In 1998, a group of entrepreneurs backing an experienced publisher had a unique idea: to produce an artistic news album that would document the history of Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land over the 2000 years from the start of the Common Era to the beginning of the 21st century.
The potential target audience that they saw was hundreds of millions of Christian believers around the world, dreaming of visiting Christianity’s holy places and interested in these places; and all those interested in the history and art of the Holy Land.
In order not to make the historic story into a purely academic product likely to interest only a relatively small number of people, they thought up a unique format for the book: the history would be presented to the reader in the form of newspaper articles, since the majority of people read newspapers. In other words, the Crusades would be documented as a report in the newspaper just as the visit to Bethlehem by then President of the United States, Bill Clinton, was described at the time.
As befitting journalism, accompanying pictures would be required. But since we are talking about events that took place hundreds of years ago, naturally there are no contemporary archival photographs and therefore the articles are accompanied by illustrations and works of art relevant to the subject.
Initially, the initiators of the idea met with Christian religious leaders in order to hear their opinion of the venture, and to rule out the existence of an album with a similar concept in the world market.
Such a meeting was held, for example, with the heads of the Franciscan church in Israel. This church was given responsibility by the Vatican for pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and its members “hold the keys to Christian pilgrimage”. The Franciscans gave their blessing to the venture. Investigation also showed that there was no similar product and the project could get underway.
Because of the different streams in Christianity, such as Catholics, Protestants, Evangelists and Provoslavs, it was decided that the story would be presented not from a
religious viewpoint, but rather from a historical and artistic position, so that each group
could identify with the content of the articles without provoking objections from any of the believers. The accent was also on representations of pilgrimage over the generations by the great artists.
The work
Now the initiators had to get down to the work in practice. They met with many academics and theologians, and their ranks were joined by experts on the subject of Christianity, who led the project. A great deal of material was collected from different sources, and reworked in the form of journalistic coverage. The finished project included over 550 articles.
At the same time, preparations were underway to photograph the works of art. This was a wide-ranging and time-consuming task. It included many contacts with museums and owners of private collections. It is not necessary to pay for the use of photographs of works of art that are more than 70 years old and are found in public institutions, such as museums or the Vatican basements. But with regard to photographs of works of art of any age in private collections, the owners are entitled to ask for payment. The initiators of the idea purchased rights and gathered some 3000 photographs. Over 1100 of them found their way onto the pages of the book.
A considerable sum of money was invested in the venture. The initial estimate was around $400,000. In practice, the cost was twice as much, or more.
Work on the project lasted more than eight years. In 2000, a limited version of the album was published, a kind of pilot to check out the response to the product in the market.
There was an enthusiastic reaction at the exhibitions and fairs where the album was exhibited, but the main target audience, members of the different churches, confirmed the fears of the initiators that it would be difficult to adapt the text to the world view of the different streams of Christianity, even if the focus of the album was on the historic rather than the religious motifs. The Provoslavs, for example, wanted dozens of pages to be changed so as to give greater emphasis to their activities. The Evangelists do not believe at all in the story of the Annunciation. The history of pilgrimage begins, as far as they are concerned, in the year 1000 CE.
Marketing dilemmas also arose. For example, the big American publishing house Barnes & Noble said that the book’s cover, adorned with a large cross, was too religious in its connotation.
As anticipated, the book had to be improved and made more sophisticated. About a third of the material contained in the pilot edition underwent changes. In addition, because of the heavy financial investment involved in the project, the initiators decided to bring in more partners.
Setting up a company and enlisting investors
In mid-2006 one of the initiators decided to set about the work with renewed vigor. He purchased the rights of the other founding partners and set out to find new investors whose strengths lay in the field of marketing. The album itself was almost ready. Although a considerable number of changes and additions were required, most of the raw material was already translated into seven languages: English, Spanish, Russian, German, Italian, Portuguese, and French.
The entrepreneur did not see the project as an album or as another product to market, but as an entire commercial business. A business that was no different from a start-up, except that in this case there was already a finished product. Therefore, most of the business activity had to focus on marketing it throughout the world.
The entrepreneur came to the offices of Brooks Keret, a financial management company mainly engaged in enlisting investors in the world of high-tech. Brooks Keret came in as a partner in the marketing company set up in order to market the album; Nimrod Elmish, a partner and business development manager, was appointed as its representative in the project, and work started apace under his management to raise the finance, partners, and officeholders required by the company.
A new company was set up, called RMC Publishing. A number of strategic investors were brought in, who not only brought money into the company, but also contributed their knowledge, their contacts, and their experience. In this way RMC’s marketing network was considerably strengthened without any additional fixed costs.
Examples of how the partner/investors have contributed: one of them has contacts in Singapore, through whom an initial purchase has already been made; one wants to
undertake activities in Poland; a third has made contact with a person in public relations in the United States; another partner has undertaken to develop activities in Brazil, and so on.
At the same time, the company management understood that there is a difference between willingness to invest time and resources on the part of someone with a substantial holding in the company, and such willingness on the part of someone with a small stake. It was therefore decided that if a “small” investor contributed directly to profitability, he would be remunerated for it. In other words, not only would he enjoy a dividend on his investment, but also a commission for any other relevant contribution.
The investors were recruited through the Brooks Keret investors club. It was important for the partners that these should be people who were willing to cooperate and with whom it would be pleasant to work. According to the partners, a kind of mini Angels club was formed, familiar mostly from the field of investment in high-tech, with the investors bringing other people into the investment. (An angel is an initial investor in a company, giving it a first financial push. These are usually private individuals, not funds or institutions, and for this reason the entrepreneurs call them angels.)
Recruiting an investor to be CEO
The partners prepared to recruit a CEO, the person who would drive the company.
They were looking for someone who did not necessarily come from the publishing field, but from the world of high-tech. First of all, because the arena for the new company’s activities is the global market, as it is for high-tech (unlike the book market, which is local and language-oriented in character); and also because it had become clear to them that around the world, especially in the United States, most books are sold today through the Internet. They looked at the figures and found, for example, that some 70% of the tens of millions of copies of The Da Vinci Code that have been sold were sold through the Internet (this particular book was not chosen at random, since its story draws inspiration from the world of Christianity). They also found that 80% of the new Harry Potter book sales were through the Internet.
Books are a classic product for selling over the Internet. The book is not a sophisticated product that can be damaged in transit or use, where it is sometimes difficult to track
down the seller to compensate the buyer. The buyer knows exactly what he is getting, there are no surprises. It is also a cheap product, which makes it psychologically easier to purchase online.
The partners wanted a CEO who would also be one of the investors, with a significant investment. Such a person, they assumed, would be extra cautious with the investors’ money, and would also create a sense of trust among the other investors, because his interests were wholly in line with theirs. There can sometimes be natural conflicts of interest between a salaried manager, who wants to leave money in the company in order to develop it, and investors, who want to receive the fastest possible return on their investment in the form of a dividend.
The CEO appointed by the company is Amos Talmor, a man with international experience in sales and marketing in high-tech companies, who retired from his work as a salaried manager a number of years ago, and in recent years has invested in several high-tech companies. His main occupation and specialization is in international marketing.
Marketing - the business model
It was decided that marketing would focus mainly on centralized sales to organizations and sale over the Internet. Sales to individual customers would be through local distributors. As a rule, the business model sees bookshops as important but not the main player, in light of the above findings with regard to Internet sales.
Centralized purchases can take place in a variety of ways. For example, a large company might purchase such an album for tens of thousands of its employees before Christmas. An introductory letter from the CEO can be printed on the first page.
Another example: priests and preachers purchasing a large number of albums and selling them to members of their congregation. The story of the Church or the text of an important sermon can be attached to the album.
For example, one of the interested parties contacting the company was the Church of Zion, which has 1680 churches across the United States.
Concessionaires:
The global marketing network will be operated by concessionaires, other than the main market - the United States - where it will be managed by local distributors.
An example of the model of engagement with the concessionaire: initially, the concessionaire will be required to order 10,000 albums. After an agreed period, he will be required to order twice this quantity. Meeting these quotas will justify giving the concessionaire exclusive distribution rights in a particular country. Obviously, the potential concessionaire will make a profit from selling the albums he has acquired at the outset, at the stage of proving his seriousness.
The quotas will vary from one country to another, relative to the size of the population in the country. In the nature of things, the quantities that the concessionaire in Germany will be asked to acquire and distribute will be greater than those set for the Dutch concessionaire.
The catalogue price of the album in the United States will be $49.95. Although this is a relatively low price for such a unique product, the consideration is that the price should be as popular as possible so as not to deter people from buying the album. In the United States, as well as in Brazil, for example, the concessionaire will be able to decide the catalogue price. In any event, the cost to the concessionaire will be the base price, on average $22.
Internet:
In the view of the RMC management, “if you are not on the Internet you do not exist”. At this stage, the company has an informative website. The next stage (in July 2007) is to create a top quality image website. This will be followed by a website that will also serve as a marketing tool.
The image site contains prospectuses describing the book in the seven languages in which it is distributed. It also has excerpts from the album. If anyone wants to buy it, he will be referred to the website of the concessionaire in the country of the potential purchaser.
The Internet activity also relates to the sale of supplementary products. On the website, it will be possible to bring up most of the articles drawn up and written when preparing the book. Other supplementary products could be postcards, posters and calendars with the pictures.
Concessionaires will be able to engage with local advertising agencies and offer them the use of these products.
Another marketing idea is to send people SMS birthday greetings along with one of the pictures illustrated on the site.
Today, intensive work is taking place to promote the website on Google, MSN and Yahoo. The aim is for words such as Christianity, pilgrimage, or holy land, which yields millions of results, to bring up the website on the first page of the search engine.
Public relations:
There can be no marketing activity of this kind without public relations. Initial contacts have already been made with a public relations agency in the United States, through one of the investors in the company.
The jewel in the crown to date came at the end of May. The CEO of the company, Amos Talmor, met with the Pope in the Vatican and presented him with a copy of the album. The meeting was documented on film and is a valuable marketing tool that everyone is very proud of.
The way to the meeting with the Holy See was paved when the album was sent to the Vatican for its opinion, resulting in a personal invitation for a representative of RMC to meet with the Pope. The film documenting this meeting undoubtedly has incomparable public relations value.
Equipped with this, the company’s managers set out on a marketing and distribution trip, starting with the CBA fair in Atlanta - the most important fair for marketing to the Christian world.
As a result, contacts were made with a local company that will represent RMC Publishing in the United States. Other marketing activities have been carried out in parallel, such as beginning to sell the Spanish edition in bookshops in Spain.
The company operates today from its offices at 1 Hamasger St., room 103, Raanana, tel: 077-2120067, where an advanced computer system is installed.
Further details can be provided on request.
Sincerely,
Amos Talmor
CEO & Cofounder
Email: Amos@RMC-Publishing.com
