Electronic Gaming Monthly, a Ziff Davis title, shut down in January 2009. Now, according to Consumerist, subscribers are receiving Maxim to finish out their subscriptions. And some are angry about it.
Female subscribers and parents of young susbcribers, in particular, are not thrilled with having their gaming news supplanted by scantily clad starlets and “hometown hotties” and are showing their wrath on blog posts and comment pages across the Web. I can understand their ire. Maxim is not my cup of tea, either.
But does this really count as a massive fufillment goof? If you think in terms of stereotypes, the majority audiences for both magazines would seem similar: young men who are interested in entertainment content. Not being privy to the company’s customer data, I can’t say whether the stereotypes are true, but if they are, I think pleasing a majority of consumers, even at the risk of annoying a small percent, isn’t a bad way to go.
Some commenters have wondered why EGM and/or Maxim didn’t send out letters, offering refunds or a choice of replacement magazines. That would have been nice, and probably best in terms of fostering goodwill among ALL customers, but an extra mailing would have been expensive, and they would have run the risk of encouraging refund demands, rather than neatly moving all readers to a new magazine.
