Seeing Double

Men's Health magazine's December cover features Twilight star Taylor Lautner. Most people have seen several pictures of Taylor Lautner and would probably agree that he has a very fit, healthy, and admired frame. It's because of his much-appreciated body that the fact that he's on the cover of Men's Health should come as no surprise. However, the surprise is that Lautner's cover is almost identical to the cover that Jason Statham shot back in October 2007. The cover pages are eerily similar as almost all of the text on the left-hand side of the most recent cover matches the text from the left-hand side of the October 2007 cover as if it were a carbon copy. This seemingly ridiculous repeat of information poses this question: are Men's Health readers being gipped? Relieving words from the magazine's editor tell us no. David Zinczenko enlightens us by saying that the apparent re-use of material was entirely intentional, an an alternate cover was sent to subscribers. "Rest assured-it's this originality and reporting rigor that's made us the biggest men's magazine brand in the world," Zinczenko said.

From a PR perspective, Zinczenko trusts the readers of Men's Health enough to appreciate the creativity behind such a stunt. It takes a committed magazine-to-reader relationship to be confident doing something so dangerous as to making it seem like the information in an issue will be repeated. If anything, a loyal reader will pick up the issue anyway regardless of the misleading cover, and subscribers will be reinforced of the benefits of subscribing: no misleading covers.

http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/crush/taylor-lautner-cover-repeats-the-same-old-lines/255?nc