I Regret The Free Magazines

Recently I got a letter in the mail. I had airline miles that were going to expire…on an airline I had NO reason to fly on anytime soon. (Thanks old work trips!) But there was good news: I could use my miles to get magazine subscriptions…for FREE! No S&H, no tax, no added cost.

So I did.

And boy, do I regret it.

The Great Print vs. Digital Debate

As a marketer, I've heard it all from "PRINT IS DEAD!" to "EMAIL IS DEAD!" and I always disagree.

Sure, the golden age of email…you know when open rates were better than your grades in high school…those days are gone. The days when everyone read a physical copy of the local morning paper…also gone.

Print still has power. But holy crap, are some of these magazines wasting it.

What I Expected vs. What I Got

I expected to have a nice reading experience on a variety of topics like grape-based alcohols and things you eat…raising tiny humans…athletic endeavors with pictures…improved domiciles and food growing spaces. And, many other titles I've forgotten enough that I can't make up alternative names for them.

I was wrong.

I'll repeat that for my husband, just in case he doesn't believe I said it: I was wrong.

Now, I'm not an eco-warrior, but I do think it's good to reduce waste and take care of the earth. I take recycling home from work because our office complex only has trash.

And now, I'm responsible for a whole lot of glossy recycling every month.

I thought I'd get great recipes to try, read thought-provoking articles, bring new ideas to the office. But just trying to figure out where the ACTUAL content is in between the ads…it's not worth it.

There are the obvious ads, the advertorials, the sponsored/co-branded crap. And somewhere amongst over 70 pages of print and a variety of overpowering scent samples, there might be 3 pages worth reading. And here's the kicker: half of those ads don't even bother with a real headline that earns the read. It's just a logo and a vibe, which tells you exactly how little anyone's thinking about the reader anymore.

This "valuable offer" is actually stressing me out. I feel guilty that I don't enjoy them. I get annoyed when they clutter my house. The one feeling I haven't had is "the pleasure of a good read."

The Real Problem Nobody's Solving

I know this isn't a simple problem to fix. The subscription model isn't working for magazines, so they have to sell ads, but soon the ads are so overwhelming that the content's not worth paying for. It's a vicious cycle. I've spent 40 years writing ads people actually wanted to see, and I can tell you the difference isn't the medium, it's whether anyone in the building still cares if the reader gets something out of the page. A headline built to filter and hook instead of just fill space would fix half of what's wrong with these issues.

I just wish I hadn't maxed out my point redemption to find this out.