London newsletter publishers react to July 7 bombings with "stiff upper lip".

"Life goes on. Business goes on," said Richard Londesborough, publisher of London-based Business Monitor International, in an interview with NL/ NL. "The terrorists are not going to change our lives. We're not afraid." His remarks summed up those of a number of U.K. publishers we contacted in the past three weeks, some of whom almost apologized for the common refrain of their keeping "a stiff upper lip."

"What's happened in London is not going to have a tremendous impact on our content," Londesborough said of his 70-some newsletters covering the economy and politics of 175 countries around the world. He said Business Monitor has about 75 London-based political-risk and economic analysts who are in daily contact with primary sources, like Central Banks, in the Middle East, Latin America, Russia, Central Europe, and Asia, among other regions. "The bombings do not dramatically change the picture of our coverage."

He continued, "It's the retail and tourist sectors that are now suffering. Business-to-business operations are going on normally. Thank God, it's not like 9/11, which affected the entire world. Looking back at that time, our fax machine, which normally yields dozens of subscription orders daily, almost went silent--and not just from the U.S. but from the whole world. It wasn't until December of that year that orders began coming in at a steady rate again," Richard said.

Keep mailing into the U.K.

Londesborough concluded, "I imagine most of your readers are in the U.S. Please tell them that postponing any direct mail campaigns into the U.K would be a gross overreaction. As things now stand--but who knows what may happen next?--we're a bit wary but are going about business as usual. Keep mailing."

But Peter Hobday, publisher of Cornwall-based Subscriptions Strategy Newsletter, said, "Most of my readers, I hope, know that a big event kills direct marketing." He pointed out that the marketing of consumer publications--what he termed "minority publications"--will be affected the most. "The bombings won't affect my editorial as my next issue will be in around a month's time." He publishes six times a year.

Julian Turner, chief executive of London-based Electric Word plc, which publishes about 30 managers' newsletters in a variety of fields, emailed us a quick note while on holiday. "It has obviously been a very big event for us." Referring to the July 7 bombing of a double-decker bus, he said, "To have two employees in a company of about 50 people on the same bus seems incredibly unlikely, but it was even more remarkable that they both survived." We'll hear more from Julian once he's back from holiday.

Rory Brown, group marketing director at London-based Incisive Media plc, said, "In general, we are making no specific changes to editorial content in our titles," which consist of almost two dozen b-to-b newsletters.

"However, we do have a few publications that specifically deal with issues like business continuity planning, operational risk, insurance, money laundering controls for terrorism, etc., and articles on these subjects are obviously particularly topical at the moment."

Conferences

We asked Mark Baldry, director of East Sussex-based Infoline Conferences, "Has the tragic incident affected either the content or the marketing of your conferences?" He answered, "Not really; we have delayed some of our mailings because certain parts of London remain cordoned off by the police who continue their forensic work and the Royal Mail had become backlogged.

"That said," Baldry said, "we had four events running in the city when the bombs went off. Two simply carried on (the police advised everyone to stay where they were), and two were abandoned (mainly, I suspect, because these delegates had a long way to travel home). They have been rescheduled for later in the year."

A UK NEPA conference, which began the day after the bombings, attracted the highest number of its 52 members in years. Karen Hindle, director of UK NEPA, told us, "The bombings haven't had any effect on my work."

Contact information for any of the persons mentioned in this article is available by emailing Paul Swift at [e-mail] with the subject line "Contact Information"