Ideas that glitter

Is your business model getting stale? Your business model is like your wardrobe – it needs to change with the times. Particularly if it’s a media business we’re talking about, where online and print are competing for eyeballs – and wallets. And the old models aren’t working as well as they used to.

So, I was heartened when the topic came up at this month’s FMA meeting (Fulfillment Management Association) in New York. One particularly shiny, out-of-the-box idea is in the pipeline and just may change the way we think about magazine subscriptions.

Dubbed Maghound, The magazine lover’s best friend, it’s a whole new way of buying magazines that could revolutionize the industry. Subscribers pay one monthly fee and choose which magazines they want, selecting from all the major publishers. Here’s the really hip part – they can change their magazine selections any time they want! This revolutionary idea, the brainchild of Time, Inc., is still in development and is coming to a website near you!

Another cool idea involves magazines placing listings in the Yellow Pages with their 800 numbers and taking phone orders. That’s an idea whose time has come.

I inquired about a project I once worked on, the retail card. This involved a plastic card, like a gift card sold at the front checkout at retailers. To activate the card, the buyer calls an 800 number. Trouble was “breakage” – few actually called the number, rendering the retail card an unproven concept.

The down side is that it’s labor-intensive to develop and execute new ideas. But there’s no choice, really. Doing things the way they’ve always been done won’t take our industry to the next century. So keep those new ideas coming!