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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Men’s Health Brings Jimmy the Bartender to iPhone .jpg) “Jimmy the Bartender” advice column into a novel iPhone application. The $2.99 downloadable app for the iPod Touch and iPhone is a rara avis among mobile programs—it is informative, fun and whimsical. The app combines personal advice, pick-up tips, bar reviews, drink recipes and bar game secrets. “The Daily Jimmy” is the main component that the app carries over from the magazine. A daily Q&A with advice for men is kept in a “Barchive” of tavern philosophy delivered in the wry persona of Jimmy. There is also the “Instant Wingman” tool that sizes up the kind of woman you are spying in a bar and offers tips for approaching her with the right line and attitude. The very successful Rodale “Eat This, Not That” franchise of diet advice is folded into the mix with snacking advice. “Jimmy’s Best Bars” is a database of local reviews both from “Jimmy” and from users. “Shake it Up” describes and rates various drinks, and “Win Any Bar Game” offers tips for common barroom challenges. Users can submit photos, recipes and reviews from the phone itself. “We’re not just turning over the keys to a developer or repurposing content from the publication,” says David Zinczenko, SVP, Rodale, and editor-in-chief of Men’s Health. “We’re creating exciting new ways for the user to interact with our brand.” In fact, “Jimmy the Bartender” is among the best executions we have seen of a magazine brand’s voice and editorial sensibility. The app doesn’t simply try to re-create the magazine content but embodies the humor and editorial angle of the men’s magazine through an eclectic but coherent content mix and Jimmy’s persona. This is an artful blend of the utility that any mobile application requires and the playful creativity that turns a utility into a showpiece for what the iPhone/iPod Touch can do. “Jimmy the Bartender” also takes some marketing cues from other successful iPhone/iPod apps by capitalizing on the cross-marketing power of the platform. Within this application, Rodale not only markets its other mobile “Men’s Health Workouts” app but also pulls users into the Rodale online store where it sells magazine subscriptions and the fitness book catalog. Because mobile application users have already shown a willingness to pay for content, publishers have been successful in moving users across a family of applications rather than relying only on the hit-or-miss merchandising power of the Apple iTunes/iPhone store. While Rodale's app has not made any of the best-selling charts in the App Store, the scant number of reviews for the program are strongly positive. There are more than 30 million iPhone and iPod Touches in the market worldwide. This week, Apple is expected to unveil an updated line of iPods that likely will emphasize the iPod Touch models and the increasingly robust App Store ecosystem. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com |
 Sr. Marketing Manager, Confidential
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