I had the honor and privilege of attending the 73rd General Service Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous as the Panel 73 Delegate for Area 65 (Northeast Texas) last month in NYC.  I was assigned to the conference committee on Grapevine & La Viña.  During both our committee meeting and during the general session of the conference, the GV Publisher, Chris C., gave an update on the progress of the upcoming new GV and LV mobile apps.  I wanted to share some of his report with you here.  If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me and I will be happy to try and answer them for you.

Snapshot of Periodical Publishing Industry Revenue:

• 2007: $46 Billion
• 2020: $24 Billion
• A 48% decrease in revenue in magazine publishing

Our new app will be meeting readers where they are:

• Daily reading habits of North Americans for newspapers and magazines is 11 minutes – smartphone – 3 hours plus
• 84% of households have at least one smartphone
• Average person looks at their smartphone every 5 ½ minutes.
• New York Times Example of how they’e anticipated this shift:
  • Print subscriptions 740,000
  • Digital Subscriptions 9,600,000
  • Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, Eating Well, Health, and Parents went all-digital in 2022.

Keep Tradition, Enliven Digital

• Print continues as flagships for traditional subscribers to Grapevine and La Viña, Corrections, H&I, groups and for 12th Step work. The magazines are not going away!
• We do, however need to invest our finances, time and resources in the infrastructure and staffing for digital delivery of content and services.

AA Success in Mobile Digital Delivery

• AA Grapevine podcast:
  • 437,000 downloads to date
  • 92% using mobile devices
  • 22% growth in listenership over the last 90 days
  • Listenership in top 5% of all podcasts
• Meeting Guide app:
  • Currently on 627,460 smartphones
  • 596,000 active users (1.5M members* – 39.73%)
• Instagram: Grapevine and La Viña:
  • Over 11,000 followers

* 2022 Membership Survey may reflect different numbers

Grapevine and La Viña apps

• iPhone and Android
• Easy to use
• One tap access, passwords embedded
• Fun to engage with: Interactive, sharing thoughts, sharing stories, sharing info
• Personalize with sobriety date, favorite meetings, and spiritual maintenance checklist
• Exclusive content for app users
• Share your Experience, Strength and Hope on articles
• More opportunity to publish your articles
• Share articles with your group, with friends

Enthusiasm for Grapevine and La Viña apps

The GV staff have worked long and hard toward identifying the need for these new apps and to gain Fellowship support and ideas.  To do this they have attended the following meetings and events to gain insight:

• Regional Forums
• Area Assemblies
• ICYPAA
• National AA Technology Workshop

Survey Summary and Key Insights

They also created a survey that went out January 19, 2023 to the Grapevine and AAWS email lists, on our daily quote, on the meeting guide app and found the following:

• Survey showed “A strong opportunity”
• High interest in apps based on response—shut down survey after 4 days
• $2.99 monthly price appropriate
• Discounted yearly rate appealing
• Respondents comfortable with using recovery apps and Grapevine can be added to their daily digital usage.
• Content is king for GV and LV — current and past stories get highest scores

APP Benefits

• Grapevine La Viña always on hand
• Guides Personal Recovery and helps you help other alcoholics
• Builds Community
• App Exclusive Stories
• Share stories
• Improved Events Calendar
• Chat Features
• Keep track of spiritual practices – Daily checklist – Meeting alerts
• Listen on the Grapevine Podcast
• Magazine audio playlist
• Get Published! More room for more submitting, sharing
• Comment on Articles

App Project Timeline

• App development underway
• Report given to Conference Committee April 2023
• Complete development June 2023
• Test July and August 2023 with Beta release
• Launch September 2023

For more information, visit: https://www.aagrapevine.org/