I want you to Imagine starting a company today.
Imagine that that business you start is still around in the year 2213
that's 190 years from now! That’s 7 generations.
imagine that you start this company to serve a tiny emerging industry. A laughably small one
But over the decades, your endeavor helps develop and grow this humble little industry into one of the most impactful and true transformative forces in the world.
Imagine along the way your company invents, marketing practices and strategies that are so pioneering that they grow into entire massive industries of their own.
In 1832, DK Manor started American railroad journal,
190 years later, it's still in existence.
It’s gone through a complex history of mergers, acquisitions, name changes, but Railway Age is a publication that's still quite vital for the North American railroad industry.
American railroad journal was the premier industry journal of the 19th century and arguably the longest continuously operating trade publication in the world.
They coined the term “public relations” and developed the modern practice.
They were the first trade organization to set up an ongoing lobbying operation at the federal level.
They’re also responsible for a long list of firsts in the advertising field and firsts around new publishing technologies like full color printing.
that's cool, but But why do we study this?
Sure the story and the longevity are pretty impressive, and at least to me, fascinating in its own right.
But what does this old trade journal have to do with business and marketing? The work we do today?
Why is it important?
hell, Why am I doing a podcast about the history of b2b marketing?
I believe the more we learn about the past, the more we can foresee and recognize the future.
I believe there's a lot we can learn by following a trajectory back. Tracing its contours.
If we can identify the patterns, if we can follow the patterns backwards, then we can glimpse however faint, the ways those patterns may continue in the future.
We can see how the cycles might repeat themselves. See the logical conclusions of trends.
none of that's precise but it helps. helps us think about where things are going.
Specifically, with the American Railroad Journal story, I think there's some interesting patterns around Content marketing.
For me, they are the original content marketing organization, especially when it comes to thought leadership for an emerging industry
now if you're going to research the history of content marketing, there's a few there's several entities that could credibly claim to be the first.
The furrow was a magazine was started by the John Deere company in the late 1890s. It expertly marketed the John Deere products to farmers, and is still in public publication today.
You'll find Johnson and Johnson who in the late 19th century published a guide to wound sterilization along with a catalog to order their products.
You'll find some people pointing to Ben Franklin, who as a way to promote his Pennsylvania printing press business, Published Poor Richard's Almanac.
There’s also the locomotive magazine, first published in 1867 by the Hartford steam boiler inspection and insurance company.
It was Devoted to steam power and industrial safety and at least until very recently, was still being published as newsletter.
They’re just some of the interesting content marketing stories of early B2B marketing,
or "industrial marketing" as it was called back then. There are many more, including so many from beyond North America.
I'm planning to visit some of those early content marketing analogs in future episodes.
But for me, when I look back on the early threads of content marketing, thought leadership and network building that are effective and powerful today,
I keep coming back to American Railroad Journal.
Many of us work in emerging industries or at least work to serve & promote burgeoning sub categories, trends, and movements.
We’re always trying to navigate how to promote and grow and cultivate the larger space we’re part of to grow the whole pie
as well as promote our employer's part of that industry
and try and stay true to our own personal brand and values along the way...
It’s a delicate track to navigate.
I think there are some key navigation patterns we can learn from the success of the railroad journal.
Now it may seem obvious in hindsight that the railroad industry was going to be massive, but back in the 1832 when the Journal was first started to be published just two years after the first successful railroad in North America.
The year it was first published there were a total of 12 railways in the USA, operating on only 200 miles of track.
Nine of the 12 railways still relied on horses for power.
Now it grew very quickly, and smart people definitely knew that this new technology was going to have a big impact eventually,
but how fast, how far reaching that impact would be, I think probably would have surpassed even DK Minor’s wildest dreams at that point.
When the journal first started there wasn't a lot of railroad expertise in the world. It's a new technology and the experts that didn't exist.
The few experts were mostly in England. And no railroad experts really had experience dealing with the large geography and mountainous terrains of North America.
So the publication actually helped to develop and identify some of those early engineering talents. People who were just published their ideas form a very technical drawings, blueprints proposals would later go on to become extremely influential railroad engineers.
something else important they did that contributed to their impact and longevity is they evolved their scope as the industry changed.
Whithin the first few years of being published, they expanded to include both the engineering side of the business but also the business side, including a lot of the public offerings and financial vehicles to invest in creating these railroads.
They then expanded to cover industrial mining and related operations. And over the years, they sometimes served the passenger rail business as well as the traditional freight industry.
As they evolved, they also mixed up the content types.
They always included extremely technical content.
I’ve gotten a couple old issues on eBay and they have these big fold out blueprints of proposals of new techniques of new technologies tools, architectural drawings, site maps of new types of stations, track setups.
They also provided the best industry source for financial data and developments. They invested heavy in education and knowledge sharing.
but unlike a lot of their contemporaries didn't just promote new innovations and new applications. They didn’t just collect and share data. They analyzed them.
they mostly championed achievements and promoted their growing industry. but they weren’t afraid to point out looming problems, proposed reforms.
they were the first entity really of any kind at that scale to examine some of the common problems that big industrial business would pose for an increasingly connected and commercialized society.
the early journals also did an amazing job at balancing the voice and brand of the content.
There's a great quote from one of the early editors that says “if we shall see if we shall succeed, being comprehensive, without effusiveness, practical, without dryness, solid without heaviness, and a value to both those who build and operate our railroads and those who use them. We should feel assured of our abundance success”.
That balance is important for any b2b marketing campaign, any content operation. You’re always serving multiple stakeholders, trying to be of practical value.
You Don't want to be too boring, dry.
You’re always juggling hyper targeted focus and a broader audience, working with an audience that may be at different stages of the buying and development journey.
To help an emerging industry gain momentum you both need to focus on technical, tactical expertise but also how the industry might fit into important broader macro trends.
I hope that's been an interesting look at some of the earliest thought leadership in a fast growing technological driven industry. I hope the history and journey of innovative content pioneer and at least provides a new perspective.
this podcast is titled nothing new under the sun and in some ways, I guess I could be seen as a cynical title.
and in many ways it HAS all been done before.
a lot of innovation is about trying something that's been done, but doing it in a new field or a new time and a new situation with new tools for a new audience.
especially as a marketer....it's easy to call something new.
It's easy to call something first, easy and maybe even necessary to get excited and think...no one has ever done this before!
But these old journals and print ads and marketing campaigns and other long forgotten emphemera are full of people just as smart, just as driven just as ambitious, just as complex and complicated as any of us.
we should always assume that there’s an analog to the newest technique or trend.
some similar pattern. or similar moment, just in a different part in time.
But ultimately, for me, Nothing New Under The Sun is an optimistic title.
Because If we assume that in some way, it’s been done before,
then that means we can learn from what came before!
The time, the perspective, the situations, the tools are different,
but the pure execution, the art, the craft, the determination, the strategy, the choices, those all have echoes in our own work.
Especially if YOU are working in an emerging industry or category of some sort,
and especially if you are trying to create and promote content that is actually
“leading” the market and broader community you want to serve,
then by definition there’s no contemporary map to follow.
I want to quote one of the railroad journals earliest editors who said
“It may be true that experience is the best teacher. But a man is a damned fool who cannot learn from anybody's experience but his own."
True 150 years ago, true today, and I’m willing to bet, true 150 years from now.
....Thanks to each and every one of you for listening to this episode.
I know that I learned a lot putting this episode together. Hope you did as well!
Check the show notes, where there's links to several archives of the American Railroad Journal and other things mentioned.
If you found this interesting, I'd love to hear from you, and especially what topics to explore in future episodes.
Hopefully, we all can learn together from the experience of those who came before.
and who knows, maybe, just maybe one of you out there is helping to create something that will still be around in 190 years.