Personalized print

BRAND: Lexus
BRAND OWNER:Toyota
CATEGORY:Automotive
REGION:USA
DATE:Mar 2009 - May 2009
MEDIA OWNER:Time Inc

The Lexus SUV 2010 RX is a car with 22 customizable settings, plus eight options handled by a dealer. Lexus wanted to highlight this feature and cotton on to the fact that these days consumers demand personalized offerings.

The rise of consumer empowerment in a digitally connected world, means people can read specialized blogs, RSS feeds and create personalized Google homepages.

Consumers have become accustomed to filtering out the content they don’t care about and select to read only the things they want.

Lexus recognized this but also recognized that this type of selection process was not available to the same degree in offline media.

Lexus teamed up with Time Inc to deliver this level of personalization to print. Readers can select five Time Warner magazines that Time editors will combine into a personalized magazine with 56 possible combinations.

The magazine, called “Mine”, is essentially a printed, expanded RSS feed, which is a five issue, 10-week experiment. Magazines available include Time, Sports Illustrated, Food & Wine, Real Simple, Money, In Style, Golf and Travel and Leisure. Lexus is the only advertiser, but with personalized messages for each subscriber targeting their interest.

When users sign up to the service, they fill out an online survey that means that all of the Lexus ads in the magazine are tailored to the reader, and will include their name and where they live.