This week's winner in the shameless self promotion category is (drum roll please): AT&T Magazine. 

I get that custom magazines need to be brand builders - that's part and parcel of what these magazines do; it's how they justify budgets often. But it's hard to build brand when no one is paying attention, whivh is exactly what happens when you create a magazine that serves your interests alone and ignores those of that pesky group of people called your readers.

Beyond the self serving articles (cite a few here), it's the machine-gun scatter of "AT&T" throughgout the book that makes me flip through the entire "issue" without any attempt to engage in the content. I tried to count the mentions but gave up when I encountered 22 on ONE page -- it's in the heds and deks; it's in captions; it's in body copy; it's even in the actual images. This from a magazine called -- are you ready? --  "AT&T Magazine." I kind of know it's from AT&T without the reminder every 10 words or less. Without offering any real value to the reader experience, the constant brand reinforcement is the equivalent of putting up a thousand billboards on a trans-arctic highway . 

The fact that AT&T magazine arrives in my mailbox withgout aqny effort on my part only exacerbates the engagement issue. With nothing invested in the issue, I have little reason to let it add to the clutter of my llife. Paid sub magazines already have crossed the theshold of reader engagement; free magazines have to make that initial connection and just shouting out the brand name over and over doesn't make that connection happen.