The Daily Perk

Hemispheres Magazine - Saving our Industry?

When Pace Communications, the publisher of several in-flight magazines, recently boasted that United Airlines’s Hemispheres garnered the most affluent readership according to the latest MRI study, I wasn’t surprised.  But when I looked more closely at the release, it gave me some hope for the print industry.

According to the release, the median household income of Hemispheres readers is over $120,000 per year.  That’s higher than all other national publications, including, Forbes, Fortune and The Wall Street Journal.  But that’s not too shocking considering that the only place you can find the magazine is in the seat pocket in front of you on a flight, and—surprise—affluent people fly.  The next number quoted by the release wasn’t any more revealing.  “Hemispheres” has experienced an increase in readership to the tune of just over 20 percent.  Again, this is pretty easy to make sense of—more people flying means more people reading your in-flight magazine.  It was the release’s final number that I found compelling—the MRI found that Hemispheres readers spend almost half-an-hour with each issue.

Now, we’ve all forgotten the latest issue of our favorite magazine at the airport bar.  And when the bratty kid kicking your seat screams so loudly that he manages to drown-out the snoring offensive lineman next to you, you’d reach for the phonebook if it meant brief mental respite. So, when you’re on the plane, it’s any port in the storm, right?  I mean, talk about a captive audience.

But half an hour is a long time.  My subway ride to work takes about half that time, and I’m always able to get through a few top stories in The New York Times before my stop.  Half-an-hour means that people are not just flipping through the ads—they are actually reading the magazine.  And since “Hemispheres” runs many long features (see Frederick Waterman’s "Two Towns Down" from the October and November issues) it may indicate that despite our purported 30-second attention span, the American love affair with a good story is not dead.  And that’s good news for aspiring magazine writers everywhere.

To read more entries on captivating audiences with marketing incentives, visit the S&MM SoundOff, the official blog of our sister publication, Sales & Marketing Management.

What's Your Time Worth?

It's Monday morning and you're in corporate hell - the weekly staff meeting.  Struggling to stay awake as your manager practices the art of talking much but saying little, you doodle some mythic equations to figure out how much money is flying out the window with each painful minute.  Sprinting for the nearest caffeine shot afterward, you think to yourself, "Surely, our time would be better spent doing something else." 

Now, thanks to PayScale and CNET Media scion, BNET.com, you may have some real numbers to back that claim up.  Sort of.

Meeting Miser, available from BNET, allows employees to track the amount of money absorbed during a meeting or presentation.  The application is linked to PayScale's massive salary database, which includes over 8.5 million salary profiles across hundreds of industries according to BNET.  Simply select the state and city in which your meeting takes place, choose the appropriate professional profile for all attendees, and hit start.  The calculator tabulates the cost of the meeting by the second.

In practical terms, the application is utterly useless because the math doesn't work.  You can't use an employee's annual salary figure to track the value of his or her time by the second.  But, it is amusing - which is what you're probably after if you're reading this blog.

So, have fun with it.  You only need one "attendee" to start Meeting Miser.  Find out how much it costs to get coffee, have lunch, or write an email.  When you're disgruntled, start the clock while you cruise the net and happily watch company cash tick away.  Or, if you're a go-getter, use Meeting Miser to improve your efficiency.

Oh, the cost of this post? $32.67.  Comment and let me know if it was worth it.