Bloomberg Businessweek Turnaround

About 4-5 months ago I decided to subscribe to the new Bloomberg Businessweek magazine.... I know... subscribe to a magazine in this day and age?? ... hear me out for a second and I'll explain...

Businessweek had become about as dry as it get's as far as magazine's go. The content was boring. The design (or lack there of) was awful and all of these points basically led to the magazine's demise. I was reading an article on Reuters talking about the possible merger deal with two competing firms which were bidding on Businessweek. One firm had plans to fire all the staff and take the magazine online only to turn it into a digital publication and the other firm (Bloomberg) had plans to keep the staff and go with the traditional model of a magazine and simply bring life to what had become a boring business mag.

I have always admired Bloomberg. Their content is fantastic and their businesses are always strong so I had a curiosity to see what the outcome of the Businessweek deal would be. Anyway, long story short, Bloomberg ended up winning the bid and acquired Businessweek.

I have since subscribed and had the pleasure to get the magazine delivered to my office weekly. Week after week it's jam packed with fantastic content, beautiful images, well done covers that are aesthetic to look at and just an overall fantastic example of what the magazine truly should be. This is a powerful example that all publications should be savvy to. While the whole industry was doom and gloom, Bloomberg disregarded the propaganda about "print" and created a model that can be profitable if executed correctly. While everyone in the industry had crashing stats, closing their doors and taking their publications online or digital..... Bloomberg came in and made a desirable business magazine that was exactly opposite of what all of the analysts were saying about print. As long as the content stays consistent, I have no plans of canceling my subscription and in fact have started to tell others about it (word of mouth campaign) because I am so pleased.

To me, the key takeaway's here are this:

- Don't listen to the analysts or the general population, focus on basic principals that you know work and make your product or service great. Deliver fantastic products or services to your audience that they will buy and promote like crazy to get it in front of them.

- Focus on a valuable quality product or service. People will pay for valuable, quality products or services. The main problem with print was that it started to lack it's value for the price people were paying. If you focus on value compared with price and maintain a higher value in the minds of your buyers than the price you are charging, they will buy. "No brainer" value propositions tend to sell in large volume. Price is completely arbitrary if the value of the product or service is higher to the buyer than the actual price of the item.

- Make it interesting. Businessweek became so bland that even if the content was great, the whole package was fantastically boring. I think people and companies forget that people like to be entertained and they like to look at colorful pictures, images and branding. Make your product or service interesting or sexy (for lack of a better word) in some way to entice interest.

Print still has it's place and done right, like Bloomberg Businessweek, always will.

- Robert Cornish
CEO, Richter10.2 Media Group