In the example of Sports Illustrated, take yourself back to 1990 when magazine subscription rates were starting to drop off. In that period, Sports Illustrated suffered a 7% decline in their circulation in the first half of the year. Now, no matter what they did, they were unable to get the subscription rates up. Even by offering deep discounts on subscriptions, consumers weren’t grabbing it. Plus, if they discounted too steeply, it would impact their ability to get advertisers paying premium rates without showing that consumers were paying close to the full cover price of the magazine.
Sports Illustrated, owned by Time, Inc., wasn’t the only magazine that was suffering under the company’s umbrella. People magazine had also experienced a severe decline of 5%. Time, Inc., knew that it needed to do something fast. So it started to offer a tripwire that included sports bloopers on VHS. However, the cost was exorbitant and there were only so many bloopers it could offer. So, they turned to the football phone as the new tripwire.
Why the football phone? First, it appealed to the target market. And, it was unique and exciting. Far more exciting than a boring magazine subscription. The football-shaped phone concept was conceived by Sports Illustrated’s director of circulation at the time, Michael Loeb. Back then, advertising on cable was also very inexpensive. Plus, the phone, which was sourced from China, only cost a few dollars “landed”. So it all made sense.
Loeb worked on the logistics of this offer for many months. However, that wasn’t the only offer. They also concocted an offer that consisted of a sneaker phone. If you’ll think back to 1990-1991, it was both offers that were running almost concurrently. Talk about an early-on split-test, right?