Bosacks Speaks Out: On the CRMA and Cottage Entrepreneurism

Yesterday I wrote about the developing style of corporate risk taking place at Hearst, let's call it tower entrepreneurism, envisioned and shared by Dave Carey. Today I want to suggest another great and often missed sector/movement in successful publishing. It is the City and Regional titles. It is my pleasure to speak every few years to the City and Regional Magazine Association (CRMA). They are a feisty group of owner/operators leaping beyond traditional publishing platforms and creating as many new revenue streams as there are pages in a cross-country Fodor's travel book. Let's call the CRMA cottage entrepreneurism as opposed to tower entrepreneurism. Each is a powerful edifice.

Each time I go the CRMA event the air is charged with excitement, brothers and sisters sitting in a conference room sharing new ideas and pergent internal employee motivational strategies. Every time I go I remember how much I love being there. If my career had taken another course, there is no doubt I would have been a member having started several local publications in my early career. Perhaps that is why I feel so comfortable among them. That and the fact that they are consummate never-say-die, scrappy entrepreneurs.

The members of CRMA hold what they call the Round Table of Best Ideas, where they each present a great idea that is bringing in new revenue streams. They are not competing with each other, so they are completely open to the cross-pollination of ideas. There are some ideas that seem to me too proprietary, so I won't pulge them here without permission. But many of the ideas are just good ideas we can all learn from, and I know many titles are already trying.

There are many Wine and Food Festivals, and they are growing in attendance and revenue each year.

One of the ideas I liked, even though it never occurred to me as a local publisher, was to hire an Ice Cream Truck and drive around to meet the local advertisers and give away free frozen treats. The publisher and sales team tagged along so it was a congenial, if you will pardon the expression, ice breaking event. Great for long-term relationship building.

One of the magazines created a Festival of the Arts. Selling exhibit space, VIP lounges and all the other event type revenue streams. A few of the magazines have created specialty local travel/regional visiting apps that not only work for their local area but any other location as well. It was built in-house and can be sold to other regional areas.

One of the local magazines has a cutest baby contest. There is a cost to enter and for an extra charge they are happy to create for you a print of your cutest baby on a mock cover of the regional title.

Another title has a whiskey Fest which is of course a variation of the wine festivals sprouting up everywhere. Local fermentation ferments a myriad of ideas.

Many magazines are acting as agencies on a local level to create a web and social presence of local retailers who might not otherwise have the wherewithall. There are also SIPs of many sorts - Local Buyers guides, Local Brewer and Distillers guides, Local Home and Garden guides, and many more.

I could go on but you get the idea. Publishing is alive and well and thriving at the local level and, like the tower entrepreneurs, they are not averse to risk in this changing environment.

Yesterday I reported David Carey's advice to C-level publishers that they should embrace the business model of risk, reject common business orthodoxies and do their best to leverage partnerships. Those three things are exactly what the members of CRMA strive to do and from where I sit they are doing it well.