We Hit You Where You Live

Reason's groundbreaking June issue--featuring over 40,000 personalized covers, editor's notes, and back cover ads--has generated a ton of press attention. Here are two of the latest stories:

This issue will hit you where you live
Los Angeles Times, May 18

Data trail gives marketers -- and you -- advantages
Chicago Tribune, May 17

Comments

[will]

so, is this issue out already?

[garym]

I get _Reason_ at Barnes and Noble, so I didn't get a personalized cover. Truth is, it makes me less inclined to subscribe than before. I realize calling my attention to the information's availability doesn't change anything, but it just gives me an unpleasant feeling.

[Jesse Walker]

Yes. Collect them all!

[Jesse Walker]

(That was directed to Will. The joke sounds a little creepier if you think it's a response to Gary.)

[AJ]

got mine a week ago, I am only 25 miles from the printers in Mt Morris IL, so mine comes very fast.

a bit disappointed in my cover, I understand that those in urban areas got better photos. The map on airphotousa showed coverage was tons better in the cities rather than rural areas, but why wouldn't it be? Oh Well...

[Lisa Simpson]

It also got a write-up in Slate's In Other Magazines last week or so, complete with photo of sample cover.

[Mo]

I never got my copy of the issue. I'm waiting on tenterhooks for the damn thing already. 🙂

[Pavel]

Your marketing gimmick worked on me quite well and I subscribed.

I fully plan to collect the whole set, trade 'em with my friends and scare mom.

[Pavel]

Incidentally, if the issue I get in the mail gets me to start freaking out over the dangers of untrammeled lightning fast information transfer technologies, I'll soundly cure myself by using your piece of shit comments uploader.

You're not scoring any libertarian points when government bots can recognize my face but I can't post a sentence to this thread in under 5 minutes.

[Larry A]

And both links require registration. Was that intentional?

Have to log off now. The black helicopter is landing.

[fyodor]

What's that website that gives you registrations again?

[Brian]

bugmenot.com

[Hydroman]

Thank God I don`t live in the post office. You`ll never find me Nick.
That shot looks like a reconnaissance film from my
debriefing days back in Vietnam.Especially with the red circle around the US Post Office.
It scared the hell out of the Vets that work over there.
You know a picture like that could bring the Homeland Security Team to your home some night.
Sleep tight!(Gun in sight)

[Brian]

I got mine (about a week later than normal, BTW, Mo, so maybe it's on its way) and I was really impressed. I live in house that's behind another house (not visible from the street), one that UPS, FedEx, and occasionally even the post office have a hard time finding when delivering packages, and it was smack-dab in the middle of the circle on the cover. Nicely done.

[twistedmerkin]

I received my issue a few days ago. I was horrified to discover that Reason knows my name and address.

[Dewey Fischer]

Loved the cover! I always wanted to be featured on the cover of a major magazine.

[judson]

What's on the cover if I buy it at a news stand?

[Patrick]

Your marketing gimmick worked on me quite well and I subscribed.

Me too, but no sign of it yet....

[Patrick]

Your marketing gimmick worked on me quite well and I subscribed.

Me too, but no sign of it yet....

And Pavel is right - you really need to do something about this comments system - it sucks 🙂 Need some programming help?

[dot]

I signed up just to get it, and i'm still waiting for mine too. Glad I'm not the only one.

[lisa]

Was anyone else's cover wrong? We got ours seemingly on time, but our photo is way off.

[ReasonStaff]

Lisa
Your copy was mailed to Al Qaeda by mistake.Sorry,shit happens.

[Reason-Staff]

Lisa: Your cover wasn't wrong, you're being "relocated."

[Patrick]

I'm interested to see what I get, cos I have never seen any mapping software that can find my address. I live in a part of NYC where everyone puts a hyphen in the middle of their house number for no good reason that I can see, and computers seem to have no idea what to make of it....

[undercoveragent]

Patrick
Do de letters GPS ring a fimiliar bell? They can find anyone.

[fyodor]

undercoveragent,

Sure they can find anyone, but first they need the correct information, without which they might just, who knows...bomb the Chinese Embassy!!

[Patrick]

Sure you can find anyone if you input the correct latitude and longitude, which is what GPS does. I'm not sure if they input addresses.

[Larry]

Could you post an actual cover? Maybe yours?

[fyodor]

This is when it really sucks not to have any friends who are libertarians! 🙂

[Andrew Lynch]

I got mine. Very impressive. My new neighbor was standing on the front step with me when the mail came. She looked down in horror when she saw the cover. "What do you DO for a living?" she asked. I jokingly said I had sent a threatening letter to John Ashcroft. I don't think she was amused.

[Lisa Simpson]

Pretty brave of Mr. Gillespie to publicize his location. But Oxford, OH? I assumed he was an Angeleno! Speaking of which, what's the pale diagonal traversing the 405 in the LA pic?

Anyone else here adore aerial photos (not just of Reason subscribers' houses)?

[Andrew Lynch]

Yes Lisa,

Go here for a cool tool that allows you to see your residence much closer than the Reason cover. The zoom on my address was close enough at the time the photo was taken for me to see my car parked out front!!!

For some killer beauty shots with astonishing detail, check out the gallery here. Enjoy.

[Ruthless]

Our ahead-of-the-curve California daughter had been bugging me about the cover since she had heard about it on NPR.
My curiosity about the newstand edition was satisfied just today.
I'm giddy with anticipation of upcoming cover spreads of up-skirt J-Lo.
Quoting Andrew Lynch, above, "Go here for a cool tool."

Life is good!

[Only Ed]

I'm a bit disappointed myself.

My home is 1/16" wide.

It says my median income is $60,405, I'm 53 years old and there are two people in my household.

Well, one out of three ain't bad, I guess.

But what really dismays me is that I see articles in print that I read online two or three weeks ago. Makes me wonder why I still subscribe...

[Ruthless]

I see your point, Only Ed.

You need to hurry down to Sam's Club for an industrial-sized jar of White Rose Petroleum Jally.

Trust me, Nick don't care if you stick the pages of your own issue together.

[MJ]

Shot and missed. My cover photo was more than a mile off. The information on the personalized pages is entirely based on my name and address, which I gave to Reason voluntarily. The logistical effort to make several tens of thousands of different cover sheets is impressive. However, the reality of the experiment is less than cool, less than disturbing.

[EdtheOnly]

Ruthless,

-You a personal friend of Nick?

As for petroleum "jally", I wouldn't know. But considering the history of your posts, you seem to have a great deal of familiarity with it.

[Just Passing Through, But I Ac]

Hey, give "Ruthless" a break.

He's consistently idiotic. Who else here can make any claims to consistency? And loyal? Gosh, he posts 60 times a day! H&R needs more dolts like "Ruthless." Keeps the riff-raff in, dontcha know.

[Mike]

Only Ed: You subscribe to see a picture of your house on the cover, of course.

Actually, in my case it was a picture of the local UPS Store, but it's still pretty spooky to see my name and address right there on the mailing label, plain as day.

Didn't Wired already do this with some of their ads a couple of years ago?

[Ammonium]

Nick says that he does not envy my average commute of 14.64 minutes. Does he never leave his house? My average commute would probably be even shorter if I drove, but I enjoy the fresh air.

He says that 49.69% of us have college degrees (which is pretty good considering that the median age is 22), but our median income is $19,591. Does that make us losers? Is that why my advertisement was some lame thing about 17 homes being condemned in my state, and not an advertisement for a luxury car?

[Walter Wallis]

National magazine ads used to say "Prices Higher West of the Mississippi."

I hope Barbra Streisend was pleased with her issue. Otherwise you'll hear from her attorneys.

[David Blanchard]

What a relief. Reason didn't find where I live, at least not on the front cover. Of course, the inside cover showed a Yahoo or Mapquest location that hit the mark.

[Rick Barton]

Kudos Reason! The content of the zine is stellar. This is the most interesting and dynamic blog in all of the political blogosphere, and now it turns out that you guys are marketing geniuses as well! You deserve every word of the acclaim you're getting.

It is so cool that you guys came up with this. But, can you really imagine a lefty or neo-con publication coming up with a marketing ploy this clever?

[Rick Barton]

I haven't received my issue yet and am really anxious for it.

BTW, if the satellite pics were taken before the end of last summer, could you be so kind as to tell the satellite guys make it zoom over my house again and click another pic? I had my trees trimmed in the early fall and I think it will look nicer. You can just put the new pic in my July issue. Also, if the satellite folks can give me a little warning, I will chalk out some groovy libertarian slogan on my back lawn! 😉

[Ernie Longmire]

Andrew & Lisa, check out Keyhole for an even cooler tool: all the aerial imagery is combined with map and elevation data and rendered onto a 3D globe that you control in real time with a zoom control, a tilt control and a joystick. The imagery they offer outside of metro areas is poor (15m resolution -- even the original Terraserver did significantly better than that) but the metro imagery is solid. San Diego is in three-inch resolution; you can count the Botts Dots on the freeways.

[KentInDC]

My coworkers were pretty impressed that I made the front of a national magazine - even one most of them had never heard of. Some of them were even able to tell which streets were which in the aerial photo because they are familiar with my neighborhood (I live across the street from the Ballston Metro Station in Arlington, VA.).

I spent last weekend working in NJ and mentioned the magazine to a coworker there. She said her boyfriend, who works for Experian, is always promoting the advantages of such information collection and was very excited when he checked out the feature article.

[Patrick]

As I expected, my Reason cover is about 15 blocks off the mark! I guess I feel safer knowing that the closest you guys can target me is "somewhere on my street". Although the globeexplorer.com link above surprisingly WAS able to find my exact address.