Just to prove that there are some, ahem, creative marketing people out there, listen to this. The Oakland A’s baseball team is offering A’s Access fan members lifelike cutouts for $49 to be placed in the stands at the home games. Now if you want to have your cutout in the Foul Ball Zone, you’ll have to pay up to $149. But… if a foul ball hits the cutout with your face on it, the team sends you that foul ball. And two tickets to an exhibition game next year. How do you know that’s the actual ball?
Here are three more revenue-producing examples of using your head in these difficult times—even if it’s not a cardboard one.
1. Doubling down on content. Morning Brew has added a fourth newsletter, Marketing Brew, to go with Emerging Tech Brew and Retail Brew. At a time when others are cutting back, they plan on adding 15 new staffers this summer, many in editorial. Their “revenue comes from carefully crafted native advertising, in the form of a ‘Together with’ branding at the top of the newsletter and sponsored content,” according to
an article on the site Flashes & Flames. “More than 40 clients (many in finance, computing and sportswear) are charged for every unique reader who actually opens the email, which averages some 45% of the current 2m (non-paying) subscribers.”
Once the pandemic hit, they “launched a guide telling readers how best to work from home. It quickly became a pop-up, three-days-a-week newsletter, The Essentials, with tips on how to be active, healthy and happy during quarantine.” More than 75,000 subscribers in the first three days later, and it’s now sponsored by a cold-brew coffee company.
“Another example of our mission and how we’re being a resource to readers, providing them with the content they need in every facet of their life, from professional to personal,” said Alex Lieberman, CEO and co-founder. “We are thinking differently about the media landscape. While our mission is still the same, we’re upping our content offerings—delivering more podcast episodes and dipping into opinion pieces from industry experts.”
2. Taking advantage of the access you might have to particular speakers. According to a Digiday
article today, publisher Atlas Obscura has been leaning towards the experiential. Virtual attendees to an event can now pay $35 to learn mind control from mentalist and mind reader
Vinny DePonto. They also put on a virtual premiere for the documentary “Spaceship Earth” for a movie studio. “The premiere included a conversation between the main characters of the documentary and moderator
LeVar Burton. It was meant to replicate the post-viewing panel that takes place on stage at in-person premieres. That event brought in 32,000 views, an audience several times bigger than a typical movie theater would be able to accommodate.”
3. Putting a goal front and center… The Association of Proposal Management Professionals was headed toward a 10,000-member milestone when the pandemic hit. But Rick Harris, APMP’s CEO, decided to move forward faster. “When things are so disturbing and upsetting, there’s a comfort in normality,” Harris said. “We took the approach: We’re all in this together and we’re all moving forward as a team, an association and an industry.”
According to
Associations Now, in the last four months, APMP has increased its standard one webinar a month to as many as four per month—they are free for members; some are sponsored—knowing that members needed more information to navigate the crisis. “
APMP branded everything with the 10K initiative. Every new staff member was asked to commit to the drive to reach 10,000 members, and the goal was formalized in the strategic plan… Harris credits the book
The Art of Membership by
Sheri Jacobs as the guiding principle for reaching APMP’s membership goal. His main takeaway? “Keep membership front and center, and make it the center of your universe. Everything is ancillary after that.”
