Boardroom View

Maghound In Your Future?

Jack Hanrahan, Hanrahan Media Services LLC
Apr 02 2008

Maghound In Your Future?

Maghound?
It’s the magazine lover’s best friend…
It’s the most innovative idea on the magazine circulation front in years…
It’s Maghound!
Maghound? 
Yes, Maghound.  It’s an odd-sounding name at first perhaps.  But read this out loud and we bet you’ll get over any initial squeamishness about the name by the time you finish.
So what is it?  Some say: Think Netflix for magazine subscriptions and you’ve got it.  It’s that simple.
This fall, Maghound could become a new way for consumers to buy magazines.  Here’s how it would wor

• Maghound is selling a membership in a service; it’s not selling traditional subscriptions to magazines.

• As a Maghound member, you order the magazines you want for as long or as short as you’d like.  You pay a monthly fee for what you choose.  Final pricing has not been released but test versions has pricing as follow

• 3 magazines for $4.95 a month
• 5 magazines for $7.95 a month
• 7 magazines for $9.95 a month
• About 20% of the available titles would be premium-price

• You manage your membership online…on one screen
  • Adding or dropping titles
  • Lengthening or shortening the period you want to receive a title. 

• The service is open to all publishers

The brainchild of Brian Wolfe and team at Time Inc. Consumer Marketing group, the simplicity, flexibility and power of Maghound will not be exclusive to one publishing house.  In fact, the more publishers and titles, the better.     
A viability test conducted by Time Inc. indicated that users:

• Liked managing all titles in one place (no more multiple renewal notices!)
• Took over 10 minutes to review titles and fill out their order
• Ordered 4.7 titles per order on average

 
The test also revealed that people were upset when it was revealed at the end of the ordering process that this was only a test.  They wanted to pull the trigger and order right then.  That’s a good sign. 
 
Those who tried to order through Maghound were younger, better educated, and more affluent than the magazine subscriber.  This finding, if continued to be borne out when the service goes to live test mode in the fall, would bode well for continuing the demographic advantages magazines as a whole have on other media.
 
In addition, these copies will provide very engaged readers to advertisers, I suspect.  When, for a flat fee, you can choose from hundreds of magazines for a length of time that fits your needs, that would seem to demonstrate ‘wantedness’.”
 
Some skeptics question whether loyal magazine subscribers will embrace Maghound.  I  think that misses the whole point.  Maghound seems well-suited to make magazines easier to sample for lengths of time that best suit the user.  The service may be just what the industry needs to bridge consumers from buying a single copy to taking a subscription.

And  the name?  Don’t you love it!

This article first appeared in Jack Hanrahan’s newsletter on the magazine business, CircMatters.  Send Jack an email if you’d like to see the most recent issue.