Esquire Hopes To Keep Magazines Alive With Electronic Ink

from the gimmick-or-more? dept

News of Esquire's October magazine cover using eInk was released earlier in the summer, but the magazine has now hit the stands. The cover of the magazine has a 10 square inch screen that flashes a series of images, interspersed with "The 21st Century Begins Now." The magazine also has some more of the screens inside for advertisers to use. It's likely that this magazine will sell an awful lot of copies (I'm going to try to pick up one if I get the chance), but the real question is whether or not this is just a gimmick, or it really has some potential for magazines. It certainly can't be particularly cheap to get these e-ink screens in every magazine, so it hardly seems like a reasonable short-term solution for the magazine industry. But are more interactive magazines a possibility in the future -- or will it come from the other direction, where people will simply download "magazines" to devices like the Kindle, which uses similar technology for the screen? While I'm still not sold on ebook readers, it seems more likely that we're heading to a future where the magazine resides in the device, rather than the device residing in the magazine.

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Of Course Crowdsourcing Will Get Stale If You Think Of It As Just A Marketing Gimmick

from the relationships-relationships-relationships dept

News.com's Tim Leberecht wonders if crowdsourcing has "jumped the shark," pointing out that everybody and his dog seems to have a crowdsourcing program in place, and wonders if consumers are getting tired of the gimmick. I think the problem here is the way the question is being framed. If a company views crowdsourcing as just a one-off opportunity to get some free labor out of its customers, then obviously customers are going to get tired of it. But that's the wrong way to look at it. What crowdsourcing is about, ultimately, is improving communications with your customers, and among the customers themselves. Asking your customers to become more involved in various aspects of your business -- offering product advice to one another, providing feedback on new products, or offering ideas about advertising strategies -- increases customer loyalty by demonstrating that your company is actually engaged with its customers and responsive to their concerns. If your "crowdsourcing program" is limited to the marketing department, you're throwing away much of the potential value of the concept. Building strong relationships with customers and fostering online discussion about your products is at least as valuable as any cheesy ads a "make your own ad" contest might produce. Advertising gimmicks "jump the shark," but strong relationships with customers never do.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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