• Peel me: Printed magazines can engage the readers' hands in so many ways beyond just flipping pages—cut out this recipe, peel this strip, tear along the perforation, pull out this card, open this product sample, gently remove this centerfold and hide it from the wife and kids.
• Fruit vandalism: A recent issue of Lucky Peach took the "peel me" tactic to a new level with a page of mock fruit stickers—for example, "Suspiciously Foreign Tomato," "Hand Harvested By Poor People," "Eat Me," and, for you J. Alfred Prufrock fans, "Dare to Eat a Peach" with a picture of T.S. Eliot. When shoppers started placing the little messages in produce departments and trying to use the "$6 Off Entire Purchase" stickers, Lucky Peach got kicked out of Publix supermarkets, and generated more than enough free publicity and online copy sales to make up for the lost newsstand sales. Try that with an app.
D. Eadward Tree is a pseudonymous magazine-industry insider who provides insights on publishing, postal issues and print media on his blog, Dead Tree Edition.
The View From the Tree: 34 Tricks Printed Magazines Can Do That Apps Can’t
• Peel me: Printed magazines can engage the readers' hands in so many ways beyond just flipping pages—cut out this recipe, peel this strip, tear along the perforation, pull out this card, open this product sample, gently remove this centerfold and hide it from the wife and kids.
• Fruit vandalism: A recent issue of Lucky Peach took the "peel me" tactic to a new level with a page of mock fruit stickers—for example, "Suspiciously Foreign Tomato," "Hand Harvested By Poor People," "Eat Me," and, for you J. Alfred Prufrock fans, "Dare to Eat a Peach" with a picture of T.S. Eliot. When shoppers started placing the little messages in produce departments and trying to use the "$6 Off Entire Purchase" stickers, Lucky Peach got kicked out of Publix supermarkets, and generated more than enough free publicity and online copy sales to make up for the lost newsstand sales. Try that with an app.
D. Eadward Tree is a pseudonymous magazine-industry insider who provides insights on publishing, postal issues and print media on his blog, Dead Tree Edition.