Entertainment Weekly puts smartphone in 1000 magazines | Hacker News Reader

Entertainment Weekly puts smartphone in 1000 magazines

mashable.com

74 pointssmartician34 comments

Am I the only one that's concerned about the environmental footprint of this publicity stunt? We've come so far to have disposable cell phones! With a processor and camera that are more powerful than available consumer electronics 10 years ago. And now we put them in dead tree magazines just to display some trivial tweets and to be thrown away a few weeks later? Sure, I'm tempted to get one just to play with it, but there's this other voice in my head saying that this is a whole new level of crazy.

I sincerely hope this is some kind of recycling effort? But then, how did they get the same recycled phone model in large numbers? Maybe a production run that was completed before a model was taken off the market?

All I could think about was that Li-ion battery should a) be recycled, and b) not in the paper recycling bin, where this magazine will probably end up.

Very true, can see some bulk paper shredder having a bad day.

I can't imagine this advertising method is cost effective once the novelty value has worn off, so I can't really see this being a major environmental issue.

What is slightly more worrying is that if this based on the usual magazine distribution methods, 1/3 will be pulped without being sold.

Wait, what? One third of magazines never reach a pair of hands? Do you have a source for this claim?

More than that in most cases:

http://www.ppa.co.uk/about/activities/environment/ppa-enviro...

My dad used to work at a magazine distributor, and I'd not be surprised at all by that number.

Lead times to print magazines tend to be long. They could print them quickly, but the cost would be substantially higher. So it can be anything from days (expensive) for topical magazines that don't carry news, to weeks or months (for things like comics, that are often printed in low cost countries). It is/was generally far cheaper to use cheap print options like that, and over-order substantially over expected retailer requests in case of extra demand, than to be prepared to do multiple print runs.

Each retailer would request more copies than they expected to sell, given that they'd take the copies on consignment, and nobody wanted them to run out of copies - more distribution runs was far more expensive than sending them more copies initially. Given that sales for each retailers could fluctuate substantially from one week to the next, that meant a large number of unsold copies.

So there's two large buffers that by design lead to unsold inventory. Usually the only thing that varies is that the size of the unsold inventory varies from issue to issue depending on well they're at forecasting demand.

Most retailers would only get a distribution run once a week (this distributor didn't handle newspapers) unless a particular issue of some magazine proved successful way beyond the norm.

As a kid I used to love that he had that job - we used to get a huge pack of free comics and other magazines every Friday due to fluctuating orders from retailers - staff got to freely pick from anything that was too old for them to take further orders.

The sell-through rate is the percentage of magazines that make it into a customer's hands. 66% would be very high; it's typically much less. (Keep in mind that once a new issue comes out, the old issue is pretty much instantly worthless)

I've checked about 10 stores (~60 copies) ... haven't found a special magazine yet ... I'm going to continue to check throughout the night at various drug stores and grocery stores. I'll respond back here with my findings. (Nothing on ebay yet ... just generic copies)

Ok ... I've checked most drugs stores and grocery stores on the westside of LA, here's a few things I've found:

Question: What stores carry Entertainment Weekly for sale?

Answer:

Always Carries: Vons, Pavillions, Rite Aid

Mostly Caries: CVS

Sometimes Caries: Famima

Does not Carry: 7/11, Walgreens, Ralphs, Smart & Final, AM/PM, Mexican Grocers (4x), random liquor stores (7x)

Not enough information known: Barnes & Noble, Albertsons, Gelsons, Trader Joe's, Target, Fast & Easy, and Whole Foods.

--------------- Geographic Area Covered ---------------

I've covered everything in Downtown LA, Culver City, and most of Hollywood, Mar Vista, Marina Del Rey, Venice, and Westchester. I missed a few places that close early; will probably try again around 6am. I've gone through approx 300 magazines, no luck.

I'm assuming effectively random distribution of the ad; that is to say that EW, inc. didn't carefully cherry-pick the recipients of the 1000 special ad issues, but instead distributed them indifferently.

Some tips:

* Some places will only have their EW magazines at the checkout while others will have them on a separate rack which is either on a shelf around where greeting cards end and vitamins start (in drug stores), where the film development sections used to be (perhaps still are), off in a desolate corner, or some place completely unexpected. I have yet to find a store that had EW BOTH on the rack in an aisle AND at the checkout.

* Employees of the store generally _have_no_idea_ if they carry EW or not; just ask them where the mags are.

* Customers are sloppy with magazines. A large number of times I found say, a Vogue, placed in front of the EW stash; so if you are glancing over the rack and can't find the stack of EW, look BEHIND the front magazines and you may find it.

* Grocery stores generally open at 6 am. Drug stores, if they close at all, generally open later; between 7 and 9.

* Remember, EW is an entertainment magazine so it will be placed with celeb gossip and other hollywood like magazines. Generally there's a mens' section (with things like sports, working out, monster trucks) a kids section, a feigned intellectual section, a glamour section, and an entertainment section; oftentimes mixed with the tween (think 17, tigerbeat, etc) section.

* I haven't tried a book seller (e.g., Barnes & Noble) or a newstand yet, but I don't think they would carry a significantly larger quantity of the issue or be statistically more likely to have the special ad on an issue by issue basis so therefore, I don't necessary view them as more lucrative potentials.

* This is the cover you are looking for; it's pretty distinct: http://www.ew.com/ew/inside/issue/0,,ewTax:1227,00.html ...

What I have been doing is taking the whole stack and then bending them in a wavy motion to quickly see if it's all paper, or you know, something else. Then I will eye-ball the thickness; this isn't a 1000 page wedding magazine, it's only about the thickness of a Cardbus card. I would think that an issue with the right advertisement would be bulbous and obvious; it clearly has different paper stock. Interestingly enough, EW doesn't seem to have the 25 odd mail-in subscription things fall out when you pick it up, nor does it seem to have a different paper stock ad that makes you flip to it. This image from ebay has a pretty good representation of the standard issue with thickness: http://i.ebayimg.com/t/ENTERTAINMENT-WEEKLY-October-5-2012-T...

Anyway, lastly, if you are lucky and get one, please post pictures, I want to see it! This sounds like pretty neat technology.

Wow, I wish they'd given this to the iFixit people to tear apart instead.

Seconded. It was pretty obvious that it was a phone about 20 seconds in. Watching them finally figure out the keypad was in fact a keypad around 8 minutes became too stressful to watch.

Wow, just wow.

I gave a talk on the Internet of Things (it was an IEEE event) and talked about how new problems could be attacked with nearly free compute + network. This is such a great example of that in practice.

Can you imagine what they could do to cost reduce just to an ad unit with a bit of pre-paid cell minutes?

EDIT: I am surprised they didn't pull the sim card, put it in a nominally complete phone and make a call on it.

Looks like it's this phone: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Unlocked-Single-Sim-A-GPS-3G-Cell-Ph...

Same color PCB, sim card and camera in same position.

Though the lowest I saw it listed was $35 for wholesale orders, so I'm guessing it's a bit cheaper without the case, standard battery etc. But really I guess by the time you add in the sim + data costs, new battery and the 2 extra boards + labour would probably be around $40 a piece. So 1000 of these would of costed around $40k, pretty expensive ad campaign for only 1000 people.

But I guess these guys will get a bunch of exposure off it (already has anyway), so it maybe might pay off.

Still looking on Alibaba atm, seem crazy that you can actually get 7-10" tablets for around $30, for example: http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/625682187/PF_Tech_mid_with...

I if was in CW's shoes, I think it would of been much more impressive to have a huge big screen in the middle of the page rather then a tiny little one.

Of course it would use more battery and there's no 3g, but if you loaded it up with 4gb of content on a loop, would look much more impressive IMO.

That teardown is crazy. I was definitely surprised. Not the most professional tear-down but very funny how they keep repeating each other and then seem genuinely surprised.

I don't know about "best tear down ever" though...

I wonder if they are using the GPS to track customers.

They could even use it to eavesdrop on customers...

I'm guess this is not exactly the type of magazine you would want to be taking onto a flight without knowing about it. Can see some security chap throwing a right wobbler.

This reminds me of the 2008 Esquire magazine that had an e-ink cover and ad: http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/08/esquires-e-ink-infused-ma...

I bought that one to take apart.

Unfortunately it was a segmented display, not bitmapped, with some art and text already drawn into it. The driver chip just turned a few segments on and off. We didn't get our free general purpose display, but it was interesting to play with for a few minutes.

You can hack it and turn it into a clock (sorta):

http://hackaday.com/2008/10/14/how-to-make-an-e-paper-clock-...

I hope someone works out who is obliged to provide GPL Linux source code (CW network? Entertainment Weekly?), so they can run their own OS on their throwaway adphone.

Has to be something they can be made into that's more useful than scrap.

I'm not sure if this is a brilliant publicity stunt or a pathetic example of the potent synergy of desperation of dying mediums.

And by "pathetic" I don't mean inadequate... I mean arousing pity.

What's most telling is that they didn't do this publicity stunt back in 2005, when they could have just as well done it with a thousand $10 used Nokias in a thousand magazines.

Wow. This is very daring attempt. It looks like those singing Hallmark greeting cards but way supersized into a cell phone.

If this becomes cheap enough, it's a new venue for publishing.

I saw this in japan with cellphones at least 5 years ago.

Ew any details on that or insight what we might see in 5 years time based upon now?

Really surprised they were able to make a call with it.

So can I just go to let's say Barnes and Noble and pick one of these up?

I'm guessing this is only in the U.S.?

yes, and in LA and New York only.

I want one! That's awesome.

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