When he was young, Samir Husni discovered that he loved magazines so much, he started collecting the first issue of every new magazine he could find. Today, that passion has grown into a one-of-a-kind collection of magazine first issues that takes up space the size of a warehouse.

His passion for magazine launches, and magazines in general, inspired him to pursue a PhD in magazine-ology (although, technically, it was called journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia) and, ultimately, to become recognized as the leading expert on magazine launches. Today, he is noted for his annual Guide to Magazine Launches in the U.S. (there were 678 in 2012) and is director of the Magazine Innovation Institute at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi, where he is professor and Hederman Lecturer.

Samir is also very funny, so we’re not surprised that somehow he and Hammock founder Rex Hammock discovered each other and have become friends over the years.

While Rex is known for embracing (or at least, experimenting with) any media platform he believes can help companies and other organizations build tight relationships with customers (or members, etc.), it’s no secret that Rex is a DNA-level magazine guy.

You know how some people can talk about sports and remember who pitched in the third game of some long-ago World Series? If you’re ever around Samir and Rex when they get together, they start having one of those kind of wonky conversations about magazines.

Once every couple of years, Samir invites Rex to come to Oxford to speak with students who are in his magazine development and magazine business courses. Earlier this week, Rex made one of those treks and we have the photos to prove it.

[Post by Rex Hammock]

Because Hammock has a long history of publishing print magazines while, simultaneously, serving as creators of digital media delivered to audiences via screens (starting back in the days of CompuServe and laserdiscs), I’m often asked about the future of print magazines – as in: Will print magazines still be around in the future?

These questions typically spike whenever there is news involving closures or layoffs at once-powerful magazines like Time or Newsweek. or when a famous person like a Facebook co-founder sparks a lot of media coverage for buying a magazine like The New Republic.

Here’s my quick answer to the question, “Will print magazines be around in the future?”:

“Yes, but…”

For a much longer version of this answer – a version with predictions covering all types of print magazines – read on…

Companies that earn the loyalty of customers are those that treat sales transactions as part of an ongoing journey, not as the finish line. Such companies focus on relationships that go beyond selling and focus on adding value to the products and services they offer their customers.

As part of a series of blog posts we call Customer Media Basics, here are six things almost any business or organization, large or small, can start doing that will help turn customer transactions into long-term customer relationships:

1. Create better instructions and user manuals.

After investing so much in product development, marketing and sales, many companies — even ones selling us expensive products like TVs and cars — ignore the importance of the first message customers experience after they take ownership of the product. Even if you’re in a professional or business-to-business marketplace, the communication materials developed for the “on-boarding” period of any new product or service will set the tone and expectations for all that comes after that. When you treat such media as an afterthought, you’re communicating to the customer that you valued them more before the sale than after.

[This post is part of the series, The Basics of Customer Media and Content. A version of this post previously appeared on the blog of Rex Hammock, RexBlog.com]

There are two kinds of online content* that really matter to customers: 1. Chronological content (or what at Hammock, we call, Flow Content), the type of news and information that keeps us abreast of what’s happening now, real-time, that is of importance to us in our work or personal lives. 2. Contextual content (or what we call, Flow Content), the type of every-green content that provides us the  understanding and knowledge when we need it.

Flow Content: This is the content that’s important because of its time-stamp. It is a never-ending stream and river of news and information that comes when the sender decides we should receive it, not necessarily when we expect or need it. It comes in the form of tweets, updates, email, text-messages, RSS feeds, etc. We can’t live without it. Often, it’s this kind of Flow Content that customers say over-loads them. That makes sense, as it over-loads all of us, especially if we don’t know how to organize it. In that case, we ignore it.

[Part of the series “How Great Companies Use Customer Media”*]

At Hammock, we are inspired by people who run companies and organizations that are leading the transition away from viewing marketing as a series of promotional activities that end with a transaction. These savvy leaders now view marketing as a process of building relationships focused on helping customers reach their goals or aspirations.

We’re especially inspired by the country’s oldest catalog retailer, a family-owned business founded in the 1850s called Orvis. Orvis is ahead of the curve in embracing new forms of media or content that help them teach and learn from their customers, so it was an easy decision to feature it as the first company of our new series called “How Great Companies Use Customer Media.”

In many categories of consumer or business-to-business marketing, it’s difficult to find companies that have fully embraced the value-delivering philosophy we sum up with the phrase, “Don’t sell customers hammers and nails; teach them how to build something.” But when it comes to the outdoor-enthusiast retail category, several companies are so good at mentoring their customers that many of their promotions have evolved into significant profit centers.

[Posted by Rex Hammock]

Except when we’re at work, those of us who have marketing jobs aren’t marketers, we’re customers.

When we’re not at our marketing jobs, we experience the world of commerce through the eyes of a customer. We make purchasing decisions and interact with companies — all while in the role of buyer, not seller; as a user, not a maker or supplier.

We all are experts at being customers, perhaps even more than we are experts at being marketers.

But too often, when we punch in our time-cards at the marketing factory, we leave that expertise at the door.

For example, when we are customers, we buy products from companies that tell us how great we are — and how their product is all about helping us be or do what we want to be or do.

But when we’re marketers, we think our job is to flex our brand muscles and tell the world how great our company and product are.

When we’re marketers, we think our job is to target customers. But as customers, we’re tired of being target practice.

The secret to successful marketing is to stop being a marketer.

Stop cranking out all that hype you can’t stand to receive when you’re a customer.

Stop telling customers how great you are — and start helping them be great at something they want to be.

You know all this — at least you do when you’re not at work.

[A version of this post was cross-posted on RexBlog]

Yesterday, Wikipedia added the “ePUB” file format as an export option for collections of Wikipedia articles you want to compile. This may not sound like something new, as the ability to compile — and even order a print-on-demand version of — such a collection of articles has been around for a while.

What makes this new feature significant is that ePUB is a format optimized for display using all the major ebook reader devices or apps (Kindle, Apple iBooks, Google Books, Nook, etc.). While PDFs of such articles were readable on such devices or apps, the ePUB format will provide you with a document that is more book-like.

[Cross-posted from RexBlog.com]

I wish there were some magic pixie dust, let’s call it, say, “social media,” that big companies could sprinkle over themselves so that, suddenly, they would be loved by their customers.

However, I spent a few hours on Saturday  frustrated with a giant corporation that has an awarding-winning, best practices, does-every-possible-social-media-approach. But I still hate them.

With their marketing millions, they tell me they are people, just like me, who will drop everything to help me. But when it comes to a Saturday morning and their customer (me) wants to know why their product isn’t working, they become an impenetrable wall of barriers between me and the help I need.

Last week, Seth Godin, perhaps the most lucid mind and consistently insightful voice in marketing, used his gifted story telling skills and mighty platform to explain
why people hate big corporations. His example was Progressive Insurance, and the issue used as an example far outstrips the petty frustration I felt.

But, frankly, Seth’s example is too often the norm, and unfortunately, is not isolated to Progressive.

Do you recognize the guy with the cigar in the photo accompanying this post? He was a comic character, Raymond J. Johnson Jr., created by comedian Bill Sagula in the 1970s, who was forever introducing himself to anyone he’d meet with a string of names, like: “You can call me Ray. And you can call me Jay. And you call me Ray Jay. Etc.”

At Hammock, we are beginning to feel like Ray (or Jay or RJ, or RJJ) …

When Hammock Inc. started more than 20 years ago, the services we provided (and still provide) put us into a segment of the marketing and media world called “custom publishing.” We considered our service to be assisting our clients in building strong relationships with customers, something we thought “loyalty marketing” was a good term to describe.