Anatomy of An Amazing Marketing Deals

Marketing people are creative, and they often earn their stripes by solving business problems with creative marketing. 


The Philadelphia Inquirer illustrates this perfectly with their marketing campaign to increase subscribers. In November 2011, they began offering a tablet PC for $89 with the purchase of a one-year subscription to the digital version of the newspaper ($10 a month).

Stroke of Genius!
This is a stroke of genius. What does the Inquirer (an all other newspaper) face? Younger readers aren’t buying newspapers because they get their news from the Internet.

Let’s look at what the Inquirer did. You may have heard the phrase “a problem in search of a solution.” If you tweak that phase a little bit and think of it as “a problem in search of another problem” you have a marketing perspective that can result in amazing deals. Someone at the Inquirer was smart enough to think that way.

Think of the Customer
Instead of thinking about their own problem, the Inquirer thought about the problems of their desired client. What do young people want? Education, jobs, family….Ok, those are too big for even the Inquirer to solve. What do young people want for Christmas? Now that’s a more manageable problem.

So, what do young people want for Christmas? Kindles, music, iPhones, Uggs, Wiis, North Face jackets, digital cameras, iPods, video games, iPads. iPads…iPADs! Give the Millenniums iPADS . . .wouldn’t that be cool?

Give it a WOW-factor!
Note that last line above. Whatever you use as an incentive must have a WOW!-factor.


An iPad fits the bill perfectly. It lets the Inquirer apply another old marketing adage, “give them the razor for free and sell them the blades” (or the more modern version of “sell them the printer cheap and make money on the ink cartridges).

Now you have the “buy a subscription and get a tablet cheap” marketing offer.
When the iPad turned out to be too expensive, the Inquirer teamed with Arnova, which offers a great tablet on the Android Gingerbread operating system, the same OS as the Kindle. (My daughter has practically given up her MacBook in favor of the Arnova tablet.)

To recap: Think about your objective and what your desired client wants. How can you combine their current behavior, desires or wants with your objectives?

It takes brainstorming. It takes lots of “what if we….,” and “wouldn’t be great if…” thinking to devise a creative approach, but it results in great marketing.

Test Yourself
So, test your own skills. Answer this: How did Disney World increase attendance by African-Americans in 2010?

I’ll post a link to the answer in the next blog. In the meantime, post your thoughts.
–Paige
MultiPlanet Marketing specializes in creative thinking. Let us work with your management or marketing team to develop solutions for your challenges. Contact me at 610.687.2690. –Paige Miller