The April/May issue of MyBusiness which we publish for NFIB is hitting homes this week. The focus is on NFIB’s ramped up efforts to reform small business health care. NFIB recently launched Solutions Start Here, an aggressive national campaign to ensure that legislators will keep small business in mind when discussing health care reform for the country. The feature article Solutions Start Here has more details on how small businesses can join the fight.
Also check out this issue’s MyBusiness Manual: The Essential Guide to Small Business Benefits for tips on how to attract top notch employees—and keep the ones you’ve got happy and loyal.
As always, this issue of MyBusiness is packed with tons of great tips, tricks and other must-read stories for small business owners, so head over to MyBusinessMag.com to take a look.

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.

Have you ever thought about how often magazine offices appear as settings in movies? From writer Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson) in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” to Andrea Sachs’ (Anne Hathaway) stint as an editorial assistant at Runway magazine in “The Devil Wears Prada,” movies are filled with characters who dream of making it big in journalism.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at this list compiled by Rex a few years ago and you’ll see how often it really is.
And it’s not just on the big screen. One of my favorite shows (“Ugly Betty”) is all about the making of a Vogue-esque magazine and the crazy people who help put it together.

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.

I can say on the front end that copyright law is one of those necessary evils for the publishing industry. Necessary — it gives writers, artists and others the financial incentive to create works, allowing them the rights to the money made from their writing, their photographs, their illustrations. An evil — it’s complex, and most freelancers and publishers would likely agree that Congress ignores copyright law for years on end, then addresses it from a less informed viewpoint than most of us would prefer.
Copyright law is one of those issues that really makes me wish for a benevolent dictator, despite my love otherwise for our imperfect democracy. In my opinion, far too much copyright law is decided in the courtroom, admittedly for lack of any reasonable alternative.
(Fair warning: I’ll still be talking about copyright law after the jump….)

Happy New Year! Well, kinda. If we still measured our year according to the Julian calendar, March would be the time we’d sing “Auld Lang Syne” instead of “When Irish Eyes are Smiling.” In the March/April issue of American Spirit, which we publish for the DAR, Bill Hudgins writes about the challenges that came with Colonial America’s adoption of the Gregorian calendar—and the confusion the switch still causes genealogists.
Whether or not your grasp of etiquette would past muster with Emily Post, be relieved that you didn’t have to abide by the rules of courtesy books, 18th-century manuals on the proper behavior of gentlemen and women, which we also spotlight in this issue. From table manners—“Make not a noise with thy Tongue, Mouth, Lips or Breath, either in eating or drinking”—to personal appearance—“Wear not your clothes foul, ripped or dusty, but see to it that they be brushed once every day at least”—these books provide surprising glimpses into the everyday lives and aspirations of early Americans.
The issue also covers the recent International Preservation Trades Workshop, where experts demonstrate hands-on techniques for preserving historic structures. We feature some talented craftsmen and women who are whizzes at reglazing vintage windows, renewing wood finishes, repairing ornamental plaster, carving bricks and stone, and dozens of other traditional methods of historic preservation. This story is especially fitting now that DAR has embarked on a multimillion-dollar restoration of its many historically significant buildings, including the century-old Memorial Continental Hall. The next time you’re in D.C., stop by for a tour of the complex, only steps away from the White House. On 1776 D Street, of course.

On some level of course, America’s Marines don’t really need an introduction. They’ve been protecting our shores for more than 232 years. But because they are, famously, “The Few …” there’s a lot about becoming and being a Marine that most Americans never see. To correct that, the United States Marine Corps has launched a broad-based community and public relations campaign designed to give the rest of the world more insight into what it takes to be a Marine. A centerpiece of the campaign is a new TV spot that was taped at locations across the country, featuring the Corps’ legendary Silent Drill Team. A companion Web site, OurMarines.com, documents the video shoot and collects stories about Marines and their families. The site also contains an extended version of the TV spot.
One of the photos from the making of the commercial, taken in Columbia, TN, a few miles from Hammock Inc.’s Nashville offices, graces the cover of the March-April 2008 issue of Semper Fi, the Magazine of the Marine Corps League, which we publish for the League.
Elsewhere in the issue, we encounter a different “kind” of Marine – one made of plastic and aluminum and electronics. The Marines and other services increasingly use robots to perform highly dangerous tasks such as reconnaissance, investigating potential explosive devices, even retrieving wounded comrades under fire. While there is not now and never will be a true substitute for boots on the ground, ‘bots will take on new and more complex tasks as another weapon in the Marines’ arsenal.
Speaking of that arsenal, the Marine Corps League co-hosts three trade shows a year that bring active-duty Marines together with military suppliers. The Marines are not shy about giving the vendors (many of them veterans) a quick and incisive analysis of their products. And the vendors hustle to fix, upgrade and adapt their products and services to meet the warfighters’ needs. Semper Fi reports on the Marine West Expo in January aboard Camp Pendleton, CA; we’ll be at the next one, Marine South at Camp Lejeune, NC, in early April.

The February/March issue of MyBusiness is out now, and we’re tackling an issue facing small business owners every day: Surviving in hard times. While we might think of today’s current economic woes when we hear that, for a small business, “hard times” might also mean losing your top salesperson or Wal-Mart building a new store down the street.
Created by the National Federation of Independent Business for its small business owner-members, MyBusiness magazine handles tough topics like this every issue. A regular feature the past few months has also examined how small business is dealing with the health care crisis. We examine possible solutions, and NFIB’s role as the voice of small business on critical issues like health insurance.
Hammock has produced MyBusiness since 2000, but it’s only available as a benefit for NFIB members. You can take a sneak peak at MyBusinessmag.com — also created by Hammock.

We’re big fans of the folks at Wired magazine. Indeed, in the Hammock Inc. Library, you’ll find a complete collection of every issue of Wired ever published. Flipping through the February issue we were reminded once more how creative they can be when we saw this spread in a feature story on “33 Things That Make Us Crazy” that includes some inside-magazine humor. It’s the first time we recall seeing the lowly blow-in card serve as the central visual element of an editorial feature.

While in the background (and on the website version of the story), you can see a photo illustrating the piece, the full impact of the design is experienced when flipping through a newsstand version of the magazine that is carry 3-4 blow-ins. If you catch it perfectly, the cards fall out into your lap, animating the story even more. We’re so impressed, we’d think the Folio: folks should give them an Ozzie award for best use of a blow-in card in an editorial feature.

It’s a bit fuzzy in the photo, so here’s what the copy says:

“You know all those subscription cards cluttering up this issue of Wired? Well, um … sorry. We understand you detest the deforesting paper rectangles — “bind-in” or “blow-in” cards, to use industry parlance. Honestly, we do, too. But they’re part of our business model. It’s not just about money, really — it’s about your eyeballs. See, advertisers pay based on audience size. And blow-in cards are a cheap way to snag subscribers and boost numbers: It costs a glossy monthly about $10 to acquire a new reader through one of those cards. But using direct mail? $25 — or more. We’d be happy to get your business through the Internet, which we hear is the wave of the future. But for now, just 10 percent of new subs come via the Net. And 12 percent come from those damn blow-in cards. The worst part about ’em? They cover up some really good stories.”

We’ll admit we’re also not the biggest fans of blow-in cards, but we now realize we’re huge fans of clever editorial concepts and graphic treatments about blow-in cards.

[Photo: Shot by Rex with his iPhone at Davis-Kidd Booksellers.]

Here’s a glimpse of the latest issue of Pharmaceutical Commerce, a magazine Hammock designed from the ground up in 2005.
The magazine, which covers the business side of the pharma industry, including marketing, finance, supply chain and packaging, delivers helpful and timely information to more than 16,000 readers.
The next issue should be out in a few weeks. In fact, as I type, Ben Stewart is probably designing some awesome illustration for it.