Good magazine is launching a marketing blitz that includes a custom insert in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, a “name your own price” subscription campaign and a partnership with Starbucks.
The pricing offer, which launched September 8, will run for the three months, as the Starbucks partnership will. Readers are able to choose from nine different price points, ranging from $1 to $1,000, for a year-long subscription. Good, published six times a year, donates all of its subscription revenue to nonprofit organizations.
“We thought, with the launch of the new Web site and the branding effort around being a content provider for Starbucks, it was a good opportunity to introduce people to the magazine who may not be familiar with it,” said Ben Davis, director of audience development for Good. “It was a democratic way for people to decide what the magazine is worth to them.”
Davis added that the pre-chosen price levels may be used to segment readers for future marketing efforts. Good readers tend to be in their 20s and 30s; skew slightly female; and are interested in politics, pop culture and their communities. The magazine, which is preparing its initial audit, has a current rate base of 65,000 with plans to increase in 2009.
Good‘s subscription campaign will be promoted in the magazine and on its new Web site, http://www.good.is/, as well as through its Good Sheet, a weekly custom publication produced with Starbucks and distributed through the coffee shop’s 7,000 US locations. The newsprint weekly will cover topics from carbon emissions to an election guide. The promotion will also be mentioned in Good Mini — a digest-sized, 16-page mini-magazine, produced with The New York Times and Mini USA, that will be sent to 750,000 Times readers in major markets on September 14.
“The deals with Starbucks and with The New York Times allow us to reach more people, but at the core of Good we’re about providing intelligent content in a creative and fun way, so I think these extensions are really just that,” Davis said. “We’ll reach a wider audience through places like Starbucks, but I think the folks that choose to join us on the site and the magazine are still self-selecting.”
Davis predicts the Good brand will make about 22 million impressions through the Good Sheet at Starbucks.
