If you're a subscriber, don't overlook the easy-to-miss 2-page spread, which has a tiny white plastic card attached to the page. At only 128MB drive, it's not going to win any capacity awards, but you can erase it and then have a free flash drive small enough to mail in a standard envelope if you like. Or swallow. Or insert into a custom case that you build yourself from hot glue and glitter.
In the past, we've found from talking to people in other parts of the country that these multimedia campaigns don't always cover an entire subscription base—so if it doesn't show up in your mailbox, don't blame us. However, CBS will also be distributing the flash drives to American Airlines customers this month, according to another source.
"Cadillac is CBS' Monday driver" [Hollywood Reporter]
(Photo: Chris Walters)
@MalcoveMagnesia: I'm in a large cosmopolitian city in the Southeast.
@MorganLH85: I read the whole article, genius.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone finds that these install any DRM monitoring or enforcing software (the way Sony CDs did for a while) or any other kind of spyware. This feels like a way to get software onto your machine. If you want someone to view a Flash presentation, why would you not just put a URL in the ad?
USB sticks represent an interesting way to send multimedia presentations to targeted customers (and this might be just that), but they're also a potentially huge security hole if you run one from an unknown source. I know, CBS isn't unknown, but nobody expected Sony to install spyware, either.
]]>Try reading the WHOLE article next time...
"In the past, we've found from talking to people in other parts of the country that these multimedia campaigns don't always cover an entire subscription base-so if it doesn't show up in your mailbox, don't blame us."
]]>They probably compress it to save time transfering the files to the usb memory.
]]>And... nothing happens.
There's a compressed "cbs_mac.zip" file on the drive that decompresses, and the decompressed Flash file is what you can double click to actually see the multimedia on the drive. There's enough space on the drive (36 Megs) free to hold the uncompressed "CBS_Mac" document (which is 4 Megs). Why they didn't put the uncompressed Flash player on the drive is a mystery to me.
3/4ths of "targeted" Entertainment Weakly readers aren't going to go to the trouble of inserting this little thing into their computer, and 3/4ths of those people who are Macintosh users aren't going to know (or care, or read the directions in tiny font at the bottom of the mag's advertisement) enough to uncompress the .zip file on the drive.
So all in all, I'd say General Motors has paid some company scads of money for a promotion that's going to reach a single digit percentage of the audience who actually notices there's a flash drive in their magazine.
@BowlingForDollars, the place where you are located probably determines who got the ad or not. where are you? I am in San Francisco, affluent land of DINK 20/30-somethings.
]]>Um, I didn't get one in my copy. And I've been a subscriber for years.
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