Magazine Association Renames Itself (As If ...)

New York Times ^ | September 30, 2010 | Stuart Elliot

[lbryce]

THE trade association for the consumer magazine industry is joining other organizations in media and marketing in rebranding itself to better reflect the realities of competing for consumer eyeballs and advertising dollars in the 21st century.

The Magazine Publishers of America is being renamed MPA — the Association of Magazine Media (dash and all). The dispatching of “publishers” from the name is meant to signal how readers can engage with magazines beyond the printed page through nontraditional means like Web sites, mobile devices, tablets, events, social media, books, retail presences and even branded merchandise.

The change is to be described on Monday at a presentation during a general session of the 2010 American Magazine Conference. A logo redesign, by Pentagram, will also be introduced.

The conference, which begins in Chicago on Sunday and continues through Tuesday, is co-sponsored by the MPA — there it is, the new name — and the American Society of Magazine Editors.

The rebranding will also be expressed through efforts like video clips, called Magazine Media Minutes, featuring disparate publications like Food & Wine, Glamour, Men’s Health, Natural Home, People, Popular Mechanics and Runner’s World. The videos will be available, starting at noon on Friday, on a channel on YouTube that can be reached through the MPA Web site (magazine.org/mmm).

The name change is at least the second for the association, which was founded in 1919; it was known until 1987 as the Magazine Publishers Association.

(The 1987 renaming took place a week before the Black Monday stock market crash of Oct. 19, so investors who are magazine readers — and vice versa — might want to re-examine their portfolios in coming days.)

[lbryce]

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, magazine ad spending, which reached $14.4 billion in 2007, fell to $13.3 billion in 2008 and $10.5 billion last year. The declines are expected to continue, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated, to $9.8 billion this year and $9.5 billion in 2011. That cumulative decline from 2007 to 2011 would be 34 percent.

It's all reshuffling of the Titanic deck chairs.
The print media just doesn't get it, just doesn't see the forest for the trees, (after all, being the dead-tree media you'd think they would) or simply have no choice but to go down with the ship in ignominious anachronistic obsolescence.

What better proof of the print media's abject self-delusion could you possibly imagine than that of their brilliantly creative, catchy, new catchphrase:Magazines, the power of print[sic]. !!!!! The quotation marks are mine.

[GeronL]

Wow, that ought to ramp up magazine sales... lol