22 February 2006
For immediate release
Good Enough to Eat And Certainly Worth Paying for as Well
According to the latest Audited Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures, Dish magazine has had a massive 70% increase in
paid circulation over 12 months.
Dish was launched in August 2004, targeting the “upper socio-economic food enthusiast”. The Dish target audience was
people – primarily women – who had both the time, passion and the money to enjoy a premium cooking experience.
Dish Editor, Catherine Bell, had developed a major following among this very audience, as a result of her Epicurean
Workshop retail store and cook-school. Given the extremely well pre-qualified nature of her 10,000 person database, our
launch strategy was to “gift” a one year’s subscription of Dish to this entire group. Parallel with this distribution,
Dish was retailed nationwide and subscriptions made available in the usual manner.
So, in August 2005, we set about converting those gift subscriptions to paid.
Our first ABC audit (period July 2004 to December 2004) produced a net NZ circulation figure of 20,489 made up of 10,006
paid circulation and 10,483 directed (the bulk of which was the original Epicurean database).
Our latest audit (period July 2005 to December 2005) is the first that does not include the gift subs from the Epicurean
Workshop. It produced a figure of 22,048 made up of 17,042 paid circulation and 5006 directed. Paid subscriptions now
total over 7000, close to 60 per cent of which were previously part of the complimentary list.
We launched Dish with a guaranteed, pre-qualified audience advertisers wanted to reach. We’ve grown that audience and
they’re now paying for the privilege. Based on current retail sales and subscription demand, we expect even better
results in the audits to come. Which just goes to show that, when you’re New Zealand’s most beautiful food magazine, you
can have your cake, AND eat it too.
ENDS