More on D23

I now have received all of my initial information and the parts of the membership kit for my D23 membership. I thought I’d share with you what I think of the different parts to date (some of which you can see online here).

First though we should address a couple of things based on some e-mails and other feedback about the ‘opinion’ piece I wrote the other day in support of D23.

The Anonymous blogger who mentioned that I was using flawed logic in the comments also mentioned that several other companies are doing things like this with little to no cost to the consumer, but offered no examples. I told you I could give you examples, but was choosing not too. I feel compelled now however to give you at least one side of why I think $75 isn’t ridiculous (maybe expensive yes, but not ridiculous) in comparison to some other similar ‘clubs’.

We could also do a business analysis based on some assumption of cost for the magazine, the number of people in the D23 group already (the magazine alone lists probably the equivalent of 10 man years worth of effort already attached to the D23 overhead), and then the number of people that would have to sign up to even break even before other costs (some quick back of the napkin numbers say it would probably take on the order of 15,000 members just to break even on the fixed costs depending on how many variable costs there are in the mix). . . but I digress.

Here are a couple of examples of similar types of clubs and their offerings (this isn’t definitive, just ones I’m familiar with through friends and relatives):

Porsche Club of America – www.pca.org – Price $42 per year

• Monthly magazine – community written, plus heavy advertising
• Community website at pca.org
• Local chapters that host regional meetings, etc., usually on a volunteer basis
• National convention – Porsche Parade (discounted entry)
• Local track events, usually hosted by the local chapters

Gold Wing Riders Association – www.gwrra.com Price $45 per year

• Monthly magazine – staff written?, plus heavy advertising
• Community website at www.gwrra.com
• Local chapters that host regional meetings, etc., usually on a volunteer basis
• National Wing Ding convention
• Rider towing for 35 miles and a list of approved service centers
• Discounted rider education

Harley Owners Group (HOG) – www.hog.com – Price $45 per year

• Quarterly subscription to HOG magazine – staff written and heavy advertising
• Community website
• Local chapters
• HOG Touring Handbook
• Sponsored Events

Disney D23 – www.disney.com/D23 – Price $75 per year

• Quarterly 23 magazine – staff written, large format, NO advertising
• Community website
• National Expo - ‘convention’ – discounted entry
• Special events and exclusive merchandise

I don’t pretend to run an affinity group, heck I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. . . but I think you’ll see that one MAJOR difference above is - - - ADVERTISING.

Yep. That dirty word that propels Google’s insane stock price, props up some of my fellow bloggers based on Google/Yahoo/MSN rankings, and to some extent makes free TV possible, etc. (Full disclosure: I run Google Ads and Amazon links on my site too, but to date I’ve ‘earned’ a whopping $6.23 cents from clicks.)

As one other point of comparison, the highly received Laughing Place magazine (NOTE: I’m a subscriber) is $36 per year for 4 issues. It’s probably of equally high quality in most eyes (though on thinner magazine stock and smaller in size). As far as I can tell from their opening credits, there are 3 people who work on that magazine, though I can’t surmise if it’s full time or not; my guess is I doubt it. They are the only other Disneyana magazine I know of however that is a somewhat similar format and has no advertising.

That doesn’t mean you have to like the price or the offering, or that you don’t think the price is ridiculous, etc. etc. etc. It just is one way of looking at a business problem to try and show it’s not completely on another planet. I’m sure if Disney offered advertising in their magazine, then the price could be $9.95 or some such per issue.

I suspect the price will come down as Disney gets a better feeling for the type of group they are attracting and the volume.

As for the print material to date. . . it’s pretty decent for a first time out. The articles are nice, the pictures are vibrant and the print and stock quality of the magazine are top notch. There is still some room for improvement of course. The styles from page to page are a bit inconsistent in flow and in some cases you’d almost like to have a break with a ‘plain’ page here and there to break things up a little (ads help with this in regular print material).

The D23 website has been being updated fairly regularly with new news and other information. The latest post I can find is 2 days ago on Mission Possible, the Epcot Kim Possible attraction. The web writing has been of pretty good quality as well. My main complaint about the web site so far is it can be hard to separate new content from old (though not much is old yet) as you can’t see the post date until you open the article. Likewise, I’d REALLY like to see an RSS feed for the site so I can track it and articles in my RSS reader along side all of my other news reading.

There are still many things to do before any of us will consider it a success, but so far the quality seems to be there, lets just hope for the consistency and follow through.

For the record, I’m still glad I joined.