Mr. Magazine

I just came back from a week’s visit to Helsinki where I was conducting seminars and workshops with the staff of several magazines published by Sanoma Magazines Finland. One magazine stopped me in my tracks: Aku Ankka, which simply means Donald Duck. The weekly magazine has a circulation of over 320,000 and a readership of over one million in a country of five million. It is the best known media brand in Finland and is read by almost one fifth of the population. What stopped me more than the statistics is the cover price. The magazine sells normally for two Euros, but when they have any special supplement or extra pages they cross the two Euros and have a big star burst with the higher cover price of two fifty…yes, they highlight the higher cover price. Talk about dedicated readership. Just the opposite of what we do in the States where we highlight the lower cover prices not the higher. Another surprise with Aku Ankka is the ads the magazine carries: automotive, yes automotive. Just look at the picture of the back cover above. So, the first lesson I have learned from Finland on this trip is very simple: create an addictive content for a magazine, even a comic magazine, and people will pay for the content. It is the content that people pay for and the more you give them the more they will pay. If you are in the business of selling content you do not have to fear raising your cover price.