Crain's marketing plan for the Big Apple

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Dec, 1985 by Eliot DeY. Schein

One might guess that marketing promotions sent to a constituency of advertising folk (many of whom are responsible for creative or for approving ad matter) would have to be of a relatively high caliber to succeed.

But through the years, Crain's Ad Age has done a remarkable job of doing very unremarkable circulation promotions. In fact, Ad Age's renewal series comes to mind not because of its memorability, but because of its continuous use, without change, for 20 years.

Nonetheless, for the better part of two decades, your columnist has marveled at the remarkable circulation success of Ad Age. It just seems to grow and grow.

Will the trend continue?

Enter Rance Crain and Co.'s new venture (a few years back) called Crain's Chicago Business. Chicago had a real need for a with-it, up-beat business publication--and the promotion worked. More than that, a direct mail package therefrom even won a Folio Direct Marketing award. The package, a 9" x 12" 'er, looked remarkably like the front page of the newsmagazine it was attempting to sell (to the best of my recollection).

A few more years passed, and Crain decided to enter the New York market. Why does the transition from Chicago to New York remind me of Gruner + Jahr's odyssey with Geo--from Europe to the United States to the ultimate failure of that venture?

The Crain family has a rather positive track record, and one can't help believing to them. Actually, if you compare Crain's New York Business with City Business (which Crain bought in August, ostensibly to eliminate the competition) and with a few other general business publications including The New York Times Business Section, the inclination is to pin hopes on Crain's success.

The product is easy to read, enjoyable and interesting. But it has one very noticeable flaw that can be stated thus: The New York City market is made up of an incredible variety of business interests--real estate, advertising, publishing, tourism, finance and banking, the garment industry, the entertainment industry, broadcast, law, medicine and academe. The diversity makes it a very difficult market to capture from an editorial standpoint.

Crain elected to try the "Goldhirsh" method (used to launch Inc. many years ago) to launch New York Business. Free subscriptions were entered for practically every titled person in a corporation in the major business areas of New York City. This free controlled file became the ad base for the publication. A past issue included headline stories concerning restaurants, manufacturing, real estate and pharmaceuticals. This--fused with a mayoral campaign political story and another about a national teamsters' strike--rounded out the publication's major stories of the week.

Somehow or other, Mr. Goldhirsh managed to make Inc. work after a very dismaying and expensive couple of years of launch. The question is, what about Crain's New York? Which brings me to one of my favorite subjects: Renewals.

Something like 26 weeks (and 26 issues) into the mission, a "renewal" direct mail package was sent out. It intelligently offered a one-year subscription as a renewal. If you disregard the ethics of asking for a renewal of something that was never ordered in the first place, the so-called renewal package is really not that bad.

It includes a carrier envelope, order form, letter and reply envelope, as well as a second publisher's letter that describes special editorial sections that have run or are about to appear. (The insert doesn't make it clear whether this is a list of past or projected editorial fare.)

The headline in the letter says, "Before your trial subscription ends, take advantage of this money-saving renewal offer." The letter reads, "Dear Crain's Reader, As an executive doing business in the New York area, you were included in Crain's limited introductory subscription program for good reason. Our feeling was you'd welcome a hard-hitting business newsweekly like Crain's--one that reported hot, local business news not covered in your daily or in the national press."

Pricing: A missed opportunity

Then we come to "37% off the regular subscription rate," which is just $25 instead of $40. The $25 rate is not a good choice of price; $24.97 would probably increase the pull significantly, but apparently that boat was missed, gangplank and all.

The letter proceeds: "To encourage your immediate response, I've enclosed a reply envelope. Make sure you stay on our preferred list and return your renewal form with your payment today because this low charter rate won't last too much longer."

It seems to me that this paragraph is an insult to the intelligence of circulation marketers everywhere. There's no BRE--just a regular reply envelope. How does this encourage immediate response? Staying on a preferred list doesn't seem like much of an incentive either. And you can bet the low charter rate will last as long as it takes to build the circulation for the publication.

Also, your columnist is not too crazy about burnt sienna being the signature ink color. But if that's really what Charles M. Wilhelm, the circulation director, uses in his pen, maybe it's okay.