Crain's marketing plan for the Big Apple

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

The second package

About 30 weeks into the mission comes another package. This one is meter printed, whereas the first one had a printed indicia. It also heralds its content as, "DATED NOTICE!" The dated notice is, of course (again), the "renewal" order form. This package includes a business reply envelope--so technically, if you waited for effort two, you would have saved 22 cents of your company's postage money.

The second effort in any series is traditionally a little early to start talking about editorial content, but that's basically where this letter is coming from. And the use of yellow highlighter artwork on the letter, even though it looks a little too neat to appear realistic, is a good technique.

In this package, by the way, Charles Wilhelm seems to have graduated to black ink. Screening the black signatures to 60 percent would have at least made it appear to be handwritten--as opposed to printed in the darkest ink possible.

The second effort does not push sending back payment with order, but highlights "what we need now is your O.K." to continue your service. The $25 rate prevails and the order form does say "time is running out on your free trial subscription."

All in all, this campaign, because of its look-alike efforts and its lack of attention to detail, may not do as well as it would had it been developed a little more professionally. But Crain has been getting away with this for decades and probably will get away with it again.

During this entire program of renewing the free trial subscription people, Crain does a separate cold mail and radio does a separate cold mail and radio campaign in an effort to bring in new subscribers. For the mail, they're renting mailing lists of people in specific businesses that they think would be most beneficial in terms of selling advertising. This certainly does not sound any different from what most magazine publishers attempt to do, and in this way Crain is no different.

The headline on this otherwise bland 6" x 9" envelope is, "Do you qualify for membership in New York's only officers' club?" And as long as this isn't mailed to the personnel at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, I guess nobody in the military will be upset by the gaffe.

In the cold mailing, the $25 price appears again. The letter is typeset-technically, a psychological no-no. And the signature, for no good reason, is printed in a combination of black and yellow. Basically a ho-hum effort.

The radio attack features :60's that are wisely oriented toward selling advertising space as well as subscriptions. For this display of savvy, Crain deserves the highest praise. Broadcast must be their thing. The only problem with the radio message is that it fails to mention the "800" phone number more than once. This is tantamount to direct marketing high treason.

Let's hope that history continues to repeat itself and the Crain people are successful in spite of their marketing weaknesses. Unquestionably, they have the best publication of its kind on the market. And they apparently have the financial commitment to go the long haul. No doubt Crain's New York Business will be around for Volume Two in 1986.