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If there is one magazine that sums up my tag line for MrMagazine.com, "More information in less time and less space," that magazine is The Week. In fact, The Week is the Rolls-Royce of all newsweeklies, second to none. When they say "All you need to know about everything that matters," they mean it, and I've learned to trust them and take them for their word on what they promise to deliver. I have done that since issue one, when I selected the magazine as my Launch of the Year in 2001.
Founded by Felix Dennis, the man who published even more magazines the experts said would never work, (hint: Maxim was one of them), The Week is not his gift to America or his Maxim's redemptive work (I don't think he's interested in either). The (British) Week, I was told, is his most profitable magazine among all 25 he publishes in England. While the folks at the U.S. edition know that will never happen here due to the size of Maxim and that of the U.S.A., they are quick to add that The Week, like all Dennis publications, is a for profit publication.
Last week I had a chance to chat with Justin B. Smith, The Week's President. I asked him whether four years ago he expected The Week to be where it is now.
"I guess in the beginning we didn't really know," said Smith. "We just knew that this was a very compelling editorial idea that really connected with readers and, when it got in people's hands, they would basically renew at extremely high rates, eventually evangelizing the product to the community and their friends."
This "evangelizing" is something Smith says occurred with The Week in England, where word of mouth carried the publication to unthinkable heights.
"We had seen how (The Week in England) had grown. What happened in England, is that once the magazine got to a certain size, word of mouth began to drive circulation growth almost on auto pilot," said Smith. "It was a combination of that word of mouth and extremely high renewal rates that got us all excited and got Felix (Dennis) excited in the UK. We knew that we were onto something that would be very successful."
In addition to word of mouth, The Week saw their numbers boost as a result of their uncommon use of gift-subscriptions.
"Most magazines really heavy up on their gift and reader promotions around Thanksgiving and Christmas, but we had the idea that we'd do it on kind of a constant basis," said Smith. The result was a nearly 25 percent increase in the magazine's following.
Using a circulation-driven strategy, Dennis and company have managed The Week contrary to conventional newsweekly wisdom, and have done it with impressive results.
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