I spoke to my friend Andrea York today about a new eulogy we have to write—a eulogy for a form of marketing that was brand new not so long ago. It seems so recently that we all began to collect names on our sites. We started e-newsletters and sent them off, jam-packed with value, to our burgeoning lists. This was the beginning of permission-based marketing, where our audience would give us the OK to sell to them, as long as we provided enormous value along with our solicitations—information,…See More

Every now and then, when our own newsstand landscape begins to look too homogenous and our cover formulas too tired we look to overseas to shake us up a little.Or a lot—the polybag premium craze that swept our consumer publications a decade or two ago (but who’s counting) was sparked by one UK company.Polybag premiums have, after many years, to some degree run their course here in the US, but any publisher with a serious commitment to a UK distribution is aware that it is still the vernacular…See More