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October 10, 2008

If you are like most marketers and are looking for ways to stretch your advertising dollars in 2009, a new report by Marketing Evolution has the answer for you—magazines. According the report, magazines beat out TV and online media in terms of effectiveness when it comes to influencing audience behavior.

The study focused on an ROI “cost per impact” model that measured brand awareness, brand familiarity and purchase intent. Magazines were especially successful in the categories of branded familiarity and purchase intent. Defining ROI is always a tricky thing, but in this study they use three measurements as a guide:

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October 2, 2008

I'll be out of the office on Friday, October 3. I will not have access to e-mail, so if you need to reach me, please call (615-479-0429).

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September 24, 2008

I loved this clever headline in Sunday’s The New York Times— “Too Beautiful for Pixels”—about the biannual art book The Last Magazine. Formatted like a newspaper, its tag line is: All things new—at last. Magnus Berger and Tenzin Wild, co-founders of the magazine, said that colleagues advised them to publish it online. The co-founders decided against the advice, however, and opted for a print-only publication because ”with print you can make something really beautiful.”

I respect their decision, trusting that they know what is best for their content, audience and budget, but I disagree with the implication that you can’t create something “really beautiful” with a digital publication. The decision to choose a print, digital or a combination for distribution of your content should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Readers interact with digital publications differently than print publications, and so those behaviors must be weighed when determining what is right for your audience. Print publications can certainly be beautiful, but don’t discriminate against digital ones—they can be beautiful too.

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September 18, 2008

Whole Foods’ new website is a great example of how a company can take the passion its customers have for its products and services and create an online destination for this community to live, grow and thrive. The site connects Whole Foods fans from across the country, demonstrating that the company understands the power of community for their brand. Here are four tips that an association can learn from Whole Foods about how to create and manage a successful community online:

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September 15, 2008

I recently read about an interesting experiment: For the next three months the magazine Good is allowing readers to name their own subscription price. Good is not the first to experiment with the idea. For one month in late 2007, Paste allowed readers to name their subscription price, a program that resulted in 28,000 new paid subscribers. For a consumer magazine like Paste that carries advertising, a circulation increase of 28,000 should translate to a nice chunk of new advertising revenue.

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September 11, 2008

I’ve posted a number of times this year about how, in an effort to engage readers and meet the needs of advertisers, some magazines are using incentives to drive their readers to action—specifically to text. As a reward for this behavior, readers receive special offers, the chance to enter sweepstakes or advance notice on hot products.

In a new twist on this concept, SmartMoney’s Sept. 16 issue will drive readers to text, but with a different motivation. Instead of tempting readers with the lure of special samples or deals, the magazine will send readers premium content in exchange for their texts. Within its pullout section on retirement, SmartMoney will include a call-out box with a texting code and the phrase “retire.” Once readers send in their text messages, they will receive a PDF article about retirement.

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September 10, 2008

The private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson, specializing in the media, communications and information industries, recently released their annual report on media spending. According to the report, total communications spending is projected to grow 5.4 percent in 2008 to $924 billion. Outsourced custom publishing was one of the eight media segments that exhibited double-digit growth from 2002-2007. Along with word-of mouth marketing, pure-play Internet and mobile services, branded entertainment, out-of-home media, professional and business information services, VSS predicts that custom publishing will continue its growth momentum over the next five years, resulting in a solid decade of double-digit gains.

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August 22, 2008

I am out of the office until Tuesday, September 2. If you need something right away, please contact Natalie Willis.

Otherwise, please e-mail me, and I'll answer all messages when I return.

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July 9, 2008

A report recently released by Junta42 and BtoB magazine reveals that business marketers spend on average 29.42 percent of their budgets on custom content. This is slightly higher than that the 2007 studies by the Custom Publishing Council and Publications Management, which found marketers spending 27 percent on average for B2B and B2C. Spending on custom products is on the rise, too. In 2008, 42 percent of business marketers increased their spending on customized content marketing.

Find the full list of custom products used by marketers responding to the study here.

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June 23, 2008

According to a study recently released by Forrester Research, by 2013 the average person will watch five hours of video a day. That's a 25 percent increase from the average today of four hours. What makes experts predict this rise in video consumption? Forrester explains that the increasing availability of video programming through computers, phones and other devices will propel the growth. "People love their content and want to watch it no matter where they can get it. They'll even watch it on a small device, if that's the option they have," says James McQuivey, author of the study.

Other predictions from the study include:

• The percent of video viewed on demand will increase to 45% in 2013 from 20% in 2008.


• The percent of video delivered via the Internet climbs to 35% in 2013 from 10% in 2008.


• The percent of video consumed on mobile or portable devices increase to 15% in 2013 compared with 8% in 2008.

At Hammock, we believe video is powerful tool to keep in your communications arsenal. Video content engages your members or clients in a unique way that is a very effective complement to an organization's print and digital media content. That's why earlier this month, video was a focal point of the website we created for our client NFIB for its National Small Business Summit event. We posted video from the event to YouTube and pulled that, and content from other social and conversational media tools, into the Summit’s website.

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Barbara Logan

Director of Marketing

o: 615.690.3415

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