You know how software companies give away game demos in magazine coverdisks?

I had a direct marketing project which failed dismally.

Here's how it worked.

My side: I would sell three demos on a disk for 1 pound. A specialist would
duplicate and post these for around 50 pence. I would bank the difference.

This would be done via an off the page ad in best selling computer magazine.

My outgoings would be minimal.

How? I had a client who bought a lot of space in a computer magazine, found out his price, negotiated this price for a page in a magazine and got a reasonable price from a designer for the page. Copywriting would come free!

I offered game producers a third of the page and design cost, to advertise in the magazine and have their demo one of the three on the disk.

It was a great deal: a one third page ad, for less than they could buy it for (the prospects agreed on this) plus their demo circulated. The customer would get a taster of around 90 pounds of software for pound. This was before the internet boom!

So why the failure?

"What's the circulation of the disk", "what's the circulation of the disk?"