Print is dead.

What that really means is that the old print magazine business is dead. You remember: Print a ton of copies and stack them high on magazine stands. Try to sell half of them (a sell-through rate of 50% was considered great) for dirt cheap (12 issues for only $10!). Fill each copy with no fewer than seven (7) subscription cards, some bound in and some loose so they would fall out onto the floor to beg the reader’s attention. Oh, and don’t forget the big celebrity photo on the cover, with another big celebrity in a bubble near the top. And use orange (or some other color du jour) on the cover. And the single-copy price has to end in $.95. Those are scientifically proven to increase circulation.

Yeah, that business is dead.

You know what isn’t dead? Making a great product for an audience who cares and charging money for it.

The guys at Monocle get this. The British magazine blends crosses several different categories, as the site describes: “a global briefing covering international affairs, business, culture and design.”

It’s well written and well designed. And the content is interesting. But Monocle is much more than that. There are shops in London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Hong Kong that sell exclusive products from small home furnishings to bikes and clothing. There are events available only to subscribers.

In other words, there’s a complete brand experience.

The best part: a year’s subscription is $117 (75 pounds). They’re not begging you to pick them up with two issues FREE! They’re making a good product and charging real money for it.

That may not be the future of print, but it may be the future of business.

These guys get it. Not only do they make great products, but they understand there’s nothing like making the kids giggle to get the cash register ringing.

Okay, this might be too edgy for some brands, but what can you do to make people laugh and maybe think you’re kinda clever? Post a comment here or let us know if you need help thinking of something.

Twitter helps you get it right

As Mashable explains in “How Twitter’s New Media Blog Aims To Teach By Example,” Twitter is taking a pro-active role in teaching users how to make the most out of their service.

For all the folks out there — haters and otherwise — who continue to question the validity of Twitter as a communication medium, y’all need to pay attention.

media.twitter.com isn’t just a blog. It’s an important step forward in the evolution of technology-based communication.

MySpace started us off on the wrong foot by building a massive audience and not knowing quite what to do with it themselves. Let’s assume they did their best to learn on the fly how to turn their website into a marketing platform, and as it goes with trial and error, success was very hit or miss (with lots of emphasis on “miss”). Most importantly, in typical old-media fashion, the assistance they provided was for serious advertisers only and it involved swarms of sales support teams and conference calls to help you figure out what to do to reach their crowd.

Then Facebook came along, with its brashness and anti-corporate attitude. Kind of like, “we don’t care, you figure it out.” It’s taken years for them to come around, and even now most of their assistance is human-based. And it’s mostly around advertising programs, rather than community building.

So now here’s Twitter, putting it all out there on a blog for anyone to see. Their open style is the way of the future. They’re giving us tips and case studies. It’s almost like they want us to be successful using their service. What a crazy concept!

I’m not arrogant enough to predict where social media is heading, and I’m not here to say it’s going to be all about Twitter. But I am certain that as things continue to get more complicated, the companies who take an active role in creating win-win relationships between marketers and their audiences will have a huge advantage.

If you’re in the business of selling stuff online, or advertising stuff online, you have to watch this video.

Here Guy Kawasaki walks four young people and Anastasia Goodstein through a series of questions about their actual online behaviors and what they think their behaviors might be, to answer the question: “Will anyone pay for anything?”

The simple answer is no, with a couple exceptions. And then Anastasia shared some study data that seems pretty disconnected from reality. Without spoiling the plot completely, these kids suggest that most of your efforts to sell and market online are probably for naught.

They also offer a little bit of insight into what they do value, which is stuff they’re already into, and how to get them to pay up, which is to build something incredible (X-Box Live).

Okay, let’s assume the four thieves on stay with Guy don’t represent all of Gen Y. But if your job is to market to Gen Y, wouldn’t you want to find out for certain just how accurate a picture they paint? Are you still relying on syndicated studies that give you generic answers, or are you really getting to know your audience for real?

You may have seen this New York Times article making the controversial statement that the DVR may be helping, rather than hurting TV ratings. They say this as a great revelation, as if to say that of course we all know that the DVR is in fact killing TV, which makes the proclamation breaking news.

The article asserts that many people record the shows and actually sit through the commercials. In a single paragraph, the venerable Times has solved the advertising industry’s woes.

If only life were that simple.

Let’s forget about the fact that a growing number of us are letting the commercials play because we’re checking email, Twitter, Facebook, AIM, text messages, or any number of other activities on our phones and computers.

The harsher truth is that for an increasingly savvy audience, it doesn’t matter whether we see the commercials or not. We’re not going to be swayed by silly jingles or celebrity shills. We could skip through the shows and watch only the commercials, we still wouldn’t buy your products that have no soul, that are the same as everything else on the shelf next to you. We’re simply smarter than that.

Successful marketers need to think beyond “cutting through the clutter,” and “disruption.” Assume for a minute that you do have our attention. Now what are you going to say?

Time Inc. launched Mine Magazine earlier this year, leaving Slate and others wondering “Could a personalized magazine help save print media?” Seems like a fair question to me, so I went ahead an ordered my own copy by filling out a brief survey to tell them about my interests. Mainly, it involved clicking on cover images of the five Time Inc. magazines that talk about things I want to know about. Well, Time Inc. doesn’t have five magazines that interest me — maybe this is part of the problem — but, to be a sport, I went ahead and selected Travel & Leisure, Real Simple, Food & Wine, Time, and Money. Mine is paid for by Lexus and features Lexus advertising exclusively.

The premise is that I’ll get a personalized amalgam of these titles to suit my unique tastes. I missed the deadline to get it in print, so I get mine digitally. The first issue came today. It opens in a browser window. Looks pretty good, but I quickly realize that Mine has missed the mark, despite the intro letter’s bold promise:

“Imagine your ideal magazine. Chances are it looks a lot like the one you’re holding right now. And no wonder. This is the premier issue of Mine: My Magazine, My Way, which was designed especially for you—by you. In fact, Mine represents a groundbreaking shift in the way magazines are made, because what’s on each page reflects what you asked for when you subscribed. The customized result, which comes to you compliments of Lexus, includes great writing and reporting from your favorite magazines. You’ll find stories that will surprise, delight and inspire you, whether you’re interested in South African wine or solar power. This is truly your magazine, your way.”

It took me about 3 minutes to scroll through the 36 pages and realize that there’s nothing to read. The thing is, I’m not interested in South African wine or solar power, or how to get my kids involved in packing and moving, or how to turn my basement into an entertainment center, or any of it. This is really simple stuff. If these guys were thinking about me, the customer — instead of about how to save their sinking business model with a technology-driven gimmick, they might have asked more important questions than which of their product offerings did I want them to scan and combine into a single PDF.

They might have found out that I have no kids, that I live in a condo that doesn’t have a basement, and that I’m very interested in Californian and Italian wines. What this tells me is that they don’t really care about what I want, they care about repurposing their own content. That’s the message.

Here’s another small-to-medium gripe: it looks like a magazine. This means the pages are the wrong shape to fit on my computer screen. They’re either too small to read or else I have to scroll up and down and side to side. Not the way to leverage technology — why not design it to look more like the Keynote presentations we’re used to seeing on-screen? Why not make the websites mentioned in the articles clickable? Even the PDFs I create can do that. Even Zinio, whose technology ain’t that great, is way ahead of Mine.

The back page is the only one truly personalized part of the magazine, achieved by inserting my name into the Lexus ad copy:

THE ALL-NEW 2010 RX.
NOW WITH MORE JOSH LEVINE

This is just about as lame as it gets. A huge waste of my time and Lexus’ money.

Don’t be like Mine. Put your customer first. Ask what they want and deliver content in the way they want it. It’s really as simple as that.

Hey Time Inc., Rebel Industries offers custom publishing and custom web development. We can do this for you much better by applying the simple rules I mentioned above, probably much cheaper than what you’re spending on it now.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that Rebel is part of a collective that contributes to international trendspotting site, Science of the Time.

Well, one of my recent submissions got picked up for their top 15 this month. Check out why we say Obama T-shirts are the best and how they’ve transcended politics and are now part of popular culture.

And while you’re there, be sure to check out what other folks from around the world are spotting.