Sunday 15 August 2010

Flying with the Pigeons


For the past few weeks I have been working with The Stool Pigeon in a bid to help the publication pass an ABC assessment and increase readership across the UK. What is the ABC you ask? Well, let me tell you.

The ABC is an independent organisation that verifies and reports on media performance. If a magazine applies to the ABC to be audited, it can legally prove circulation figures. This is really important for publications like The Stool Pigeon, as it is a free music newspaper and relies solely on advertising revenue in order to survive.

Once the assessment is complete and the figures have been released, The Stool Pigeon can confidently approach bigger companies in an attempt to sell more advertising.

Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. We now have to contact every place that stocks the paper and get their full details including postcode, telephone number, contact name and position. Then we have to go through all of this data and state how many copies we send to each place. The Stool Pigeon currently has over 600 stockists across the UK. Ouch!

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