Brand extension is a key to continued and enhanced success for magazines, according to publishers like Rupert Turnbull of Wired magazine, who asserts that education is the “next big thing” in brand extension. In the last two years, Wired, a popular print magazine, has launched an online magazine, mobile and tablet editions, a podcast, an events business, and a consulting arm. Print is still key for Condé Nast, publisher of Wired magazine. Over the last eight years, Condé Nast has launched some 60 magazines and is ready to launch another four in the next four months.

However, the publishing giant is looking at ways to extend its brands and its leaders see educational strategies like its newly launched College of Fashion and Design or recent London tech conference as key, along with events like Glamour Women of the Year or the Vogue Festival.

In fact, some Christian magazines have been using events and educational strategies successfully for decades. Christian magazines have sponsored weekend writing conferences, correspondence courses, learning tourism, and camps and classes of all kinds. Events have been high on the list for magazines which have sponsored music festivals, conferences, retreats, and contests.

In this day when so many “experts” are talking about the need to go digital, mobile, and interactive, print magazines can trade on their names to extend their brand in other ways. Certainly it is important to see how technology is changing the way your readers prefer to consume your product. But technology is not the only way to get your message out there. Even super-wired magazines like Wired, with online, mobile, and tablet editions, are looking at other low-tech ways of extending their brand and increasing their reach.