Trend: IPC offers a Subscription 'MIX'

The Mix from IPC Media is a new subscription format that gives subscribers an opportunity to sample a mix of magazines over a 12-month period.

In a first for the industry 'The Mix' launches in two markets: homes and fashion. 'The Mix: Homes' gives a three-month taster of Homes & Gardens, 25 Beautiful Homes, Ideal home and Livingetc; while 'The Mix: Fashion' gives three months each of Marie Claire, Look, In Style and Now.

According to IPC Head of Subscriptions Marketing, The Mix has been created following research which revealed potential subscribers would appreciate the opportunity to 'pick and mix' titles.

Strategy: 'Multi' is Dangerous

Preparing to extend your magazine to the Internet?
Al Ries (marketing consultant and author of many books on marketing) has a word of advice: "Stay where you are and launch a new brand on the web".

Read the complete article ''Multi' Is the Most Dangerous Word in the Dictionary" on 'Advertising Age'.

Strategy: Magazines Still a Good Investment

When Joe Mansueto purchased Inc. and Fast Company for $32.5 million in 2005, they were two publications long-neglected by their publisher. "The previous owners (Gruner & Jahr) had disinvested in the magazines,” said Mansueto, delivering the morning keynote at the Folio: Publishing Summit in Chicago. “They had lost the trust of the advertisers.”

Despite online competition, magazines still make good investments, said Mansueto. A long-time reader of Inc. and Fast Company, Mansueto, founder of MorningStar, a publicly traded mutual fund and investment information provider, couldn’t resist putting in a bid for the publications when they were put on the market in May 2005.

Enhanced Technology
After winning the auction, Mansueto's strategy was to create an independent publishing company and to invest in technology and online. “Inc., for me, has always been a very powerful magazine,” he said. “I’m a firm believer in the power of capitalism, a free market and entrepreneurship. And Inc. is at the center of this movement.”

Better Paper and Editorial
To strengthen, the Inc. brand, Mansueto invested in better-quality paper stock and increased edit pages 20 percent. He also increased the editorial staff, hiring away Real Simple editor Jane Beretson.

Exciting Design
At Fast Company, Mansueto implemented a more “visually exciting” design featuring a prominent person on every cover. He also transformed the print-heavy brand into a multi-platformed brand focusing on online, events, as well as franchise print issues.

The efforts have paid off. Inc. is the number one business publication and newsstand sales are up 47 percent and Fast Company is the number three business publication with newsstand sales are up 37 percent. Combined Web traffic for the magazines grew 50 percent last year and is expected to grow at least 20 percent this year, Mansueto said. Unique visitors for the sites are up 159 percent.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE SOURCE: Folio: Summit Keynote: Despite Online Competition, Magazines Still a Good Investment

Strategy: Turn Readers into Contributors

JPG Magazine, a photography magazine that features user-generated content, recently relaunched. In its previous incarnation, the magazine allowed photographers to submit photos based on one theme per issue. While anyone could submit, JPG's founders (Derek Powazek and Heather Champ) decided which photos made it into print.

Now, JPG is even more customer-made. Members can upload photos for a variety of themes--three for the mag's 8th issue: Tourist, Intimate and Embrace the Blur--as well as for themes that aren't yet scheduled for an issue. Member participation helps JPG decide which themes to choose for future issues. While a first selection is performed by contributors themselves as they're only allowed to submit one photo to each theme, the other major change is that members can now vote for other members' submissions. JPG's editors will continue to make the final selection, but member votes play an important role. If their photo is picked, contributors get USD 100 and a year's subscription to the magazine.

Besides becoming more user-generated, JPG has also taken two steps towards 'serious' publishing. While the first 6 issues were printed on demand using print-on-demand service Lulu, JPG is now switching to traditional offset printing to lower the sale price. The publication will also start featuring full-page ads and offers advertisers the opportunity to sponsor a theme.

At a time when many magazines are shifting from offline to online, JPG's parent company, 8020 Publishing, is moving in the opposite direction, acknowledging that paper has advantages over the web.

As Powzaek puts it: "Print is difficult. It's cumbersome and expensive. Highly impractical. But it's also archival, beautiful, and emotive. Print can be intimate in a way the web never can. [...] Now, with an internet brimming with data, magazines are free to skip the data and focus on what they do best: communicate, entertain, and inspire."

Combining the two worlds -- using the internet to open up to readers and recognize them as valuable contributors, magazines can only get better.

Read the original article at http://www.springwise.com/weekly/2006-11-07.htm#jpg

Strategy: Get your Editors to Blog

When the much loved Business 2.0 staffer Om Malik decided to leave the magazine to focus solely on his popular tech blog GigaOm, Business 2.0 editor, Josh Quittner, started to consider a new model of publishing that embraces blogs and the creation of personal media into their culture. As part of this new directive, every journalist at Business 2.0 has been charged with creating a blog and the publications has soft launched a group contributed model where one blog pulls content from all journalist blogs, as well as 18 individual journalist blogs.

According to the editor, blogging has following benefits:
1) Allows smarter and more engaged reporters
2) Adding a requirement of 1-2 posts on business per day ensures continually updated content
3) Offers more ad revenue opportunities across multiple sites
4)Has CNN articles pointing directly to journalist blogs, offering reporters a personal stake and individual traffic
5) Preserves the church and state separation issue of editorial versus journalism
6) Releasing some editorial control offers faster turnaround and more cutting edge work

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Sometime ago, contentsutra had reported that Indian Express has started journalist blogs? At one time CHIP from Infomedia also used to have a tech blog... Any idea how these blogs are being used?
Are there any other magazines in India promoting blogs? Please write in…
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You can read Josh Quittner’s talk nicely summerised on Rohit Bhargava's blog here.