The Mr. Magazine™ 2011 Manifesto for a Healthy, Wealthy and Lively New Media Year

The Mr. Magazine™ 2011 Manifesto for a Healthy, Wealthy and Lively New Media Year - Today marks the beginning of a new year. A very good beginning indeed. A beginning that starts with nothing but ones. Today is 1, 1, 11. So, in honor of this new beginning, here is The Mr. Magazine™ 2011 Manifesto, published in min: media industry newsletter‘s Jan. 3, 2011 issue:

GUEST COMMENTARY
SAMIR HUSNI

The Mr. Magazine™ 2011 Manifesto:
THE LUCKY 13 FOR A HEALTHY, WEALTHY AND LIVELY MEDIA FUTURE

Happy New Year! My “resolutions” are this manifesto, which I believe will make your season bright in 2011. Here’s my “baker’s dozen”:

1. Romance the customer, the reader, the user, the viewer, the listener– but NOT the machine. That should be your motto in 2011.
2. Stop renovating if you are going to be in the business of innovation.
3. Throw a ball from left field, surprising your customers, readers, users, viewers, and listeners every time you interact with them. Give them what they expect, but surprise them with what they don’t.
4. Humanize your medium. Focus on the human voice, values, and vision behind the ink on paper, pixels on the screen, or bytes on the sound waves. In an age of isolated connectivity, humanizing the medium is a MUST, not an option.
5. Do not be afraid to charge for quality content. People are paying big money for what you think is not quality content.
6. Change your thinking and decide what is quality content based on your customers, readers, users, viewers, and listeners. Do not create based on you, but based on them. YOU are NOT THEM. Big surprise.
7. Hire someone younger, much younger, if you really want to innovate. Established folks drag a lot of luggage with them, intentionally or otherwise. Some may call this the wisdom of age, but I call it old habits that are hard to die hard. The “young and restless” drag very few and have yet to cement their feet in old or new habits.
8. Free yourself from the past but do not uproot yourself during the pruning season.
The new leaves and branches are what make a tree look good, not the roots. However, without the roots there will be no tree.
9. Keep in mind that only 9% of companies survive any disruptive innovation. Start thinking (and bring in someone new to think for you) on how to be a minority survivor rather than a majority has-been.
10. You are living the dawn of a new age, the age of Transcended Media. Are you ready to start the conversation with your customers, readers, users, viewers and listeners? Are you ready to keep the conversation going and whet their appetite for more?
11. 2011 is no different from 2010 or 2000. If you are NOT creating an engaging, addictive, repetitive conversation with your customers, readers, users, viewers, and listeners, that only means one thing: you are DEAD.
12. So show the world you are ALIVE and START romancing your customers, readers, users, viewers, and listeners. Make love to them and not to the platform or machine. You OWE it to them. And…
13. Stop being only a content provider and marketer. Start becoming an Experience Maker. There is where your media future starts.

And that, my friends, will lead you into a healthy, wealthy, and above all, lively media world of 2011 and beyond.

Samir Husni, Ph.D., is founder (2009) and director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi, where he previously chaired the journalism department. Husni’s Mr. Magazine™ monicker comes from his tracking more than 18,000 launches since 1986, when his Guide to New Magazines debuted. The 26th edition of the Guide (Nautilus Publishing/Oxford, Miss.) will be released in February 2011.

A very happy and fruitful 2011 to all.




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