As many of you may know, I’m currently involved in a website launch: www.postadvertising.com.  Tomorrow we go live to the nation.  For now you can click on the link above to see our beta version.  Please do.  Click again and again.

Anyway, many of you have done launches before and know that it’s incredibly time-consuming.  Our team here has been working basically around the clock, myself included.

Stay tuned for some juicy first quarter Reed Business Information ad page numbers in a few days when I get my head above water.

This might be a little late for all you sports fans, but since I reported on multimillionaire NHLer Sean Avery’s aspirations to become a Vogue intern when the season is over, a lot has happened. First, Avery’s team, The New York Rangers, has fallen behind 3-1 in a seven game series against the Pittsburgh Penguins. All signs would point to Avery getting coffee for Anna Wintour’s downtrodden lieutenants in the next few weeks if it weren’t for Avery’s suffering a pretty serious injury: lacerated spleen. Sounds almost comical, but it can be pretty serious. Luckily, Avery’s life was never in danger, but he’s still in intensive care. Here’s more from ESPN.com.

I love hockey. And I love magazines. In my sexy, sexy dreams, when these two are smashed together, it doesn’t exactly look like this.

This summer, after the NHL season is over, New York Rangers forward Sean Avery will become an intern for Vogue magazine. This is a guy who is known as the most hated man in the NHL. Partly because of his on-ice taunting, fighting, and all around dirty play. And maybe partly because after everyone hits the showers he walks off with actresses and models (not that other hockey players do so badly…).

Below, Sean Avery with Elisha Cuthbert.

Click here for the original story.

In short, yes.  In long, no.  What I mean by that is:

In the Short Run

B2B publishers are under terrific pressure right now due to declining ad page numbers and page yields.  I won’t rehash some of the negative stories we’ve seen this year so far (not to mention the negative numbers we will be seeing in the weeks and months ahead.  “Sucking wind” is a phrase I’ve been hearing a lot from magazine folks.)  Lashing the boats together during a storm to go after non-endemic advertising sounds like a pretty good idea.  This reminds me a bit of the “A-level” advertising initiative that gave a low 7-figure boost to Cygnus’ top line late last year.

You have captivated business customers — decision makers, buyers, influencers, and people with high incomes and steady jobs — but you’re too small to go after large, national business and hybrid advertisers for your little manufacturing site.  So band together with other somewhat similar sites to be a more attractive buy for marketers.  But….

In the Long Run

I see two negative possible side-effects.  First, this initiative will help turn space on sites into a commodity, which is bad for the idea of the brand as a central strength of trade publishing.  And if the strength of brands online is meaningless, then how can you make those all-important endemic sales?  How can you tell an advertiser that what they’re getting is better than what they can get at the competitors’ sites?  Second, Talk to an editor at The Hollywood Reporter and then one at Variety and tell them that they’re selling the exact same thing, and they may disagree with you.  Worse, they may lose the competitive edge that has propelled both books to be among the best in trade publishing.

Verticality has served trade publishing well.  Hitting all those points on the long tail with targeted outreach works — in print, online, face-to-face.  Will flattening those verticals on the advertising side have unintended consequences?

This is my last posting about The Atlantic Britney cover.  I promise.  It’s been a great run, though, hasn’t it?

I ran into Zachary Hooper of The Rosen Group (PR to the magazine world) at The Atlantic’s tea party last week, and asked him what the PR fallout has been for the Britney Spears cover.

maggrabbag:  When the issue hit newsstands, did the amount of requests you received from journalists increase?  Were they the same journalists as usual?

Hooper:  The Britney cover has attracted a lot of attention from the press.  Although the amount of inquiries has been on par with other recent stories like the Obama cover, the Britney story did open doors to some new outlets.  We also received a lot of attention from the marketing and advertising press.

mgb: What positive marketing effects from PR has this cover demonstrated?

Hoop: In tandem with several other recent stories, the Britney cover story has succeeded in demonstration our continued engagement with contemporary culture.

mgb: When you go out into the media space and try to gauge what people are saying about The Atlantic today and since the cover hit newsstands and what they were saying two or three months ago, what’s the difference?  What were they saying then?  What are they saying now?

Hoop: The Atlantic often provokes conversation and debate on a wide range of issues.  So while the Britney cover is definitely attracting a lot of buzz, we’re also seeing a steady level of discourse about magazine articles and web content on the election, the economy and the war in Iraq.  If anything, we’re adding to the mix another level of conversation that we weren’t necessarily seeing before.  The folks talking about our political content are continuing to do so as they always have, but this story has brought in a whole other realm of media coverage on its own.

After a fierce bidding war* between many interested parties that will go unnamed, the first ever piece of ad inventory on maggrabbag has been sold to IMS, the Toronto-based magazine metrics/services company.  Full disclosure time: I use IMS/The Auditor ad page data in my reporting.

*Said “fierce bidding war” was not “fierce” or a “war”.  None of the associated parties put in “bids”.  It wasn’t so much a “fierce bidding war” as a polite negotiation.  It wasn’t even really that.  It’s all lies.

Demands by consumers for a greener world has had some predictable effects on the magazine industry: sustainable/recycled paper initiatives; soy-based ink; the rise of digital magazines; not to mention green issues, green covers, green columns; etc, etc.  But just as one unintended side-effect of the rise of the Internet was the death of your newspaper’s print stock page, there will be many unintended side-effects of the rise of environmentalism.  Here’s one that could prove a useful case study for trade magazines:

Nielsen recently surveyed consumers and found out that more than half of them would give up many forms of packaging.  In the short term, this means little more than an editorial opportunity for Summit Publishing’s Packaging World and Reed’s Packaging Digest.  I expect, however, that as the packaging industry changes and responds to the demands of its consumer-facing clients, Packaging World and Packaging Digest will be there to help their industry innovate.  Unfortunately, if all that happens, the industry will be required to shrink significantly, one would assume.  And where does that leave trade publishing, its business partners (brand marketers, designers, materials suppliers, etc), and the trade publishing industry that serves it (Package Design, Package Printing, etc)?  Well, all this is for the industry to sort out in 2-4 years time, when big retailers catch up to the wishes of consumers.

But don’t worry, kiddos: forest fires lead to fertile new soil; the transistor industry rose out of the ashes of the tube industry; from destruction comes creation.  In trade publishing, the key is not to be left behind.  Find out how after the jump.

(more…)