Next Issue App - Unlimited magazines for a monthly fee

Ever wondered what owning a magazine shop would be like - having the full breadth of magazines to browse and freedom to just read the 2-3 articles with catchy headlines? 

Now you can have this on the Ipad with the launch of Next Issue. For USD$9.99 per month, the app allows you to access the latest from 39 different magazines - including back issues up to Jan 2012. The partnership of 5 publishing giants - News Corp, Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith and Time Inc. provide a great spread of quality magazines, including Time, Wired, Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest, GQ and Conde Nast Traveller. 

The app - meets the bar

The app itself is pretty good - but not exceptional. Basically it provides digitized versions of the physical magazines, although some have good interactive elements like video and mini-games. The major shortfall for me is that the text are images rather than vectors, so on the Ipad3, the text isn't as sharp as it could be. It also means that you can't adjust font sizes. It does adjust layout dynamically for portrait or landscape use though.

Pricing model - a winner, particularly for readers in Asia 

What's really great is the all-you-can-eat pricing. For USD$9.99 a month, you get access to most of the magazines. For USD$14.99 you get additional premium weeklies like Time, Entertainment Weekly and New Yorker. This means USD$120 - 180 per year, which is steep if you're living in the US where subscriptions are in the USD$20-40 range annually and you usually get both physical and digital versions for that price.

However, for readers in Asia, this pricing is fantastic. A single physical issue at the magazine store in Singapore could cost up to USD$8 due to shipping overheads, while subscriptions cost USD$140/year for Time Magazine and USD$110/year for Fortune. Readers of just these two titles alone would save money and reduce environmental damage with this app.

The app is only for US ITunes accounts at this point. If you don't already have a US account, I'd switch to one just for this.

The business strategy - traditional media finally gets it

Overall, this is a great strategy for the magazine publishers. If they get the pricing right, the incremental revenues from volume uptick should easily offset the lower prices, even accounting for leakages in international sales. But that's not all. The real kicker for the publishers is that they now have full access to consumer behaviour - which magazines get read, how long, which ads get clicked, etc. As the the WSJ puts it. your e-book reads you! While all the ads are now the same static ones as in the magazines, it won't be long before the ads are customized based on reader profiles. 

Learning branding at the Koh Phangan Full Moon Party

Just got back from a vacation to Koh Samui in Thailand where I managed to make it for this month's Full Moon Party at the neighbouring Koh Phangan. Got a bunch of photos, a nice body paint motif on my arm and the usual Foursquare check-ins. Also took away some interesting observations on marketing of commodity goods, applicable in both the physical and digital world.

One of the features of the Koh Phangan full moon party is the 'bucket' concept of selling and consuming alcohol. Basically the vendors sell the partygoers a 250-300ml bottle of hard liquor and accompanying mixers, served with ice in a 1-litre plastic bucket- see image. They come in different 'mixes' of alcohol and different brands and are priced from 200Baht for local you-might-go-blind whiskey brands to over 400Baht for 'premium' labels. For all means and purposes though, every stall on the beach sells exactly the same product, at pretty much the same (likely cartelised) price points.

So with some 60-odd makeshift stalls lined up at the beachfront, how does a stallowner differentiate? Well, the usual volume-discounting happens, some marginal product differentiation (extra fresh piece of lime) and some cross-product bundling (comes with neon body paint).

What was most interesting for me though was the branding of each stall. The Thai stallowners would take on a caucasian name for their stall. This helps the mostly Aussie and British crowd remember the stall names, but more importantly, this brings them over to pose and take photos either because the stalls are named after them, or after their friends back home. From there, the stallowners' sales skills takes over and establishes as the customer's 'favourite bucket stall' (e.g. the 'Emma' stall snagged this blogger). To maximize traffic, the most popular names are used - Alex, Jack, Jamie, etc), with some targeted stalls going for more Russian sounding names. Photo below illustrates best -this was taken early in the evening before the crowds came in. 

The simple takeaway here is that companies need to think about the target customers when branding and naming themselves or their products. At minimum, do no harm with the name. There are plenty of funny examples of this mistake - Aass Classic Beer anyone? It takes incredible product quality and execution to save a poorly named product, the IPad for instance is an exception, not the rule. 

Companies should choose names that gives them an edge within their target market - this implies being clear upfront on who that is! In the digital world, this then also needs to meet all the other requirements like ease of search, length and domain name availability. Not an easy task at all when all the constraints are considered. 

(For those keen on seeing more of what a Full Moon Party looks like, this photoblog by Asher Floyd has some very good shots and commentary)