Every CMO looking to create a revolution by saving money and producing outsized results should understand that customer publishing is one of those old ideas that’s revolutionary.

If that’s confusing, listen to Robert Sutton, a Stanford University professor who’s an expert on innovation. “All the excitement about all things new obscured the fact that most new ideas are bad and most old ideas are good,” Sutton once observed. After all, Sutton likes to say, old ideas get old because they’re good enough to survive.

Back when General Motors was an innovative marketer instead of a shrinking poster child for the ineffectiveness of traditional advertising, GM decided it would tell its own story. In the mid-1930s the picture magazines were king—Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post. But instead of just renting little pieces of these magazines for advertising, GM launched it own—Friends magazine—in (I believe) 1937. GM used it ad agency, Campbell-Ewald, to custom publish Friends. Understanding that admen couldn’t create real magazines, Campbell-Ewald hired some journalists and created the first publishing unit to operate a custom magazine for a major brand.

The idea was that Friends would be a major national magazine with circulation in the millions and great photojournalism on the Hollywood stars, cultural reporting on the American scene, and beautifully photographed stories on Chevy cars. Custom-crafted content was so effective at selling Chevies that when television came along, GM did it again and produced custom TV, creating and owning The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, a huge hit from 1956 to 1963. Dinah Shore’s signature song, “See the USA in Your Chevrolet,” was a tune virtually every American could sing.

GM, however, was a latecomer to custom television. To a great extent, the auto giant was following the leads of other giant marketers who had entered television in the late 1940s—an oil giant (The Milton Burle Show, aka Teaxco Star Theater), a soap giant (Colgate Theater) and other giants. The early days of TV were the days when marketers, not networks, created and owned the content.

It was Europe, not the US, that pioneered in birthing stand-alone companies that did nothing but create and publish custom magazines for clients. The first, as far as we can tell, appeared in The Netherlands. That company, MediaPartners Group, still produces one of the largest and most influential consumer magazines in Holland—Allerhande, the monthly magazine of the dominant Albert Heijn grocery chain.

But it was England where customer publishing really blossomed. Today, the UK is the most vibrant of the world’s customer publishing markets and titles created for large marketers dominate the newsstands, making up 7 of England top 10 magazines.

Why do we know so much about custom publishing/customer publishing/custom content? Because Story is home to some of the modern (translation: still living) pioneers of the industry. Simon Kelly, Story’s US COO, played a leading role in founding the world’s two main trade associations for custom publishers—the Association of Publishing Agencies in London and the Custom Publishing Council in New York.

Kirk Cheyfitz, Story CEO, created one of earlier publishing agencies in the US—The Publishing Company—in 1983. Jim Small led the way for sports franchises, creating or relaunching NBA Inside Stuff for the National Basketball Association, NASCAR Magazine, the Professional Golf Association’s magazine and many others. And Jon King, Story’s London managing director, is a pioneer of custom TV, having produced television programming for BP, the European Space Agency and the British Foreign Office, among others.

So why don’t we call Story a custom publisher anymore? Read all about it.