Wired Magazine's Cover Idea
Collaboration with Xerox Puts Subscribers' Faces On Cover
The Wired Magazine and the Xerox Corporation collaboration invites subscribers to send in photos of themselves for covers of customized copies in a forthcoming issue.
In a collaboration between the leading techhnology periodical Wired and the Xerox Corporation, 5,000 of the magazine's subscribers will receive a copy of the July 2007 issue of Wired with his/her picture on the cover. The thousands of customized issues are a tie-in with the cover story on the future of personalization in technology and marketing.
Xerox is a regular advertiser in Wired. The customization is a way for Xerox to publicize its new digital production press and customization software acquired in its recent purchase of the technology company XMPie.
In June 2004, subscribers of Reason magazine received copies with the neighbohoods where they lived pictured on the cover and circled in red. The photos were copies of ones taken by satellites. The Reason magazine cover tied in with the feature story on the ominous intrusiveness of technology.
For the cover of its 2006 "Person of the Year" issue, TIME magazine had a small sheet of shiny aluminum-like material that reflected the face of any reader bringing change to politics, communication, etc., from developments with computers and communications in the Information Age.
The July 2007 Wired cover goes beyond the Reason and TIME covers by being considerably more individualized. To get photos for its 5,000 customized covers, Wired is inviting subscribers to upload photos of themselves toits website. These subscribers can adjust their photo's color palette and also write a headline to go with it. The first 5,000 subscribers responding will be the ones to receive the customized copies.
The Wired-Xerox venture builds on innovative aspects of "personalization" introduced by MySpace and YouTube, social-networking websites where users upload pictures of themselves.
