Oh, how I love the Guardian. Despite years of selling digital subscriptions — and despite Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger’s equivocal posturing — the liberal bastion has been able to promote an anti-payment persona. Even though it made £1.4 million from subscriptions to its iPad app, alone.To its credit, the Guardian has adopted a smart model for breaking news site. All of its content is free on its website, but mobile, tablet and B2B content is an upsell. And now, much like The Texas Tribune, the Guardian is adding membership to the mix.In true Guardian style, basic membership as a “Friend” is free, but “Partner” and “Patron” levels go for £135/year and £540/year, respectively, and both carry monthly options. The paid memberships also include a host of other benefits, from event ticket discounts to live streaming privileges.
On the landing page for the site, Rusbridger says the idea was born out of an audience survey during a live event: “Most readers said they would happily contribute money to the “cause” of the Guardian – but an overwhelming majority also wanted the journalism to be free, so that it could reach the maximum possible audience. A fair number were happy to be subscribers, but the most hands shot up when asked if they would like to be ‘members’.”Which goes to show how fickle consumers can be. While memberships and subscriptions have the similar marketing tactics and payment processing problems, the benefits can vary in consumers’ minds, with subscriptions associated with content while membership conveys a club-like atmosphere. But this connotation of the word membership can be tricky for some left-leaning publications, where “club” still evokes old boys’ networks and institutionalized bias. So the Guardian displayed expert understanding of its audience and clever marketing by offering the “Friend” level membership for free.The one downfall? For a global brand like the Guardian, the membership plan seems to be a rather local perk, with many of the planned events scheduled to take place in the Midland Goods Shed property the newspaper plans to re-open in 2016. A better membership model for a global brand would try to host events in different cities across the globe, or at least across the country, much like Match.com’s The Stir.
