The big, one-off effort from Time and Lexus to launch "Mine" - the highly personalized pub in which the Lexus ads are targeted to you, and where you literally choose which articles to receive - hit some personal snags.
Oh, the ads are fine - tuned to your geographic area (think New Yorkers getting ads about driving to the Hamptons". It's just that the system that enables readers to go online to register for content culled from five of eight magazines (think Food & Wine and Sports Illustrated) in order for the print pub to carry content of personal interest had some hiccups.
As in, editors chose evergreen articles that seemed dated by the time the pub reached readers, and a glitch caused readers to receive articles thy had not chosen.
Not that the idea didn't sound interesting.
"It's almost similar to an RSS feed or something like that, where you get a selection" of content you're interested in, David Nordstrom, vp of marketing at Lexus, tells today's New York Times. "Longer term, if you look at what's going on with media, whether it's interactive or behavioral targeting, especially with the younger audience, they expect you to be talking to them. They want you to talk to them as an individual. In print, it's much harder, but to us this was an opportunity to start experimenting with it a little bit."
Fair enough. But you have to wonder what will happen when we pre-vette all the content we consume, disconnecting the serendipity of finding something that might change a point of view.
If you have to go all gimmicky, at least in the near term, it might be better to pull a Wired, what with its current Myster Issue from guest editor JJ Abrams. The issue, inspired by Abram's famous Magic Box presentation at the TED conference, includes Abrams-ian hidden puzzles that lead to a secret website.
Not so personalized, but very interactive.
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People should read this.
Posted by: Matilda | April 22, 2009 at 03:11 AM