It’s not surprising with ad pages down that magazines are pulling out all the stops for advertisers in an attempt to gain more pages and boost revenues. Earlier this month Starbucks played with Bon Appetit‘s masthead and now Men’s Health has entered the game. If you are a reader of Men’s Health, make sure your cell phone is handy when reading its July/August issue.

Every one of the issue’s ads will be camera-phone readable, thanks to an image recognition technology from SnapTell. When readers snap a photo of an ad they’ll receive instant promotions—from ringtones to coupons to wallpaper. The set-up is especially attractive for advertisers because of its integrated call to action and defined measurement. With advertisers chasing engagement metrics, it’s clear why the platform appeals to them.

Headline writers are like diners at The Old Country Buffet – they go right for the good stuff, and you’d best not stand in their way. There is no pun, no quibble, no stretch or rhyme or reason, no shaken-and-stirred metaphor they won’t resort to in their quest to stop readers dead in their tracks. I know: I’m Bill, and I am a headline writer.

I wasn’t always this way, although the underlying fascination with groaners and shaggy dog stories was there from the start. When I worked as a reporter and later editor at the late Nashville Banner, the copy editors appended most of the headlines to our articles. They sat roughly in an inward facing square near the city desk, and we could hear them murmuring and often cackling amongst themselves as they clarified our prose and debated zinger headlines.
There were many – and many that did not make it into the paper. Such a one was proposed for a wire story about a woman who had murdered her husband and stuffed his carcass under the house. “I’m walking the floor over you!” sang out a merry voice from the copy desk, convulsing the entire newsroom. The one headline I remember as the all-time greatest was about a grisly local murder whose perpetrator tried to cover up with arson: “Headless body found in gutted church.” If “Wayne’s World” had been out then, we would all have salaamed in appreciation.
But since assuming editorship over various titles at Hammock Publishing, I had to get into the headline business. Turns out I have something of a knack for it, and my colleagues sometimes ask me to swot out a headline for them.
[After the jump, read more about the joys of headlining.]

Our friend Joe Pulizzi of Junta42 has released a new white paper called “New Rules of Custom Publishing – New Complimentary White Paper: Nine Strategies to Create a World-Class Content Marketing Company.” You can download the white paper in a digital format here.

After the jump, read Joe’s list of Nine strategies to create a world-class content marketing company. As anyone who follows Hammock Inc., it’s no surprise we agree with each one of them:

I’m tempted just to say, “Amen!” to this recent Slate post about intrusive linking policies. Jack Schafer’s list includes my top three links-to-hate:

• Double-click the word, get a definition [NYTimes.com is a big culprit. I have, at least 3 times, clicked on the word “inside” while reading an article on the Times site. Trust me, after 13 years of primary and secondary, a college degree and nine hours of graduate work, I’ve finally figured out what inside means. Now, as for that tricky “outside….”]
• Pop-over boxes Often found on news sites to display ads, this blog tool was amusing when it first came out. Now that I’ve seen Snap Shots used more than a couple times — indeed, far too frequently — I am still waiting for an application of it that doesn’t make me grit my teeth.
• Links that don’t tell you where you’re going The web allows for endless copy. I don’t need much, but please do more than tell me you want to link here. [It’s not a real link. I wouldn’t do that to you.]

We decided about 18 months ago to create a new kind of website here at Hammock.com. As individuals, we were using lots of new online media approaches and technology — and were incorporating them into work we were doing for clients. Our site, while attractive, was not a reflection of where we are — as a company or as individuals. So we headed into a new direction.
[After the jump, read more about how Hammock.com is evolving.]

At Hammock, we appreciate the way in which new media and approaches allow one to share stories in ways other than the traditional linear approach. We demonstrated this with our 2008 T-Shirt map, for example. So it comes as no surprise that we were intrigued and impressed with a digital project in the UK by book publisher Penguin called, “We Tell Stories.” The project features six authors sharing six short stories in six weeks. Each story is told using a different set of online tools and approaches — the same types of of tools and approaches we believe can help companies and associations effectively share their stories with customers, members and others.
For example, the story, “The 21 Steps” by Charles Cumming uses a Google Maps mashup to present a round-the-world story. And the story, “Slice” by Toby Litt uses two different blogging platforms (LiveJournal and WordPress) and Twitter.
Yes, we’re impressed. Perhaps not with the stories themselves, but with the experimentation taking place. And by a book publisher, no less.
(via: Springwise.com.)

It’s been a while since I’ve made an “audio post” to a blog (I’m more “video” these days). However, some recent blog posts and Twitter comments by Patrick Ruffini inspired me to dust-off the Skype account and Audio Hijack software and give him a call. In 2004 Ruffini had the very Web 1.0 title “webmaster” for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. Despite the title, he ushered in some very Web 2.0 features and approaches to the site — and the campaign. Over 30,000 off-line “meetup-like” volunteer gatherings were organized on the site and over 5,000 websites and weblogs hosted the badges and widgets (remember, this was in 2004) that Ruffini’s team developed using RSS and XML. After the election, he ran the Inauguration website and later had a two-year stint as eCampaign Director for the GOP.

After the jump, read more and listen to the interview.

Hammock partner Jim Elliott of the national advertising sales firm the James G. Elliott Company shares some tips on how to train your magazine sales force to sell digital platforms in the latest issue of their company newsletter Ads&Ideas:

Training is, of course, necessary here to sell a brand which resides in different media platforms. But that training has to be in just the fundamentals or basics of each medium—not in the technical or mechanical aspects.

For instance, a seller should understand the fundamentals of podcasting; how it is delivered, its advantages and drawbacks and what kind of advertising works with the medium, but the seller doesn’t have to be an expert in the technology. Hopefully, the brand has a podcast traffic manager to handle the technical questions.

One of our Hammock partners is the national advertising sales firm the James G. Elliott Company. In the latest issue of their company newsletter Ads&Ideas, President Jim Elliott shares his perspective on recent news coming out of the advertising industry:

Oh, what a difference a few months can make! The first quarter of 2008 has been one of the roughest in magazine ad sales history. A quick glance at the revenue numbers for monthly magazines is sobering. The decline has been caused in part by many agencies holding back on placing 2008 schedules due to their clients not releasing budgets. But it has also been due to advertising money being diffused into various new delivery platforms.

Of course, the magazine industry has been trying to hold on to some of these dollars by creating their own multiple delivery platforms for their content. However, there is no dominant selling strategy in the way they actually sell advertising around these new platforms.

For instance, some magazine companies have created a separate digital advertising department. Some have hired outside representatives to handle on-line advertising, with a different outside group to handle mobile and so on. Others have taken their current sales force and trained them to be knowledgeable in several different media platforms.

We are keen on the last strategy being the most sensible approach because, regardless of the platform, it is the brand and its community that set magazines apart from other media. It is the strength of our business. For those of us who have also been on the buying side of the business, there is, and has always been, one thing that stood out about magazine representatives. Both trade and consumer magazine reps have always sold the brand — which is a conceptual sale.

Historically, magazine sellers were allowed to call on clients, account people at the agency and the media department because they were selling the audience, and what made that audience distinctively different, both psychographically and demographically from the competition. Magazine sellers have always been distinctively different stylistically in their approach from that of broadcast sellers in that the sale was more complicated, involving more channels of decision makers built around selling conceptually. Branding is a concept.

A good friend, Dave Smith of Mediasmith —a large digital San Francisco advertising agency—told me recently that their agency had identified many new digital platforms by which to offer up content. For example, they have identified things like:

• Rich Media Display Advertising

• Video Display Advertising (Web)

• Video SEM/SEO & Video Distribution

• Video on Demand & Interactive Television

• Over-the-Top (OTT)

• Widgets

• Mobile

• Digital & Interactive Out-of-Home

• Digital & Interactive Cinema

• Consumer-Generated Media and Advertising

• Mashups

• Blogging

• Social Networks

• Peer-to-Peer

• RSS

• Advergaming and In-Game Advertising

• Virtual Worlds

By the way, to learn more about each one of these subjects, you may visit Mediasmith’s website to see a section dedicated to emerging technologies:

From an advertising sales perspective, how many different groups–either internally or externally—will a magazine brand require to handle their ad sales needs in this world of diverse platforms? And what will happen to a consistent brand story with so many different groups involved?

I would strongly argue that magazine representatives are uniquely positioned to handle ad sales in this emerging world of different delivery platforms.

In our travels among publishers, we often hear that magazine reps don’t understand the Internet. But when you investigate these statements more carefully, often what they are really saying is that magazine reps don’t understand the technological aspects of the online medium. However, that doesn’t mean that they don’t understand the audience or the community represented and can’t, with a little training, translate the particular online site into a part of a brand for an advertising buyer.

Frankly, how many magazine representatives actually understand the many facets of the print production part of the magazine industry? I have noticed that magazine management frequently confuses the activity of order taking with the art of selling. Those folks that often take orders also perform tasks on the web that are similar to those performed by a print production manager in magazines or a traffic manager in the broadcast world.

Check back this Friday for Part II of Jim’s article.

What do we do? Over the years at Hammock Inc., the way we’ve answered that question has changed. Back in 1994, we often described ourselves as relationship marketing experts. “Custom publishing” became a popular buzzword in the mid- and late-1990s. And sometimes, we’ve resorted to the shorthand: “We publish magazines and build websites for corporations and associations.” Simple, but for those in the know, it didn’t say nearly enough.
Today, we are a custom media company in the business of creating and managing magazines, videos and online media to help organizations build stronger relationships with customers, members and employees.

Recently, Folio: — the magazine and website for the publishing industry — interviewed Hammock Inc. President John Lavey in an article about the evolution of custom publishing. John shared his thoughts about how the evolving media landscape provides new opportunities for publishers, advertisers and readers — the kinds of things we’re working on every day.
Just a sample:

Customers are aware of the various [digital media] features and functionality that are out there, but are still relatively unsure how they can specifically apply them to campaigns, which puts the publisher in the fortunate position of educator. “We’re seeing a lot of questions about what they can use and what makes sense to use,” says John Lavey, president of custom publishing firm Hammock Inc. “At the same time, the pressures of the postal increases, increases in the cost of paper, and the difficulty of selling advertising without a robust package of assets to advertisers, are favoring bigger ideas and packages.”

Read the article on Folio:’s website.