their daily lives the issues of privacy and information customization and product dissemination to consumers.

It's a rather easy magic trick to pull off...

[LostCluster]

The magazine's trick here really isn't that hard... in that for every subscriber they of course have an address, and adresseses can be converted to geographic coordinates using the same technology MapQuest [mapquest.com] has had for years. It's just a matter of getting a satellite photo that shows that coordinate as the center point, and applying the circling to the image. After that, it's just a typical variable printing job.

Modern printing technologies make it very easy for a 40,000-subscriber magazine to send out a different cover to each and every subscriber. It's just a matter of doing a 40,000 page run of each of the "customized" sets of pages with the image database available, and then the common pages can be wrapped around after printing them the typical way. Here's the homepage for VIPP [xerox.com], Xerox's technology for doign such "variable data" printing jobs on its industrial class printing products.

Re:usually, I am paranoid, this though? no.

[tgd]

I think the point is some people don't think about/realize that the ability to integrate information like that is so easy.

Plus its pretty damn cool they can demand print the magazine covers.

Obviously its a stunt, though... anyone who subscribes to a libertarian magazine probably understands those issues anyway... its a rallying call for them.

The slippery slope

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason this is a big deal is not because they have a satellite photo of your house. Everyone with a brain knows that information is out there on terraserver and a dozen other services.

The problem with this stunt is that it is a harbinger of things to come. When marketers are able to fully customize each page of a magazine to appeal to a particular consumer, they will acquire a lot of personal information from tens or hundreds of different marketing databases in order to do so.

In essence, the improvements in printing technology that made this possible will contribute to the proliferation of your personal information.

The only way to solve this is to implement EU-style privacy protections at the Federal level. We need to ask ourselves - who's looking out for you? It's obviously not our government.

There is no Right to Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

There is Constitutional "right to privacy". Some try to conjure one out of the Ninth Amendment, but the same tactic can be used to conjure a "right to security" or something else that cancels it out. Some try to conjure it out of the 4th Amendment, but it is a real stretch to apply this to information that is hundreds of miles from your house and person.

I think there should be a "right to privacy", but it just isn't there in the Constitution. Judges who conjure one out of thin air can just as easily make it go away. For such things, we should rely on the amendment process, not the fickle imagination of judges.

Re:It's a rather easy magic trick to pull off...

[IamGarageGuy 2]

This may be "easy" technically, but in practice it is a very large job. Digital printing has been able to do this for a while but the logistics has been difficult. Putting a sticker with the address on it after the run and during the shipping process has been the norm since the subscription idea started. A major magazine doing it with a 40,000 person database is a big deal. This may be the start of all the pipe dreams of personalized one-to-one advertising that have been around the printing industry for years.

Re:slow news day?

[Shakrai]

Except it's only happening on the cover of Reason.

A good point but all that needs to happen is for enough people to take notice. Then the mainstream press will pick up on it. This happens all the time for good or bad. The mainstream press ignores stories until the niche press (for lack of a better word) picks up on it and broadcasts it in everybody's face... then the mainstream is "forced" to follow it.

Fox News will break a story like this and "force" the more mainstream media outlets (CNN, CBS, etc) to carry a story. At least this time it would presumably be doing some good.

Are their intentions menat to be ironic or not?

[base_chakra]

Ostensibly, the main idea was to make readers more aware of the realities of living life as a row in a database. But then there's Chief Editor Gillispie's closing quote: "What if you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you? That would be a magazine that everyone would want to read." This seems to indicate a conflict of interests; that Reason recognizes the peril, but can't help but consider the possibilities of catering to individual readers by exploiting personal data.

Of course, this attempt at pandering generally fails in my experience. My being interested in 'Gardening' or 'Outdoor Life' is lightyears away from wanting a subscription to Better Homes and Gardens or Sports Illustrated, personalization or no. This is due to the critical distinction between essence and product.

The phrase "Free Minds, Free Markets" also seems to me to be a contradiction in terms, although "Free Markets" leaves room for interpretation. I guess I'm reading this wrong, because to my mind, the notion of individuality resists the concept of demographic marketing, no matter how "free."

Re:Visual representation

[Anonymous Coward]

pssst.. hey lazy mods..

Why is this insightful? Do the *MODS* even RTFA?! This guy just paraphrased the second paragraph of the FA and he's "insightful"?

I don't doubt that Bryan could come up with this on his own as he's clearly a bright guy, but I'm just pointing out that the mods should pay more attention.

Re:It's a rather easy magic trick to pull off...

[IamGarageGuy 2]

I will aggree that localised (?) one-to-one has been around a while, but the size of this project is the where it gets interesting. How many Indigo presses get used for this type of project as opposed to the 5-10 split runs out of a 50,000 run that are more of the norm. This is a leap in that each issue is a separate image and has to be treated as such instead of "the run for X region and the run for Y region". Publishers should and will take notice and start to demand the same treatment for their own magazines. It just seems to me that a real world application like this is what will make the marketing people take note of the ability of the printing equipment and how they can use it to their benefit. In the printing world, this is the hot thing but outside of the printing world it is not very exiciting until this type of stunt wakes people up to the possibilities.

Re:It's a rather easy magic trick to pull off...

[LostCluster]

Only the cover sheet (which represnts the cover, page one, the last page, and back cover) needs to be localized for this stunt. There are single-machine printers that could run this off in a matter of a few hours. We're only talking 40,000 impressions here, there's no need to print any locations that don't have a copy headed there.

The rest of the magazine cna be printed as normal, and just inserted into each cover sheet.

Re:It's a rather easy magic trick to pull off...

[bofkentucky]

Yeah, this is an big (odd) run, but it was doable when I worked in Mag production 4 years ago (RR Donnelley and Sons, Glasgow Manufacturing, PC Mag, Yahoo Internet Life, Oprah, Brides, Southern Living, Esquire, and many more). 40,000 mags on a patent line with a fixed maverick (High speed inkjet on the mag binder, the thing that prints the address) You could run before lunch if the makeready was done beforehand. Probably a 4 hr makeready, and Mavericks will always slow a line down, so worst case, you are looking a 12 hr bind job, but you will charge a premium even though you cut costs on the press by using non-UV coat cover stock, fricking genius.

That being said, if Oprah tried this it would be a bitch, what's she got 2 mil subsrcibers? Something sick like that would make for a shitty couple of days

Reason: Free Minds, Free Markets

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Any opinion you like, as long as it's capitalist extremism.

Re:It's a rather easy magic trick to pull off...

[payndz]

It's just a matter of doing a 40,000 page run of each of the "customized" sets of pages with the image database available

Yeah, it's 'just' a matter of doing that. The magazine I edit has roughly a 40,000 print run, and if I proposed doing a different cover for every single copy, the production director would have a heart attack, the finance director would explode and the printers would be yelling "Ka-ching!"

Hell, it's hard enough trying to wring the money out of them for a split-run cover with just *two* alternate images, never mind 40,000!

Re:PO Box

[po8]

This will make it all the more impressive when your home's photo is on your cover anyhow.

I doubt it's that hard to cross your PO box with a dozen other databases. Do you use a different box for your Reason account than for other mail? Have you ever given anyone your current geographic address?

Face it, in this modern world it's only a few minutes for a determined adversary from any piece of identifying info to lat/long for the incoming ordinance.

What resolution?

[Anonymous Coward]

The resolution doesn't look very good based on the photo. Looks like very coarse black and white photo? Old weather satillite data? So what?
It doesn't like like 1m resolution, color, recent photos. This is like the weatherman getting up and circling your city and saying "we know where you live".

BFD.

That'd be a magazine...

[Anonymous Coward]

"What if

you received a magazine that only had stories and ads that you were interested in and pertained to you?" he asked. "That would be a magazine that everyone would want to read."

That'd be a magazine that only you wanted to read.

Re:slow news day?

[Plugh]

Blockquoth Ryan Amos:

I should probably start learning the words to "O Canada."

In my opinion, you're better off learning the words to "Old New Hampshire" [50states.com]. After all, New Hampshire is the One Best shot at a Free State [freestateproject.org]!

eh whatever.

[metalix]

terraserver.microsoft.com. Big deal.

The only worthwhile topic of this article is that printing technology has come down to a point where they can print a customized cover for every subscriber. Now that's amazing.

Incorrect Mail Leads to Privacy Breakdown?

[HeXetic]

What happens if you're a subscriber but your copy has the house & name of someone else? Isn't that against some kind of privacy law for which NY Times could potentially be sued?

Keeping up with the dot-coms

[The Monster]

Most subscribers will receive an issue that features four cover pages of intensely personalized information

Having to compete with web portals that tailor themselves to the personal preferences of readers is likely to drive print publications this way, as will advertisers. What a lot of magazine subscribers don't realize is that there's already some customization going on. For example, DaimlerChrysler might buy a full-page ad in $MAGAZINE, which serves up different ads based on zip(+4) codes:

• High-income areas get the Mercedes ad
• Lower-income areas get Chrysler
• Rural areas get Dodge Truck

thus maximizing their investment, by showing people ads for things they might actually want to buy (and be willing to afford). With access to the right data, this can be fine-tuned far beyond what census data about your ZIP code discloses.