Boating
was locked in a close, tough fight with
Power & MotorYacht for
leadership in boat magazine circulation and advertising pages.
A BrainPosse member found a powerful point of difference:
Boating's circulation was
all full-price subscriptions and newsstand sales, while P&MY was
mailed free and unsolicited to boat owners – much less valuable
readers to advertisers than people interested enough to buy the
magazine.
More digging turned up the fact that
P&MY only
mailed copies to half its list each month. So
advertisers were only getting half the readers they paid
for.
A strong competitive campaign and a spectacular media
kit generated an immediate 25% increase in
Boating's ad
pages.
Next a campaign targeted to potential readers built
circulation, which drove further ad page increases.
Another campaign was targeted to advertisers of upscale,
non-marine products. The rationale was that
Boating's
readers had high household incomes and a tendency to
indulge themselves. So they were perfect prospects for
expensive watches, cars, cameras, laptops and big
flat-panel TVs.
The three-part campaign made
Boating the
undisputed #1 in the category, and left
P&MY far
behind in its wake.
