E Forward-thinking publishers have been plumping their bottom lines with branded goods and services and new content platforms for ages now. But in today’s publishing environment, a rapid pace of expansion and experimentation has become de rigueur. Here publishers reveal their latest forays into streaming video, licensed goods, and brick-and-mortar retail. x Brand tensions T By Dan Eldridge here’s certainly nothing new, or even particularly unusual, about magazine publishers trading on the public recognition of their brands to create new lines of consumer products and services. Back in the mid-1980s, for instance, Southern Living launched what would eventually become a very pro table cottage industry by sell-ing architectural home plans to readers who wanted to literally live the lifestyle depicted in the magazine’s pages. Today, the Southern Living blueprints are so popular they’re sold from a dedicated call center. e average order price for a buildable set is $1,200, and the House Plans division now brings in over half a million dollars for the publisher annually. As the realignment of the publishing industry continues, a new normal seems to have emerged: one in which tenacious publishers must consistently create en-tirely new sources of revenue and extend their brands into new, pro table territory. In recent years, publishers have repurposed their content into new formats (ebooks, TV, streaming video, podcasts), launched thought-leader conferences and enthu-siast events, and developed direct-to-consumer or a liate ecommerce platforms. ese nontraditional ventures have become nearly as important to publishers as the ad sales and subscription revenue they once relied on almost exclusively. Bonnier jumps feet-fi rst into the streaming video land-rush. “Video seems to be a white-hot space in content for all brands these days,” says Anthony Licata, the editorial director of Bon-nier’s Men’s Group and editor-in-chief of Field & Stream . “We all see how consumers are watching more and more video online, on their mobile devices, streaming through their televi-sions. And so certainly that’s a space our brands here have been pushing into.” Publishers, take note: anks to the grow-ing popularity of smart TVs and the near ubiquity of connected mobile devices, stream-ANTHONY ing video is not just the latest industry trend, LICATA Editorial but is poised to be one of the most crucial Director, income generators of the second half of the Bonnier Men’s Group 26 PUBLISHING EXECUTIVE • OCTOBER 2014 decade. It was that hypotheses, Licata says, that led Field & Stream earlier this year to ink a revenue-sharing deal with Net-2TV, an internet-based television program-ming company that teams with blue-chip publishers to create branded channels for so-called “smart TV” streaming players, such as Roku and Google Chromecast. Net2TV also streams its programming for free through a traditional website, Portico.tv, that’s acces-sible to anyone with a high-speed internet connection. Bonnier’s Men’s Group, as it happens, is no stranger to video programming. A number of its titles have been producing