IN-HOUSE PUBLISHING CASE STUDY Culver City, California 2011 Business Resource and Community Guide
The Culver City Chamber has been publishing its Community Guide & Business Directory in-house for over 20 years, printing 12,000 copies and distributing to every household in the City. This once highly productive publication had declined to $27,000 in sales and profit under $5,000. CEO Steve Rose knew it was time to try something different with the publication but going to an outside publisher with a royalty structure was not an option. Steve hired Chamber Marketing Partners to bring the publication back to life.
“The project had sunk so low that we considered pulling the plug on the printed directory. I needed a fresh perspective and CMP seemed like they had the publishing expertise to help revitalize the directory… and help it start making a healthy profit again” says CEO Steve Rose. “We’re experts at being a Chamber. CMP’s expertise is in publishing. With a staff of only 3 people, our hands are full. It made sense to hire CMP’s expertise, and I’m glad we did. The results exceeded our expectations.”
Culver City has a vibrant downtown anchored by a historic hotel surrounded by lots of great restaurants, coffee houses and two cinemas. Sony Studios, based in Culver City, is a significant economic driver producing feature movies.
CMP’s focus was to upgrade the CG&BD to a full color, magazine style publication with feature articles, make the entire publication available online and fine tune the distribution strategy of the printed piece to include more business distribution. With over 50 restaurants in the Chamber’s membership, the focus for the first year was to create a Dining Guide section to develop restaurant participation.
Ads were sold by Alex Thomas, the Chamber’s membership sales person with CMP’s guidance and coaching. Alex hit the sales goal of $40,000.
Chamber members were hired to write the editorial and shoot new photos. Barbara Brody, a staff person at the chamber updated both some editorial and the member database.
CMP provided project management services and graphic design. And through its vendor network, CMP delivered the lowest cost printing for the Chamber.
Sales increased 48% and the Chamber’s profit increased 140%. A comparison of the publication’s performance compared to the prior year, before CMP’s involvement, is summarized in the table above.
