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May 19, 2005
With Six You Get Magazine
There's a new trend I've noticed within the last few months. I'm not sure exactly when it started; all I know is that it really has to end. I'm talking about this annoying new development that every time you buy a DVD, CD, or something in the home electronics vein, they start signing you up for magazine subscriptions.
I've had it happen at Best Buy, at FYE, at Suncoast, and a couple of other stores. "With your purchase today, sir, you get 8 free issues of Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly. Thank you for shopping at Cross-Marketing Hell."
It was bad enough when it was just automatically SI and EW. Now, they're forcing others on you - and none that fit you! Recently I was offered the choice of any three of the following: Jane, Working Woman, Elle, Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek. (No sign of SI anywhere.) Assuming that I wanted EW and Newsweek is presumptuous enough. But then what do I choose? I'm not a working woman, and I don't expect to be any time in the forseeable future. Somehow, I doubt I'll fit into the new summer fashion lines showcased in Vogue. And yet I would have had to choose one of them.
The worst, though, is that the cashiers glare at you if you opt out. In this instance, I smiled and said that there were only two on the list that even fit me, and I already received both of them (a lie, but you must always fight marketing efforts with whatever tools you have at your disposal), but thank you anway. The glare I got suggested that perhaps I might like to go frolic in traffic. It was like she got commission on these automatic magazine subscriptions, and I was taking food out of her baby's mouth or something.
Some marketing or "branding" expert somewhere came up with the idea of force-subscribing home entertainment customers a series of a magazines they neither want nor care about... I say we find that person and bleed him or her to death by inflicting thousands of paper cuts via all those magazine pages.
Comments
So that's how you started getting Girls Gone Wild... hmmm.
Posted by: Erika at May 19, 2005 11:03 PM
