BRIGHT, a New Online Email for Women, Gets Out the Gates Smartly

Meet the editors of BRIGHT, a new Female emailgazine. (Well, it's an email; I'm calling it an emailgazine, without permission.)


Note it's called "Bright." Who wants to be bright? Everyone, pretty much. Who is politically opposed to being bright? Very few. Most of them can't read, anyway.

I was talking with someone the other day about SiriusXM, and how a prog channel on that is named "INSIGHT." Whereas the conservative talk station -- the ONLY talk station -- was named "Patriot Radio."


I observed, as many have observed, that liberals are much smarter in their branding -- they do not brand themselves explicitly as liberal. The Insight station doesn't proclaim its prog nature; it sells itself as supplying that which is objectively good ("insight").


Who wants "Insight" from talk radio? Virtually everyone. Who wants "Patriotism" -- some.

But not everyone.

I think Lisa DePasquale is smart to call her venture "BRIGHT" and not the more expected "Liberty Belles" or whatever conservative-ghetto-branding name that might have occurred to her first.


Important branding lesson here: do not preemptively niche-ify your audience and preemptively limit your reach.


That is, do not make your customer make more YES/NO decisions than necessary before he buys your product. Don't offer him a class/cultural loyalty test upfront before he even considers looking at your wares.

Just to let you in on a little secret: I think BRIGHT might skew a bit politically to the right.

But they haven't slapped that all over their front cover. Just like Elle and Cosmo and Madamoiselle don't slap their cultural particulars over the cover, except for the inescapable (they're for women, mostly).

The Downside: there actually is a downside to what BRIGHT is doing, and an upside to the "Liberty Belles" model -- when you announce your specific niche upfront, you do make a stronger play for that specific niche. So you have a greater chance to grab up that smaller audience from the get-go.

But you're trading that short-term "the people this is more designed for will know immediately it's designed for them" launch for a longer-term "this product should be for everybody" potential reach.

I think conservatives should have enough confidence to pass up on the Ghetto Layup and reach for the potential Big Audience.

Story Ideas for BRIGHT? a long time ago on the blog -- so long ago we were using Minx 2.07 to run it -- we had a long riff on parodies of a women's magazine headlines.

Here was one I liked, from "Planet Moron:"

THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF HIS MOUTH

Your secret "cheat-sheet" to figuring out what he really means!!!

Here's that old post, collecting the entries. Don't comment in old posts!

Thanks to Buzzion for finding that.

posted by Ace at 03:40 PM

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