Now here’s a business that exists in a traditional industry, yet is managing to find novel solutions to gain and maintain viability amidst the threat of new competitors.
The guys from HB, publishers of Idealog, media are publishing Inspire magazine, a travel mag. Now what you ask is innovative about that?
Well Inspire is sponsored by House of Travel but, unlike the other agency advertising, managed to retain it’s integrity in terms of editorial content without becoming yet another advertorial.
HB (I assume) realising that there is no money to be made in traditional publications such as this, innovated. I guess HOT pays a significant amount of the cost of publishing the magazine, in return for advertising space. HB gets to sell space to other non-competing businesses and also gets to sell magazines via subs and on the news stand. HOT gets to give the mag free to it’s best customers – adding value to their brand.
Kind of win/win/win.
Vincent this is the sort of thing that helps us off the Road to Nowhere!
Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergance of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. 
Actually it’s even better than that. The magazine is the first expression of what we hope will become a genuine community building exercise that finds expression not just in print but online and events. The key idea is to make use of media to help companies build community. Turns out web 2.0 is a media opportunity afterall!
OMG.
MAS.
[...] infuses it with something new. In fact even when I was writing for the competition I was publicly complementing the innovation they were bringing (and privately bemoaning the fact that others weren’t doing [...]