The ambitious "Seed"

This week I had the chance to meet Adam Bly, founder and editor of Seed magazine. I was pretty impressed with his thinking about Seed and all the related ventures around the magazine that he is currently developing with his team. I was especially intrigued that Ben Fry, an early pioneer of data visualization, joined Seed magazine and is pursing now his interests as part of the Seed Media Group. It is very encouraging that some magazines realize that great content is highly desired, independent of its distribution form. And Seed is one of the few magazines that continues to hire extremely talented individuals to increase the quality of its thinking and work. 

Additionally the Seed magazine team seems to leverage its expertise around “Seeing everything through the lenses of science” to offer services that traditionally consulting companies or advertising agencies would do (e.g. building interactive websites, designing visualization applications). The magazine is really stretching itself not just onto new distribution formats but morphing itself into a modern Media Services company that ignores the traditional boundaries of publishers. The magazine might remain the center but the periphery of this center could become more important than the magazine itself. 

Seed’s core agenda is definitely highly ambitious. Here is an excerpt form his corporate website, describing its core principles:

·   “Science is transforming our global culture and conversation unlike ever before, shaping markets, informing policy, inspiring the arts and deepening our understanding of who we are, where we come from and where we're heading.

·   The pursuit and impact of science is borderless.

·   Science is a powerful tool for solving global problems, from climate change to clean water to poverty and development.

·   Science affects every single person on the planet.

·   Widespread science literacy is essential in the 21st century.” 

It is admirable to pursue such an ambitious agenda and to do this with quite some success over the last four years. Beyond that, Seed might function for us as an early indicator of new developments that have high relevance for our thinking and working in marketing.