COLUMBIA HOUSE GETS RID OF NEGATIVE OPTION MARKETING
By Adnews Staff
Columbia House Canada of Toronto launched a new direct mail music shopping program earlier this month that it is billing as being hassle-free. Called Play, the program offers new subscribers 12 CDs or cassettes for free. In addition, if they want an extra CD, they will receive the second for free. To receive the free CDs or cassettes, the subscriber must commit to buying another six CDs or cassettes within the next two years. Customers will not have to send back reply cards unless they want to make a purchase, and they will not receive unrequested products. Columbia House is promoting the new program using magazine, newspaper and TV ads, as well as direct mail. The campaign was created by Wunderman, Cato, Johnson of Toronto. Until now, Columbia House used negative option billing to encourage subscribers to buy CDs or cassettes from the company. Customers would have to return a reply card whether or not they wanted to make a purchase, and Columbia House would send unrequested CDs to subscribers, then if the customer did not return the product, they would be billed for it.