The third issue of the new business weekly hit desks across the city on Monday and carried an impressive array of news stories, but not much in the way of ads.

This has led some observers to question the integrity (some might say sanity) of Crains’ ‘no-discount’ approach, wherein advertisers are required to pay ratecard unless they agree to multiple bookings. When this happens the c£5,000 a page fee falls away dramatically.

Porter: reasons to be cheerful

“We could have sold a lot of cheap ads, no problem at all,” he relayed, “but when people ring up looking for a deal we tell them ‘this is the rate and it’s discounted for frequency.’ That’s it, no deals.”

He continued: “The purpose of the fortnightly launch issues (Crains goes weekly from 4 February) was for editorial and product purposes, rather than being advertising driven.

“We wanted to ensure that, before we went weekly, the writing, the design and the entire product was fine-tuned and up to speed. That’s why we chose to launch in late December and January – it certainly wasn’t to sell advertising, that’s the worst time to do it.

“Anything we got for the first three issues was a bonus. You’ll find that come February we’ll be pushing that side of the business a lot harder.”

Porter describes his ultimate bosses over the pond as being “very patient” and as long as they’re happy with the product so far (“delighted actually”) then they’re prepared to stick to their Smith & Wesson’s and hunker down for a long fight.

Something that, Porter says, rival business publications had better be prepared for.

The launch: frontpage news

“We’re not like the competition. You don’t have to go searching through for the business news, it’s right there on every single page and, with the quality and investment in our editorial team  - 12 full time staff, which is a bigger business team than anyone else – we’re breaking stories way ahead of the pack.”

Porter cites the Lowry ‘salary’ piece that stormed the front page of the launch issue back in December as quality and timely reporting:

“The MEN printed that on 10 January,” he noted wryly, “three weeks after we’d had it on the front page.”

With the web presence and daily email round-ups gradually capturing more attention (“the average user spends five minutes on the site now”) and a “pleasantly surprising” amount of business folk forking out the £74 for the CBM sub, Porter seems to be enjoying himself... advertising or no advertising.

“That will come,” he concluded. “At the moment I’m loving it and it’s also just great to be back in this fabulous city. I feel like I haven’t been away.

“The people in the industry now are the same people that were here 12, 15 years ago. They’re still here - just a little heavier around the midriff and perhaps a little greyer too. As am I.”

But not, it seems, as a result of unduly worrying.

http://www.crainsmanchesterbusiness.co.uk/

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