Business title targets Detroit's foreign visitors

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 1991 by Tony Silber

Crain's Detroit Business and Northwest Airlines are teaming up on a new in-flight magazine they hope will benefit both parties, as well as the motor city.

The plan is to create a publication geared to the international business community that will be circulated on Northwest's nonstop flights to Detroit from international locations. The quarterly Crain's Detroit Business/International Edition, as the new publication will be known, is scheduled to hit the skies June 1.

Editorial will cover Detroit and southeastern Michigan, and draw from Crain's Detroit Business and the company's Automotive News and Detroit Monthly, as well as original sources.

"We think it will reach people who have reason to come to Detroit to conduct business, but may not have great familiarity with this area," says Cindy Goodaker, assistant managing editor of Crain's Detroit Business and the new publication. "We hope that this will tell them more about the overall business community in Detroit, particularly focusing on international activities."

The publication will have a circulation of 35,704 (the same as the parent title's weekly circulation). It will be distributed free to all first-class and business-class passengers on nonstop flights between Detroit and Frankfurt, Tokyo, Seoul and Paris. The magazine will be displayed in such a way that everyone understands they are to take their copies when they leave the plane. About 5,500 of the circulation will be bulk, bought by companies for shipment to their overseas operations.

To emphasize its international appeal, the new publication will include foreign language reports on the cover in four languages: Japanese, Korean, French and German. "We'll definitely do more and more [foreign language text] as we go on," Goodaker says.

This is not the first time a Crain Communications publication has ventured into international publishing. Last year, the staff of Crain's Chicago Business developed a prototype of a Crain's International Business that would circulate on several airlines and include market reports on European and Canadian cities. But the advertising response was tepid and the publication never got off the ground.

The advertising response to the new effort is mixed so far, says Crain's Detroit Business advertising director Phillip Buck. "But we haven't had anybody say, `Gee, that's a dumb idea,'" he says.

Buck says the first issue will have about 10 ad pages in a 32-page folio. "We obviously would not have the kind of advertising ratios that would indicate profitability by the second time out, based on the reaction we've had so far," he says.

What's in it for Northwest? Crain's doesn't pay for the use of the aircraft, but Northwest gets the back page of every issue. More important, though, Northwest hopes the magazine will serve as an added value to its passengers and make them want to use Detroit as their entry point into the United States. If all goes well, Northwest believes the magazine could assist Detroit in becoming a viable alternative to Chicago or Cleveland.