The Right Tack for Newsletters on Asia : Media: A Stanford MBA tried to make a point with a nail in his first sales letter, but got few subscribers. His high-tech issues have had a broader appeal.
Six years ago, Christopher Mead, a Stanford MBA, combined his interest in Japan and Asia and his love of writing to start several newsletters. The time was right: The newsletter business was booming, and investment and competition from Asia, particularly Japan, was on the rise.
Today, the Phoenix entrepreneur produces five specialized newsletters on topics ranging from Japanese investment in U.S. real estate to high technology. The five newsletters include Japan High-Tech Review, Korea High-Tech Review, Korea Automotive Review, Southeast Asia High-Tech Review and Japanese Investment in U.S. Real Estate Review.
His monthly publications are circulated in the United States and abroad. Although Mead declines to give his circulation figures, he says the high-tech reviews, for example, are sent to subscribers in Moscow, China and even Aruba. Heads of some of the Fortune 500 companies were among his first subscribers for the Japan High-Tech Review, which was started in January 1984.
Mead, whose brother is political economist and author Walter Mead, is owner, president, publisher and editor of Mead Ventures. His interest in Japan goes back to his graduate school days at Stanford Business School.
In an attempt to help the Japanese graduate students become part of campus life, Mead helped organize an association for Japanese and American business students in 1978. The group provided a forum for American and Japanese students to mingle professionally and socially. It has since merged into the Asia Forum at Stanford.
Mead spent the summer in the middle of his two-year Stanford MBA program in Japan, where he taught English. “I was so frustrated; their English was not as good as I expected.”
He returned to the United States, completed his MBA and went to work for Charles von Loewenfeldt Inc., a San Francisco consulting firm that did public relations work for the Japanese Embassy in Washington, the Consul General in San Francisco and the Japan External Trade Organization in San Francisco. He wrote speeches for the Japanese Consul General in San Francisco and accompanied U.S. teachers to Japan under a program sponsored by the Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organizations.)
His first newsletter focused on Japanese high technology because “I didn’t think Americans knew what was going on in Japan.” To attract attention to his newsletter, Mead sent a four-page sales letter with a nail punched through it.
“This nail is made of Japanese steel,” read the teaser. “It is a low-tech information barrier. There are also barriers to high-tech information.” Mead got all kinds of comment on the letter, but virtually no subscriptions.
“I did a little soul searching, decided to throw together a first issue and I sent that out to members of American Electronics Assn., and it was an immediate hit.”
But not all his mail is favorable. Mead used to keep a file marked “Abuse” filled with solicitation cards scrawled with derogatory responses, such as, “You’re selling away our country” or, “I won’t participate; get a job.”
Not all his newsletters have been successful. He recently discontinued Emerging Automotive Industries Review, which focused on car exports from Third World countries. “It was a flawed concept from the beginning,” Mead explained. “Third World autos in general went into slump in terms of exports to the U.S.”
Private Mead Ventures Inc., which began in 1984, employs a staff of five in Phoenix and a network of stringers. Mead also writes a bimonthly column on Asian high technology that appears in the San Jose Mercury News and about dozen other publications, including the Bangkok Post and Dataquest (no relationship to market research firm by the same name) magazine in India.
