The $764 Million Offline Social Media Powerhouse
August 1, 2008 by John_Newtson
Before the Internet was a twinkle in ole’ Al Gore’s eye, this offline publisher was kicking-butt with user-generated content.
It’s more proof that marketing principles apply across advertising media. Technology just shifts which principles are more powerful at any given time.
Back in 1965 Roy Reiman founded his publishing company. Marketer’s were decades from co-opting “Web 2.0″ as buzzword.
And “user generated content” wasn’t on anybody’s radar.
So it’s remarkable that Roy used user-generated -content as his primary editorial strategy.
It worked pretty well too.
Reader’s Digest bought the Reiman publishing empire in 1999 for $764 million.
With six publications, including the funnyily-spelled Reminisce, Reiman had over 8,060,000 PAID subscribers generating $100 million in sales from the magazine business. Plus, Reiman had a very successful book business, travel business and even a fund-raising arm.
Maybe Reiman’s audience were hard-core early adopters. What else could explain his success?
Well, his audience was primarily older, rural women. Country folk.
Reiman’s magazines were almost entirely composed of user-submitted content. Here’s a sampling from Country magazine …
- “Candidly Country” - Users submitted their “favorite family photos and the stories behind them.”
- “My Country Fantasy” Contest — Readers are encouraged to submit their country-fantasies and every issue one subscriber was picked to live hers out.
- “Can You Help Me?” — Q&A sections in every issue.
- “Overheard at the Country Cafe’” — Funny, and not-so-funny jokes submitted by readers.
- “Down-Home Advice from Country Grandparents” — Old folks doing what they love best, telling young-un’s what to do, here, with free parenting advice.
- The Top Country Character Contest” – Reader’s submit pictures and stories of the characters running around their towns and winner is selected every issue.
There was no end to ideas the editors came up with to get readers to submit new and varied content. Witness the “Pig-Pun” column where readers submit not jokes, but PUNS … puns about pigs.
No, I’m not making that up. And I am emphatically NOT secretly harboring a desire to Google “pig-puns”… and even if I did I would NEVER post them here. It would be ridiculous of me to post things like …
“What do you call a laundromat for pigs? The Hogwash.”
“Why did the 3 little pigs fall alseep every time Grandpa told stories? Because he was a BOAR.”
“How did the farmer know the fox was stealing eggs? Because the pig squeeled on him.”
I would NEVER post those here, I’m much too sophisticated for such humor.
The point is, user-generated content may feel “new” but it works because the basic human desires of being recognized, listened-too and need for belonging were already there.
Technology is just making it easier and easier for us to do. And that’s what’s been so fantastic about social-media.
I don’t see having my own Facebook page as scalable marketing system (advertising on Facebook, well ,that’s another story) but as a networking tool and a way to reconnect with old friends — it’s phenomenal.
Just last night I got an email from a friend I haven’t talked to in 10 years. He found me on Facebook.
That’s awesome!
As marketers we’re always trying to tap into and leverage the basic core human emotions into attention, desire and sales. The more we can make people feel a connection with us and our business, the more they’ll stick around and listen to what we have to say (and listen to what we have to sell).
Social-media is all the rage but as direct marketers it’s often difficult to see how we can use it effectively.
What I don’t see right now is a lot of social-media sites that work as solid, independent sales-channels. Instead what I’m seeing is that social-media is powerful energizer of other online sales-channels and media.
The social-world online opens up enormous opportunities to expand the effectiveness of your SEO efforts and syndication channels are popping up everywhere. Site-targeted pay-per-click ads on places like LinkedIn and Facebook can be great marketing tools too.
So yes, social-media is tapping into older marketing principles and yes there are enormous opportunities for the direct marketers among us to leverage the “new media.”
We’ll go much more into how to use social-media from a direct marketers perspective to build scalable campaigns in another series soon.
But for now, play around with it, and connect with old-friends. I am.
Yours for faster profits,
John Newtson
Chief Direct Marketing Officer
Explosive Direct Marketing
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