Judging A Book By It’s Cover
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I had just returned from lunch when I caught some interesting news off the web regarding the choice of two prominent magazines to use different covers for their current issues. My initial reaction, to be offended, was based on my personal and political world views, but then I realized something else is at work here.
The current issues of both Newsweek and Time magazine have been published with a very different version for the USA then the rest of the world for a reason.
TIME - World Edition
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TIME - USA Edition
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Newsweek - Covers from around the world
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I am sure there are many opinions all with varying degrees of truth to them. However, at the end of any debate there can only be one logical answer - Marketing. These magazines are not public services, but businesses. Just like the sandwich shop down the street, they need to sell product to survive.
The sandwich shop uses all means available to it to determine which items to feature each month. It weighs the various options and probably has some strong internal debate over what to feature. But, just like the magazines, ultimately the decision is based on what will bring in the best results to the bottom line. The magazines feel they will have better market penetration with the alternate covers shown above then they would with the covers chosen for the rest of the world. So they go with their best guess as to what will lead to higher earnings. I hope the results do not warrant a repeat performance.
There is some small measure of irony that this month the magazine and the sandwich shop have the same product - Bologna. I guess I will be eating pizza and reading a newspaper. I can only hope more people dislike Bologna, so we don’t see it back again.
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Tags: Business Principles, Marketing, Search & Marketing
Posted in Business Principles, Marketing, Search & Marketing
