Custom Publishing: A Century-Old "New Model"
Rex Hammock, Founder and President of Hammock Publishing
November 17, 2003
The publication Advertising Age recently featured a guest column by Randall Rothenberg concluding that custom publishing has reached the point where it can be accepted by readers and editors as "legitimate." While I agree with Rothenberg, I think his timing is off by about 100 years.
There is nothing new about magazines published by companies being sent directly to customers. And there is nothing new about these magazines being viewed by those customers as legitimate. And there is nothing new about these magazines, at least some of them, being among the highest-quality and most popular magazines published.
Rothenberg uses the appointment of superstar journalist Kurt Andersen as editor and chairman of the customer magazine from Benetton, Colors, as an opportunity to suggest the "form" (custom publishing) can now achieve "legitimacy." I agree that Andersen’s appointment can help elevate the quality of and perception of anything he touches. However, contrary to Rothenberg’s timeline, the company-published customer magazine has been a part of the media mix since the beginning of the modern mass-advertising era, for well over a century.
Perhaps the oldest continuously published customer magazine (indeed, any "form" of magazine), The Furrow, has been published since the 1890s by John Deere’s Deere & Company. Last year, the Smithsonian's exhibit of American flag-adorned magazine covers from July 1942 was filled with examples of customer magazines. As the campaign to encourage magazines to display the American flag was endorsed by the Magazine Publishers Association, it appears that such "sponsored" or "corporate" magazines were accepted as "legitimate" more than 60 years ago.
What’s more, despite what Rothenberg's lack of historical context leads him to conclude, I believe consumers have absolutely NO problem with whether a magazine is "sponsored," or is "infotainment," or is, for that matter, "company propaganda." Readers will disregard "illegitimate" editorial—or accept it with the legitimacy they deem appropriate—in direct proportion to the quality of the magazine and their relationship with the subject featured.
Custom publishing is nothing new, and readers established its "legitimacy" long ago. That said, each new issue of every magazine, whether sponsored or not, must earn anew its legitimacy, respect and authority. And that’s where a superstar journalist editor can lend the most support.