Granta's Grand Control (1,483 words)
December 1999
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Ever since I bought the Granta issue called "Krauts!" the journal has had a special place in my heart. I was studying German around the time of the Reunification, and found that the blend of articles by top authors Granta published as a "group portrait" perfectly captured the strange truth about German culture in search of itself.
The outright audacity of the issue title "Krauts!" is in sync with the equally daring approach taken in Granta's 14-year control mailing, "Throw Away This Envelope" (see below right.) Inside, the editor's letter reveals that this explosive reverse psychology is actually a trick playing on (a) the notion that this is not a tea-sipper's literary supplement, and (b) the difference between High Literature and literature more broadly understood.
Birth of a Control
Granta's main editorial offices are in London, but all of the U.S. direct mail efforts are handled from the New York office, says Amber Hewins, circulation director.
Granta's control package was written circa 1985 by Bill Buford, Granta's first editor after the magazine's 1979 relaunch. Over the years, the mailing package has been modified slightly from campaign to campaign by current Associate Publisher Sally Lewis and Editor Ian Jack, among others. The design for the original was done by then cover designer Chris Hyde, and for the current package by the late Tibor Kalman, who also created the distinctive Barnes & Noble author-portrait design.
Bill Buford today is the literary and fiction editor for The New Yorker. "[The 'Throw Away' package] evolved from promotional pieces we were using in 1979," Buford recalls. "While we were reasonably savvy about the direct mail business for such an amateur, arty literary magazine, my thinking about the direct mail piece was directly inspired by a loathing for most direct mail.
"It was occasioned by an assumption that we were selling a magazine of good writing ... the standard was literary, not mass market. The direct mail piece should try to convey that [standard] in the same way the magazine tries to convey that in its coverage and concepts," he says.
Buford and his collaborators followed some basic received wisdom of direct mail: "The idea of the copy was to write it as directly as possible to our perceived reader," he says, but "to eschew the typical direct mail tricks, such as [imitation] typewriter font, multi-colored paragraphs, etc." Yet whatever experiments took place with copy, the control as we see it today includes most of the components of other magazine prospecting packages: an involvement device (quiz), a letter, lift note, BRC and brochure. Missing are a token and Johnson boxes.
Buford continues, "We tried to make a witty appeal to the kind of person who knew who Salman Rushdie, Günter Grass and Richard Ford were. If they didn't, the direct mail piece would be meaningless to them, and so would the magazine. The essential direct mail conceit was that this is a literary magazine which doesn't like literature: In reality, it's a literary magazine that doesn't take itself seriously. A literary magazine with a tabloid heart: literary but fun."
Buford says Granta was testing a number of other approaches at the same time. "We had 10 different panels, and used a consultant who put us in touch with other designers and copywriters."
The results were stellar. "[The 'Throw Away' package] did about twice what we expected for a rollout," Buford says.
Across the Pond...
"We never did direct mail in the U.K. until 1990," says Sally Lewis. "Before that there were very few lists available. The conventional wisdom was that direct mail didn't pull in Britain. In 1996 we adapted the U.S. package to the European market. We updated it, made it more modern and glossy.
"What I did was incorporate another Bill Buford classic: 'Why are more copies of Granta stolen from people's homes than any other magazine?' plus a list of 10 reasons, with the 'Throw Away' concept for the U.K. package. [The recombined package] tested well in the United States," she says.
Bill Buford explains: "I had the advantage of being editor and publisher of Granta, so when I went to sell the magazine, my selling was informed by what the magazine really was, and what I heard was that people couldn't leave copies out on their desk for fear of them being stolen, so that led to that conceit."
The U.K. package also has four-color throughout, and that together with the good value of the free-book premium—promoted on the OSE—lifted response. "This means we can go back and test old premiums now, because the premium on the envelope in color pulled well," says Sally Lewis. "That's the most recent quantum leap: that spending on color seems to pay off."
Unusual Offer
The March 1999 U.S. package—over a dozen years later, the same concept—eschews the common practice of making an offer on the OSE. Furthermore, while free issues are the rule, Granta has devised its own unique offer. Inside, we learn that new subscribers get a discount rate and a free copy of the anthology "The Granta Book of the Family."
"Granta is a tough sell—four issues for $21.95. The offer itself isn't a 'grabber,'" points out Herschell Gordon Lewis, a veteran direct-response copywriter, author, speaker and president of Lewis Enterprises in Plantation, FL.
In the letter from Editor Ian Jack, a message to current subscribers offers stunning frankness, and is worth reprinting here in its entirety, as it sums up the package's bending of direct mail rules:
P.S. This discount offer—less than half the normal price—is for new subscribers only. Existing subscribers, please don't pretend you're not a subscriber: after all, what are computers for? And, please don't write us angry letters as you did last time: if this offer were available to everyone, we'd go bankrupt. It is only for those people who, for reasons that are mysterious to us all, are still not Granta subscribers.
How's that for telling it like it is? Herschell Gordon Lewis finds the p.s. "priceless," while the letter, which is long on explaining the magazine's background, "certainly is outside the pale of aggressive subscription mailings," he says.
Lewis says, "The use of 'don't' instead of 'do' always has been controversial, because the technique is a game of Russian roulette. Its success seems to be in direct ratio to two factors: (a) the sophistication of the recipient; (b) the awareness and familiarity of the recipient, relative to the offer.
"Yes, it often seizes and shakes attention where a standard approach doesn't. But the difference between attention and interest can be profound," he warns.
In A Place By Itself
There may not be too much competition for this type of magazine, which helps explain the long run of the control, says direct mail consultant Axel Andersson. It's hard to "critique" this package because there are no other mailings to compare it to, he says.
The Granta grand control received a 1994 Axel Andersson Award in the pages of Target Marketing.
"The OSE copy is the first impression prospects get; [Granta's wording] is not something you would expect in a subscription mailing. It breaks some of the rules—but then again maybe not, if it's written for the right audience," says Andersson.
Herschell Gordon Lewis notes, "A well-read target group accepts rule-breaking far more than would the general public. So list selection becomes crucial for a mailing such as this."
The Reader in Mind
In terms of lists, Buford recollects, "What we did was take about 3,000 names from 20 lists of other magazines. Then our test panels were the control, another direct mail piece and hard, soft and medium offers. We got enough information to roll out with it.
"We probably did do a reader survey. I don't think there were that many surprises. Obvious lists worked well: up-market literary, for instance. News magazines such as Time and Newsweek didn't work well. The exception for news magazines were The Economist and Guardian Weekly. Vanity Fair, Harper's, The Nation—all those were good.
"Readership always seemed to be, on average, my age; people who were in their early thirties in 1985, or slightly older than me—but with a lot more money," says Buford.
Buford reflects on the significance of this grand control: "What we did at Granta which was unusual [for a literary journal] was to build a magazine where circulation rather than advertising drives revenue, and it was finally profitable. We started publishing books in 1989 and sold those and back issues to readers. So circulation became a very important revenue source. Thus the whole business was built on the lists and mail package."
You won't see the grand old control in your mail anymore, however, as it was recently defeated by a redesigned package which will be rolled out in the next campaign. All good things must come to an end!
The outright audacity of the issue title "Krauts!" is in sync with the equally daring approach taken in Granta's 14-year control mailing, "Throw Away This Envelope" (see below right.) Inside, the editor's letter reveals that this explosive reverse psychology is actually a trick playing on (a) the notion that this is not a tea-sipper's literary supplement, and (b) the difference between High Literature and literature more broadly understood.
Birth of a Control
Granta's main editorial offices are in London, but all of the U.S. direct mail efforts are handled from the New York office, says Amber Hewins, circulation director.
Granta's control package was written circa 1985 by Bill Buford, Granta's first editor after the magazine's 1979 relaunch. Over the years, the mailing package has been modified slightly from campaign to campaign by current Associate Publisher Sally Lewis and Editor Ian Jack, among others. The design for the original was done by then cover designer Chris Hyde, and for the current package by the late Tibor Kalman, who also created the distinctive Barnes & Noble author-portrait design.
Bill Buford today is the literary and fiction editor for The New Yorker. "[The 'Throw Away' package] evolved from promotional pieces we were using in 1979," Buford recalls. "While we were reasonably savvy about the direct mail business for such an amateur, arty literary magazine, my thinking about the direct mail piece was directly inspired by a loathing for most direct mail.
"It was occasioned by an assumption that we were selling a magazine of good writing ... the standard was literary, not mass market. The direct mail piece should try to convey that [standard] in the same way the magazine tries to convey that in its coverage and concepts," he says.
Buford and his collaborators followed some basic received wisdom of direct mail: "The idea of the copy was to write it as directly as possible to our perceived reader," he says, but "to eschew the typical direct mail tricks, such as [imitation] typewriter font, multi-colored paragraphs, etc." Yet whatever experiments took place with copy, the control as we see it today includes most of the components of other magazine prospecting packages: an involvement device (quiz), a letter, lift note, BRC and brochure. Missing are a token and Johnson boxes.
Buford continues, "We tried to make a witty appeal to the kind of person who knew who Salman Rushdie, Günter Grass and Richard Ford were. If they didn't, the direct mail piece would be meaningless to them, and so would the magazine. The essential direct mail conceit was that this is a literary magazine which doesn't like literature: In reality, it's a literary magazine that doesn't take itself seriously. A literary magazine with a tabloid heart: literary but fun."
Buford says Granta was testing a number of other approaches at the same time. "We had 10 different panels, and used a consultant who put us in touch with other designers and copywriters."
The results were stellar. "[The 'Throw Away' package] did about twice what we expected for a rollout," Buford says.
Across the Pond...
"We never did direct mail in the U.K. until 1990," says Sally Lewis. "Before that there were very few lists available. The conventional wisdom was that direct mail didn't pull in Britain. In 1996 we adapted the U.S. package to the European market. We updated it, made it more modern and glossy.
"What I did was incorporate another Bill Buford classic: 'Why are more copies of Granta stolen from people's homes than any other magazine?' plus a list of 10 reasons, with the 'Throw Away' concept for the U.K. package. [The recombined package] tested well in the United States," she says.
Bill Buford explains: "I had the advantage of being editor and publisher of Granta, so when I went to sell the magazine, my selling was informed by what the magazine really was, and what I heard was that people couldn't leave copies out on their desk for fear of them being stolen, so that led to that conceit."
The U.K. package also has four-color throughout, and that together with the good value of the free-book premium—promoted on the OSE—lifted response. "This means we can go back and test old premiums now, because the premium on the envelope in color pulled well," says Sally Lewis. "That's the most recent quantum leap: that spending on color seems to pay off."
Unusual Offer
The March 1999 U.S. package—over a dozen years later, the same concept—eschews the common practice of making an offer on the OSE. Furthermore, while free issues are the rule, Granta has devised its own unique offer. Inside, we learn that new subscribers get a discount rate and a free copy of the anthology "The Granta Book of the Family."
"Granta is a tough sell—four issues for $21.95. The offer itself isn't a 'grabber,'" points out Herschell Gordon Lewis, a veteran direct-response copywriter, author, speaker and president of Lewis Enterprises in Plantation, FL.
In the letter from Editor Ian Jack, a message to current subscribers offers stunning frankness, and is worth reprinting here in its entirety, as it sums up the package's bending of direct mail rules:
P.S. This discount offer—less than half the normal price—is for new subscribers only. Existing subscribers, please don't pretend you're not a subscriber: after all, what are computers for? And, please don't write us angry letters as you did last time: if this offer were available to everyone, we'd go bankrupt. It is only for those people who, for reasons that are mysterious to us all, are still not Granta subscribers.
How's that for telling it like it is? Herschell Gordon Lewis finds the p.s. "priceless," while the letter, which is long on explaining the magazine's background, "certainly is outside the pale of aggressive subscription mailings," he says.
Lewis says, "The use of 'don't' instead of 'do' always has been controversial, because the technique is a game of Russian roulette. Its success seems to be in direct ratio to two factors: (a) the sophistication of the recipient; (b) the awareness and familiarity of the recipient, relative to the offer.
"Yes, it often seizes and shakes attention where a standard approach doesn't. But the difference between attention and interest can be profound," he warns.
In A Place By Itself
There may not be too much competition for this type of magazine, which helps explain the long run of the control, says direct mail consultant Axel Andersson. It's hard to "critique" this package because there are no other mailings to compare it to, he says.
The Granta grand control received a 1994 Axel Andersson Award in the pages of Target Marketing.
"The OSE copy is the first impression prospects get; [Granta's wording] is not something you would expect in a subscription mailing. It breaks some of the rules—but then again maybe not, if it's written for the right audience," says Andersson.
Herschell Gordon Lewis notes, "A well-read target group accepts rule-breaking far more than would the general public. So list selection becomes crucial for a mailing such as this."
The Reader in Mind
In terms of lists, Buford recollects, "What we did was take about 3,000 names from 20 lists of other magazines. Then our test panels were the control, another direct mail piece and hard, soft and medium offers. We got enough information to roll out with it.
"We probably did do a reader survey. I don't think there were that many surprises. Obvious lists worked well: up-market literary, for instance. News magazines such as Time and Newsweek didn't work well. The exception for news magazines were The Economist and Guardian Weekly. Vanity Fair, Harper's, The Nation—all those were good.
"Readership always seemed to be, on average, my age; people who were in their early thirties in 1985, or slightly older than me—but with a lot more money," says Buford.
Buford reflects on the significance of this grand control: "What we did at Granta which was unusual [for a literary journal] was to build a magazine where circulation rather than advertising drives revenue, and it was finally profitable. We started publishing books in 1989 and sold those and back issues to readers. So circulation became a very important revenue source. Thus the whole business was built on the lists and mail package."
You won't see the grand old control in your mail anymore, however, as it was recently defeated by a redesigned package which will be rolled out in the next campaign. All good things must come to an end!
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