Granta's Grand Control (1,483 words)

December 1999

multipage

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!