A game-changing idea in the media industry: Subscriber meetups

In my last blog post, I wrote about the apparent ‘brand evangelism’ that had arisen amongst subscribers to The Athletic, an online sports media startup. The website has expanded rapidly in its first eight months of existence, and its following has grown in a similarly exuberant fashion.

The Athletic has created a culture amongst its followers where they are quick to talk about why they subscribe to sports media’s newest national goliath. The Athletic’s followers are loud and proud, as the brand smartly markets quality over quantity and encourages others to ‘join their team.’

In another step towards building a personal, evangelical following, The Athletic has begun to start a new trend among their many city bases: subscriber meetups.

One of The Athletic Cleveland’s writers, NBA reporter Jason Lloyd, tweeted on Monday afternoon that the Cleveland website was close to announcing its first subscriber meetup. The idea is that subscribers could meet up at a local restaurant or bar and get to talk with the website’s writers over dinner or a drink. It will be casual and lively, a chance for the public to get to know the people behind the print.

Of all the smart things that The Athletic has done to gain a following in such a short time since its conception, this might be the smartest. This is simply brilliant.

What better way to strengthen your brand’s relationship with its following than by literally encouraging them to meet the writers in person? While I am sure that some news organizations have done this before in different ways, this was the first time I’d seen it and it struck me as something that illuminated a key ingredient missing often in the media world: reader-writer conversation.

I noted in my last post that The Athletic’s writers do an exceptional job of replying to each and every comment on their stories and they also reach out to their subscribers on social media, simply asking them what kind of content they wish to see. This is another form of direct customer service that The Athletic is implementing, in order to increase trust and build a personal relationship with those who pay $4 per month to consume their product.

By meeting such prestigious writers in person, subscribers can not only give them feedback, but they can also get to understand them better on a personal level. It will make the writers seem human, make them seem relatable, which will help them become more likeable.

An organization that already went above and beyond for its customers took another huge step on Monday, announcing that their relationship with subscribers would now be on a face-to-face, up-close-in-personal level. In an industry where everyone is fighting for subscribers and struggling to keep readership, The Athletic is gaining ground rapidly with this kind of brand-building.