Illuminating Marketing Blog

When markets change, so do businesses.

For years, print publications have seen a steady erosion of their reader-base. Despite more magazines being published now than ever before, the time (and money ) spent by readers is decreasing. The magic of the internet has taken the luster off the traditional print publication.

And as a reaction to that, in the hope that it can muster a bit of positive publicity, Esquire Magazine is upping the ante. Since some things can only be touched, Esquire has decided that the best way to publicize their 75th Anniversary is to bring some future tech to the newsstand. Behold the ePaper cover.

ePaper - like the kind developed by the good folks at E Ink Corporation - is a low-power, flexible display screen that looks and feels like paper. The idea for Esquire is to get you to buy their magazine (and support their advertisers) by offering the special edition with a powered cover.

While the effort may just be crazy enough to work - for this issue anyway - the real story isn't how this technology could be the harbinger of all future magazines, but rather whether even with portable/disposable displays people will continue to support print publications at all.