The arrogance and edginess with which Maverick stalks the magazine shelves at newsagents, casting a disdaining eye over its more staid competition, will be apparent in Empire, says Brkic.
With Maverick, business was made sexy, extending the readership of the business magazine into different industry sectors, i.e., IT, straddling the print category between business and consumer.
Using the best writers, strong photography and a layout reminiscent of Fast Company in its heyday, although more sophisticated, a different and ironic payoff line every month (a favourite: "A magazine for the filthy rich"), different covers for the same issue and an unabashed claim to intellectualism, Maverick has caused its more powerful media cousins in business publishing, and the broader industry, to scurry to redesign and refocus their own products. And best they do, as Brkic has many ideas up his sleeves...
And that is how Empire finally got off the ground - he was challenged on the idea, which had been germinating since mid-2006, and decided to go for it, hoping to have a subscription list well above that of the traditional media-focused print titles in this business sector (which sit on about 3000 - made up of subscribers and free distribution lists). Empire will also be sold in newsagents.
It will be monthly, to launch April 2007, 80 pages from the start, a glossy square book, feature people on the cover and Maverick's publishing formula will apply: best journalism, best photography, best layout, targeted marketing and distribution.
Brkic has decided there will be a triumvirate of editors: himself (before launching Maverick just over a year ago, Brkic was with ITWeb as launch editor of Brainstorm); Phillip de Wet, ITWeb news editor and This Day IT editor; and Kevin Bloom, founding editor of the first media-only focused title in the B2B publishing industry, The Media. AdVantage and Marketing Mix are the other print titles in this B2B sector which will also face the challenge from Empire, although Brkic will be hoping to take his mag further and extend his subscribers and readers to appeal to the general business and consumer intelligentsia.
So will another media magazine in this crowded B2B space be read? As with the other titles he has launched, Brkic aims to set a benchmark in publishing, he told Bizcommunity.com. Empire will be everything its name suggests he says: it will report on everything a big media company would invest in, namely, journalism, advertising, online, radio, TV, film, theatre and so on - in-depth, international news, investigative journalism, cutting-edge editorial along the lines of "Fortune meets Vanity Fair", and of course, the "slaughtering of holy cows"!
Brkic is unabashed and passionate in his description of his new magazine. On his fourth espresso of the morning (which he knocks over while waving his arms about to belabour a point), he explains that Maverick "attracts the brains in business" and so too will Empire: "Even if people are not in media, they will read it".
He concludes: "The passion has been taken out of the media business and we are bringing it back."
