Why is it always the little guy who supports the arts?
I recently received a phone call from BMW’s advertising department. The female representative asked if it would be possible to cancel the full, back-page ad they had already booked for June. I gulped and frantically went through our sales conditions in my mind but found no loophole that would bind them to a contract canceled as early as March. While I was lost in thought, the woman babbled her explanation for the change in plans into the receiver. It seems that the BMW museum, which had placed an ad in Munich Found once a year, had run out of money—the annual budget having been allocated to the designing of a new ad to replace the old one they had been running for years. Once the money had been spent on the new ad, she said, there would be nothing left to spend on placing it!After my initial shock at hearing of BMW’s substantial financial troubles, the businesswoman in me took over and I wondered, how I could I share this important “insider” information with the world? After all, the public still believes that BMW is a successful company, whose profits and growth are the envy of the entire automobile industry! Should I tip off the Financial Times? Should I take an analyst at Daimler Chrysler into my confidence?
Then I realized the cancellation could not be the result of a cash flow problem at BMW. No, I thought, certainly the ax that narrow-minded BMW executives aimed at other local cultural institutions—including their own museum—had hit Munich Found as well. I had never thought of BMW’s ad as a plug for the museum. I, perhaps rather naively, had always considered the full-page depiction of the museums’s exciting architecture to be a sort of sponsorship, an acknowledgement of our magazine that awakened English-speaking readers to the city’s livelihood. BMW could only profit from an open display of support for the international community, or so I thought.
MF is the Bavarian capital’s only city magazine published in English. It is financed soley by advertising and subscriptions, and if, in any given month all else fails, by a bit of money transferred from the publishers’ other company, Transnet Internet Services. The magazine currently boasts about 25,000 readers. Local businesses treasure our publication. Tourists and new expats are happy when they discover a Munich magazine in English on kiosk shelves, hotels take numerous copies of MF as part of their inventory and the city’s tourist office frequently stresses the importance of this magazine. Many Munich-based international companies buy Munich Found subscriptions for their employees. We are grateful to these businesses, for without them, we could not offer to the city’s English-speaking community the interesting and independent magazine that is MF. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the small and medium-sized enterprises—language schools, international schools, tax consultants, relocation services and movers, movie theaters and the numerous other advertisers and placers of classified ads—many of whom have supported the magazine since its beginnings, in 1989.
Though MF is not profitable, it does provide a chosen few with jobs. It would be in our best interest if we were to land a couple of large ads, but, unfortunately, it seems that big businesses are not interested in buying space that would certainly be of interest to our predominantly above-average-income readers. But neither car rental companies nor breweries nor banks will bite. Because we calculate to the penny, and because we slightly underpay our employees and freelance authors, we will stay in business!
Eighteen months ago, we asked those businesses who, until then, had regularly received complimentary copies of MF, to kick a little into the till. Those companies met our request with understanding and compassion. Officials at the car manufacturer with the blue and white logo categorically refused, even though BMW employs hundreds of British citizens. But, I guess that’s how it is with the arts and budgets: if you can’t measure the success of the ad, cut funding! I’m glad not everyone thinks that way.
