Promotions put to the test

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, March, 1990 by Eliot Schein

Promotions put to the test

What a lucky guy Dave Kelley is. The circulation manager at Advertising Age, he apparently has an unlimited budget for testing the latest state-of-the-art promotion pieces for new business solicitation.

A potential subscriber needed only to be in the advertising business to have received as many as four or five promotion pieces from Ad Age during the last year. In fact, as you read this, the results generated by the first 1990 efforts are being evaluated (their most recent major mailing went out on December 27, 1989).

With offers ranging from $52 to $74 a year, an Ad Age subscription is not small potatoes; and the opportunity for Crain Communications to earn lots of money from subscription revenues provides a sound footing and fertile field.

The most intriguing Ad Age promotion of recent vintage is the Cross pen package. Nestled in 9" by 12" double-window envelope is an over-sized promotion piece that includes a machine "hand-written" offer. The copy reads, "A free Gold Cross Pen handsomely engraved with your name is our way of thanking you, . . ." followed by the person's name hand-written in.

This is a blockbuster of a four-color promotion; and once the fulfillment of the premium is satisfied, the publisher can pocket $62 of the $74 selling price and walk away smiling. The hand-writing personalization was done in this case by Diversified Imaging in Maryland.

The fact is, this package probably works better than anything Ad Age has ever tried at this (relatively high for them) selling price. The only problem, of course, is the high cost of the promotion piece itself and the $12 premium--which comes engraved in 25 characters or less, with the first name, middle initial and last name of the individual who subscribes. That's not bad.

One oddity: There is a four-color broadside in the package that for some inexplicable reason has an entirely empty guadrant. Except for this blank chunk of beautiful coated stock, the color work on this package is crisp, clear and lovely.

The letter is handled quite capably, and seems to cover all the bases--including the "36 special intelligence reports," the fee pen and the fact that the $74-a-year subscription rate is tax deductible. All in all, a great package.

According to Kelley, it has a good front end, is expensive to fulfill, and probably is one package that will stay in the cycle until something better can be tested that will work well enough to take its place.

(A personal aside to Kelley: You might want to try to isolate the people who subscribe via this test package and offer them a renewal premium of--you guessed it--a Cross pen refill.)

For serious readers

Another test package is almost like the Wall Street Journal control approach. In a subtly pinstriped, 7-1/2" x 3-7/8" window envelope with an "Office of the publisher of Advertising Age" corner card is a $64 subscription offer. The letter is of particular interest, inasmuch as its introduction tells the story of David Ogilvy starting his ad agency and Ray Kroc selling hamburgers, and then leads into, "Because you are reading this letter, I know this much about you. One way or another you are in the business of making products move. That's how you are different."

This is a promotion piece destined to pull well if mailed to the more serious in the marketplace. It discusses the newsworthiness of the weekly nd sells the price advantage as far as possible. Crisp, clean--maybe a little boring in light of the 9" x 12" free pen extravaganza that we just discussed--but all in all quite a noteworthy package. And, it'e one you would enjoy reading--especially the letter copy.

There are two more test packages worth mentioning here: a yellowish "confidential" package (which is kind of interesting and innovative) with a lower than low $52-a-year offer, and a traditional double postcard effort--a special "Next 12 issues free" plus 52 more issues for a total of $59.

All this testing, while it is the name of the game, is not necessarily the be-all and end-all. Publishers still have to send out control packages in the largest quantities to keep circulation input humming along.

Keeping it under control

As of this writing, the prevailing Ad Age control pcakge comes in a 6" x 9" brown kraft envelope that says, "Open Carefully, Award Acceptance Certificate Enclosed." Inside this carrier envelope is a four-color promotion piece showing Ad Age's age-old "Marketing Genius Award" mug which, through the process of cold fushion printing, hs the name of the recipient ot is.

The order form has you write your name on the mug, enabling you to receive an actual mug and 52 issues of Ad Age for $64. This mug offer has been in effect, in some form or another, for close to 20 years--proof again of the validity of the premise prevailing about this and the Good Housekeeping control package: "If it's not broken, don't fix it." A control package that continues to work is worth its weight in gold. The control premium, at least, appears to be exactly the same as it always was, and a great premium at that.