Lady Mags Push Readers To Go Online Even While They Read
LatestMany magazines are having a hard time attracting readers to their websites, so they’re trying a new approach. Rather than just listing urls and hoping people will look them up online, magazines are becoming littered with mobile codes. The hope is that while readers don’t care enough to look up an editor’s blog, they’ll bother to hunt down QR codes and snap them with their cell phones.
Jenny Bowman, Glamour‘s creative services director, tells the New York Times, “Our theme is social networking across the board … Social is so huge that we wanted to take it to the next step and make it seamless for our audience.” The “seamless” procedure involves readers noticing the small print on the September cover that directs them to page 84, downloading the Glamour app, using it to scan icons throughout the magazine, and waiting to see what extra features or coupons pop up on the screen.