About Us: Our Story
The Hub looks like a magazine and reads like a magazine. But it is much more than just another magazine. It is a place where the best, brightest and boldest in marketing -- clients and agencies alike -- can exchange their best thinking.
It is a platform that is as intelligent, inquisitive and innovative as you are, that is built on the belief that insights, ideas and innovation are the ultimate drivers of growth in marketing. It is written for -- and read by -- a carefully identified community of about 3,000 senior-level executives on at top corporate marketing departments and agencies.
The Hub is an exchange of ideas ... both in terms of "give-and-take" discussion, as well as an exchange in the sense of a marketplace (like the Stock Exchange).
Our premise is this: Marketing is the business of ideas. Like any business, it has buyers (clients) and sellers (agencies). As an exchange of ideas, the Hub is a place where ideas are presented, discussed, explored, changed, accepted or rejected, bought and sold.
Launched in July 2004, and published bi-monthly, the Hub is published by David X Manners Company Inc., and brought to you by the editors of Reveries.com and Cool News of the Day. It is fast becoming a favorite of thought-leading marketers not only in America but also around the world.
A Short History of the Hub
The story of the Hub is really two stories. On the one hand, it's a content story, and on the other, it's a business story.
Both stories date back to October 1996, when we launched Reveries.com, where we published Q&A interviews with high-profile marketers, assembled roundtable-style discussions, fielded reader surveys, featured white papers, case studies and trend reports.
A little less than two years later, we launched a daily email newsletter, Cool News of the Day, intended to spark the imaginations of seasoned marketers on a daily basis.
Our idea was to create a place where marketing's best and brightest could exchange their best thinking, and help each other solve their most daunting challenges. It was a natural outgrowth of our content-development work with consulting firms and marketing services companies that were interested in taking a thought-leadership approach to new business growth.
At the time, there was nothing like Reveries online -- or in print. The trades did a good job covering the comings and goings of the industry. Business publications provided thoughtful articles on marketing issues here and there. But there really wasn't anything truly dedicated to exploring the many challenges facing marketers.
In 2004, we decided to launch the Hub as a print manifestation of the kind of content we had pioneered online. This probably qualifies as counterintuitive -- or just plain crazy -- since it was already apparent that that the print magazine business was not exactly on an uptick.
In part this was brought on by the rise of the internet, but it was also because of a growing belief that advertising in magazines didn't work as well as it used to. This was a downward spiral, obviously, because without any ads, there couldn't be any content. Refusing to accept this premise, we believed the Hub could forge a new path.
An Exchange of Ideas
First, unlike traditional magazines, the Hub is all about creating an exchange of ideas. In this way, we see the Hub taking an old, monologue-style medium -- print -- and making it behave more like a new, conversation-based medium. Its power is its ability to open conversations with those with whom you might not otherwise ever speak.
From a content standpoint, we created a magazine based on the proposition that innovation is the ultimate driver of growth in business. We provided a forum for the industry thought-leaders to define and address the issues of the day.
From a business standpoint, we created a magazine whose revenue stream flowed more from content than from advertising. Yes, we accept ads because sometimes it's the best way to communicate an idea. But the real value of the Hub is its ability to build and sustain long-range conversations based on thought-leadership, and with that, grow a business.
Achieving this required an entirely new business model. It's a model we call "collaborative sponsorship," in which the Hub collaborates with a small group of sponsors to create quality content for our mutual, primary audience – senior-level marketers at major corporations. We refer to these sponsors as our "brain trust" and together our goal is to help the Hub's readers address their challenges more effectively.
For our readers, the result is a valuable resource of some of the marketing industry's best thinking. For our collaborative sponsors, it is an opportunity to engage our readers in conversations about their challenges and how to solve them -- the kinds of conversations that lead to business growth.
The Boldest & Brightest
The Hub has featured dozens of interviews with high-level executives such as John Fleming of Wal-Mart, Leslie Kilgore of Netflix, Dina Howell of Procter & Gamble, Paul Latham of Costco, Tom Boyles of Disney, Simon Uwins of Tesco, Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo, Steve Wozniak of Apple, Larry Flanagan of MasterCard, Mark Addicks of General Mills, Michael Mendenhall of Hewlett-Packard and Lisa Klauser of Unilever.
We'd love to have your thoughts -- on the Hub as an exchange of ideas as well as the stories we publish. For more information on collaborative sponsorships, please call Joseph McMahon at 845-238-3516, email: joseph AT hubmagazine.com.
May those with the best ideas win!
Editor-in-Chief
Tim Manners
Senior Editors
Peter F. Eder
Jane Harris
Managing Publisher
Joseph McMahon
Art Director
Julie Manners
Illustrator
John S. Dykes
Circulation Director
Bertha Rosenberg
Contributors:
Stuart Armstrong
Paula Ausick
Mitch Blum
Britt Dionne
Jayne Eastman
Spencer Hapoienu
Mack Hoopes
Chris Hoyt
Cindy Jolicoeur
Jon Kramer
Marta LaRock
Chris Maher
Luke Mansfield
Dori Molitor
Chip Miller
Susan Nelson
Zain Raj
Mike Shinall
Tim Scholler
Al Silverstein
Ted Taft
Paul Thompson
Vince Weiner
Kendra Wehmeyer
John Wilkins
Al Wittemen
Mary Zalla
