Hammock CEO Rex Hammock spoke today on the topic of “How to Go to Market with a Marketing Services Business” at an American Business Media’s Marketing Services Council meeting in New York. Earlier this week, ABM’s Scott Fried interviewed Rex with some questions about being a provider of marketing services and what trends he’s seen in the industry during his career.
ABM: What does it mean to you to be a marketing services provider? How does that differ from being a traditional media company?
Rex Hammock: Here is a simplistic way I describe the difference: a traditional media company creates and manages media and content that support a traditional media business model (advertising, circulations, events, data, etc.). We create the same types of media and content but they support our clients’ various business models: the association business model, the healthcare business model or retailing business models.
“Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch” was a classic advertising slogan of the Don Draper era. Featuring a smiling model with a black eye, the grammatically incorrect Tareyton print ads ran from 1963 until the early 1980s (cigarette advertising on TV ended in 1971). On its surface, the slogan was a cute way to encourage loyalty to the Tareyton brand. Yet beneath the surface, it was an insidious and not-so-subtle rallying cry for smokers to ignore the evidence linking smoking to cancer that started mounting in earnest with the 1964 Surgeon General’s report.
Hammock Inc.’s eponymous head-helper, Rex Hammock, is among the 12 “media and publishing” Nashvillians included in the 450 top business, political and civic leaders honored in the Nashville Post’s 5th annual “In Charge” list. This is the second consecutive year the list has included Rex, the eponymous.
The Post post notes that Rex was “a trailblazer in blogging (he was the first person to blog a meeting with a president, in 2004) and social media (his Twitter handle is @R)” – which gives you an idea of how closely he follows developments in social and other kinds of media.
Rex founded Hammock in 1991 as a specialized marketing services company creating media that companies and organizations use to communicate directly with their customers or members. He also helped to found the national trade association, the Custom Content Council, of which Hammock Inc. is a founding member.
(And if you’re wondering what that photo is all about, it accompanied a story on the Google Enterprise blog when we were an early-adopter of Google Apps for Business.)
When developing a strategy for using customer media and content to build long-term relationships with customers or members, always remember “Chekov’s gun.”
For four years, American Spirit* has dedicated its March/April issue to Women’s History Month. It’s a particularly enjoyable issue to write, edit and design in partnership with the Daughters of the American Revolution since it gives us a chance to find and promote little-known stories of fascinating women of early America.
One of those women is a Cherokee “Beloved Woman” named Nan-ye-hi, an influential leader and peacekeeper during a time of great upheaval in the Cherokee Nation. Despite my living in Tennessee–her home and that of her ancestors–for the past 10 years, I had never even heard of Nan-ye-hi until the Nancy Ward DAR Chapter (named after her English name) suggested researching her life for this issue. It was a privilege to share that research with readers.
Our cover was designed to highlight Nan-ye-hi and two of the other diverse and distinguished women featured in this issue. Illustrator Antonio Rodrigues used organic shapes and earthy colors to illuminate Elizabeth Freeman, the former slave who helped abolish slavery in Massachusetts, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, a pioneer in Catholic education who became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized, and Nan-ye-hi. The subtle background script that fleshes out the illustrations underscores one of American Spirit’s goals: to faithfully record these early American women’s remarkable stories and convey their importance to modern readers.
Another feature is excerpted from Nancy Rubin Stuart’s book, Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married. Stuart details the moments that Lucy Flucker Knox and Peggy Shippen Arnold met their Revolutionary husbands Henry Knox and Benedict Arnold, and hints at ways the women’s initially parallel lives eventually diverged.
It’s Mardi Gras season, so it’s fitting that we travel to Louisiana for two stories: Our Historic Homes department visits Laura Plantation, a French Creole sugar plantation that was run by several strong-willed women in the 19th century, and Spirited Adventures checks in on Natchitoches, the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase.
*For more than a decade, Hammock has been honored to assist the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution in publishing their award-winning magazine. Anyone can subscribe here.