For a magazine that prides itself on propagating ideas, isn’t it surprising to find Fast Company out of ideas? How else to explain this LOWEST PRICE EVER pricing strategy to goose subscriptions?
I’m reminded of a Seth Godin riff from PURPLE COW where he says a low-price strategy is “the last refuge of a . . . marketer who is out of great ideas.” Aren’t the folks at Fast Company too smart, too savvy, and too dang creative to fall for the low-price strategy trap?
UPDATE (7/9/06): The Head Lemur has applied his "Clown Suit Rule" to Fast Company. Well worth a visit.
I gave up on FC in 2000. Mazel tov to me, I know.
Posted by: Ethan | July 08, 2006 at 08:13 PM
Wow! This is very interesting. Does anyone know what FC's current circulation is?
Posted by: Troy | July 09, 2006 at 01:11 AM
You're right
I prefer blogs insead of magazines like FC. They are pumping the same general things. This is not worth time.
Posted by: ozgur alaz | July 09, 2006 at 11:11 AM
I cancelled my subscription when they started promoting the English language Al Jazeera on their cover with some blue eyed moron wearing a palestinian shawl.
Posted by: Peter Verkooijen | July 09, 2006 at 04:42 PM
Yea, FC got off to an amazing start - for anyone who does not remember. It started out as a coporate empowerment magazine - it was brilliant writen and compiled. The first 10-18 issues were just freakin' brilliant - you couldn't wait to implement or discuss with someone ... but then in the days of the internet craze 1.0, a lot of meaningful enrichment workplace ideas went by the wayside of what's in it for me and by that, I mean, can I make $200k in options this quarter. Anything else about wmpowerment, enrichment or personal/corporate growth got pushed out the iwndow for what's the stock price this morning and can we launch another internet division and IPo to scoop up $500 million dollars ... FC got lost in that hyper paced era where people would work at 4 places in 6 months if the salary or options were better. Their ideas were suddenly old fashioned and too damn slow so they jumped aboard the INDUSTRY STANDARD-WIRED- INSIDER-BUSINESS 2.0 bullet train of 500 ad pages a month if they had anything to do with the internet ... and Zimmerman was smart to sell out at its peak - almost as soon as he sold, the market was gone. From 500 ad pages to 56. It went that quickly. But FC is nothing now. It's just hobbled togther crap - to put it bluntly. It has no idea what to say anymore.
Posted by: jbelkin | July 09, 2006 at 09:48 PM
Business 2.0 blows Fast Company out of the water. However, the magazine has improved in the last couple of months. For awhile it was very bad. I will hang around for a couple more months. My issues run out in three months.
Posted by: Jason | July 09, 2006 at 09:49 PM
Time was that FC was so "It." Ah well...I do kind of like its blog...
http://blog.fastcompany.com/
Not sure why they don't just mothball the print magazine and focus on beefing up the blog content. Then again, that's just what I'd do.
Posted by: Ann Handley | July 09, 2006 at 10:24 PM
I agree with Ann
Posted by: jr | July 10, 2006 at 06:02 AM
I'd agree that this shows desperate measures being taken.
I see similar things happening with Wired which I believe is STILL a great magazine. But they seem to be pushing "special offers" on me more and more. They also have the most agravating advertising stunts in their issues.
Posted by: Tim Grahl | July 10, 2006 at 09:47 AM
Gave up on Fast Company a few months back. I resigned my coordinator role with the San Francisco CoF after the Al Jazeera cover. We blogged it here:
http://twoscenarios.typepad.com/maneuver_marketing_commun/2006/04/fast_company_al.html
Our blog entry includes Linda Tischlers rationale for doing the story and I think offers some insight into why Fast Company continues to alienate subscribers...
Posted by: Mike Smock | July 13, 2006 at 01:19 PM
You all seem to be uber-cynical. Doesn't that free gift appear to be overtly enticing. I mean it seems like a perfect bag to store all your never-to-be perused Fast Company periodicals, perhaps for a rainy day in hell:)
Posted by: Ben | July 14, 2006 at 04:56 PM
As a former full-time staff member of the magazine and web site, I've appreciated and been intrigued by this post and the resulting comments. Even if folks are being critical, if you didn't care, you wouldn't say anything at all. ^_^ Thanks for caring!
That said, I'm curious. I just signed up for a year of Esquire magazine for $6 a year. I don't think any less of Esquire as a periodical. I appreciate the cheap eats. Do you think less of Esquire because of the low sub rate?
I say sign up for Fast Company at $5 per annum. Sign up your friends. Chances are that it may never be this cheap again.
And for the folks who said they prefer B2.0. Hey: Whatever floats your boat. ^_^ Their sub currently costs $7.
Posted by: Heath Row | July 14, 2006 at 10:32 PM
Heath ... thanks for dropping by. What gets this marketer yapping about FC's $5 cheap eats is how OVERT they are in marketing it. It's one thing to charge $5. It's something else to scream LOWEST PRICE EVER EXCLAMATION POINT and to use $5 CALL-OUT BUTTONS. This long-time subscriber believes FC is too smart, too savvy, and too creative enough to position the cheap eats in such a lowest common denominator way.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | July 14, 2006 at 11:41 PM
John, had you not mentioned it in a blog post here, I would not have even been _aware_ of the low sub price.
How overt is _that_?
(I visit the web site every day, so one would think I'd notice changes of any magnitude. I may be daft. I'll gladly accept said label!)
I know about the price because you _talked_ about it. And I jumped on that talk. I just resubscribed. That's _remarkable_. Savvy marketing regardless of how you slice it.
I _do_ get your point, however, and the larger question behind it. During the new economy boom -- which I think most of us recognize -- Fast Company sold easily for $19.95 a year. That boom ended years ago. Fast Company's ideas are still valid. Is $5 too low a price?
I'm _glad_ I don't have to pay $20 a pop. I don't subscribe to the Economist, a _brilliant_ magazine, because it costs $85 per annum last I checked.
So: Is your critique of magazine subscription practices in general? Or Fast Company in specific?
If it's the former, it's a more interesting question -- and a problem worth solving.
Posted by: Heath Row | July 16, 2006 at 10:24 PM
You know what? The magazine subscription question is _fascinating_. Let's solve it.
How should -- could -- magazine subscriptions (and publishing) work?
Brainstorm away.
Posted by: Heath Row | July 16, 2006 at 10:29 PM
Heath, my views on this matter are both a critique and an observation. Fast Company’s $5 yearly subscription offer tells me its business isn’t healthy. Healthy businesses do not need gimmicks to grow. Growth happens naturally at healthy businesses. It can be argued the magazine sector isn’t healthy as the entire market is experiencing a drop in ad pages so Fast Company isn't alone in dealing with this issue.
Dropping subscription rates also signals desperation to this marketer. I’ve given FC lots of digital ink on this blog and when I asked readers for their ideas on how to make FC relevant again, I was very surprised to read how many people had let their subscriptions expire. It might be much more commonplace these days for magazines to cut subscription rates to boost circulation to allow the magazine the opportunity to offset its lower subscription revenue with higher advertising revenue.
As for solving the subscription issue, my advice is to first look inward to solve the issue of making Fast Company a worthy read again. To solve for making FC worthy again, they should start here.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | July 17, 2006 at 02:11 PM
Fair enough. We agree that a low subscription price might be a short-term fix for a circulation concern. Magazines use these gambits all the time.
I also know that the magazine's team is on an ever-ongoing search for ways to make the magazine more interesting and useful. I'm sure the team is taking your ideas and input into consideration!
That said, I'm _still_ interested in the bigger question in terms of reapproaching how the magazine-publishing business model works: How magazine publishing, subscriptions, and fulfillment can be "fixed."
If you ever have any ideas in that regard, let me know!
Posted by: Heath Row | July 20, 2006 at 10:02 PM
Heath ... I don't there is a problem with the bigger magazine/publishing/subscription picture. Nothing needs to fixed because nothing in this game is broken enough to fix. Other magazines are thriving in this ever-nuanced networked world. However, something is broken with FC. Ad pages are down. And as a result, subcriptions must also be down as well as single-copy sales must also be in a swoon.
Another key measurement which quantities FC's relevancy troubles is the number of Bloglines subscribers FC Now has. I'm a Bloglines user and I read FC Now's RSS feed off Bloglines. At one point, Business 2.0's blog (business2blog) and FC Now had about the same number of Bloglines subscribers. In fact, because FC was early on the blogging scene (thanks to Heath), they held a Bloglines subscriber advantage over Business 2.0. However, FC Now's Bloglines subscriber base plateaued long ago and has been stuck in the upper 400s for months. Business 2.0 rocketed past FC Now a long time ago and now has over 11,000 Bloglines subscribers. Whoa! Something is indeed wrong here. Something needs to be fixed.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | July 20, 2006 at 11:03 PM