WSJ Plus and the power of community

This is long delayed but will post anyway because 1) the warm feeling still is with me more than two months later and 2) I haven’t had made the time time to post until now. 

On Oct. 16, I attended a special event for Wall Street Journal subscribers at The Petersen automotive museum in Los Angeles titled “Visions of Glamour, Automotive Design and Style.” This three-hour “WSJ Plus” event was part of the Journal’s new “membership” rewards program and featured: 

1. An hourlong roundtable with WSJ auto columnist Dan Neil (who is so good he earned a Pulitzer Prize for his work); Ian Callum, chief stylist for Jaguar; and Stuart Reed, chair of the transportation design department at the Art Center College of Design. 
2. Exclusive pre-event access to the museum that included a goodie bag, free booze and hors d’oevres.  
3. After-show guided tours of the Petersen “Vault,” which houses dozens of priceless and famous cars not on display in the museum. 

To top it off, the event occurred just a few days before the Petersen closed for an extensive 13-month renovation. All in all, a special package for subscribers. This was my first WSJ Plus event and I was thoroughly impressed at the quality of the event and the degree to which WSJ was taking its version of a member-rewards program. 

Neil is just as personable in person as he is a print, and with Callum and Reed took the 50 or so attendees into a deep examination of how psychology and sociology impact car design, and vice versa. 

The entire evening was a delightful reminder of the power of community. That WSJ took the effort to leverage a marquee columnist and connect like-minded individuals  passionate about a niche topic bodes well for their efforts to increase customer loyalty (and particularly since this particular topic appeals especially to WSJ incomes). 

I have no idea what it cost WSJ to host the event for what was a relatively small group but I can guarantee most, if not all, of the attendees went away satisfied, told their friends about their experience and are otherwise more loyal to the Journal. 

As a side note, Google Plus surprised me the next day by sending me a link to this photo slideshow it created based on my Google Map I created to get me to the event and select photos I took at the museum. I don’t know how Google Plus chose those specific photos from the dozens I took, but it’s an interesting overview that I found to be a nice digital keepsake.