Founded in 2013, Contexte, a 100% digital, French-language publication, has established itself as a benchmark for understanding French and European public policy. From Paris and Brussels, its journalists dissect the legislative backstage, regulatory decisions and games of influence that shape our laws.
In early 2025, the team revised their subscription offer, aiming to provide more clarity and more value. Sacha Cayre, CMO at Contexte since May 2024, takes us behind the scenes
"Stop seeing it as a simple pricing issue! You need to build a real value proposition, based on real usage, and above all, tell a clear story. Because if you simply announce a price and features, nobody will really buy the idea behind it!"
Marion Wyss: Hello Sacha! You’ve just announced that you’ve launched a new subscription offer at Contexte. When did you start work on this and why?
Sacha Cayre: The work began before I arrived, in October 2023. The initial situation was that we had a single offer, with a highly personalized price scale based on the type and size of an organization. This ranged from NGOs with no employees to Total Energy or the European Parliament, with price differences of 1 to 50.
It was becoming unmanageable! There was some tidying to do – we had to go further than simply establishing a new range of prices. We also had to repackage our offers to give meaning to them.
You asked Simon-Kucher to help you with this transformation. Why did you choose them?
The choice was made before I arrived, but what I understand is that the team met with 2 or 3 service providers and chose those who had the most credibility in the industry and who knew how to work on advanced pricing models.
Simon-Kucher came up with a pricing structure that was easier to understand than our original scale, but still complex. When I arrived, I was told: “OK, now you have to put it in place and launch it”. But as I dug deeper, I realized that it wasn’t suitable for our context. It was too financial, not marketable enough. In short, we didn’t have a real story to tell…
What have you done to make the offer more intelligible?
We put some meat around the bone! In fact, Contexte has always had a very strong product, but we had never really thought about how to package it. We advertised prices and features, but we were missing the meaning, the narrative. So we used design thinking methods, created personas and, above all, tried to understand how our subscribers really used the service. And that’s when we realized that there were huge gaps in usage…
What usage gaps are you talking about?
The first thing we realized was a bit crazy: 60% of our subscribers were reading the briefings every week, but only 4% were going on to visit the other content!
In a nutshell, people were buying the briefing, even though we produced a lot of high-quality information behind it, which was hardly used at all. But those who dug deeper were loving it! So we said to ourselves that we absolutely had to recreate the link, make them want to go further. That’s where the idea of the augmented briefing came in: you read your usual briefing, and if you want to dig deeper, whoosh, you get an enhanced version with links to the rest.
You’ve also launched other services on top of this?
Yes! We created the Member directory, which lets you find an MP, see all the amendments they’ve tabled, and track their progress. For lobbyists, it’s a gold mine.
We’ve also launched AI debriefings: instead of having to watch three hours of video from a parliamentary committee, the tool gives you a transcript and directly identifies the moments when your subject is discussed. You go from two hours to ten minutes. It’s a game-changer for all professionals…
Is all this included in the basic subscription?
So no, we’ve structured it all into three packages: Essential, Advanced and Integral. The enhanced briefing and the MP directory, everyone has access to. If you want alerts on keywords and amendments, it’s in Advanced. And the AI reports are in the Integral offer.
Have you removed certain functions?
We did ask ourselves a lot of questions, particularly about the events calendar. It was not bad for the essential offer, but we certainly needed to add more value to it to make it attractive in Advanced. Given our current priorities, we decided to put this rework on hold.
What’s changed in terms of pricing?
We’ve overhauled everything, including for existing subscribers! The rebalancing is really complete: more value for the big accounts and maximum accessibility for the smaller ones. This pricing philosophy is at the heart of our mission, where we try not to keep our information for only the big players who can afford it.
How were the editorial team integrated into the project?
We have to admit that everyone was working in a bit of a silo at the beginning. We needed a rapprochement: to build together, otherwise our users wouldn’t make the connection either. To address such an in-depth reworking of our offering, we spent spend a lot of time with all the departments (product, tech, sales and copywriting) to build a proposal that suited everyone. The editorial team is now systematically involved in the development of new products and new editions. It changes everything.
From the outside, one might get the impression that your growth is driven more by increasing the average basket than by increasing the number of customer organizations. Is this the case?
Oh no, that’s not the case at all. We want to increase both at the same time! We had 1,200 customers in 2023, 1,400 by the end of 2024 and by the end of Q1 2025 we’ve reached 1,600. At the same time, it’s true, our average basket has risen by €1,000, to around €7,500 a year. We have the advantage of having a very strong product and totally insolent growth. We’ve been growing at between 30% and 40% for the last four years. Last year, our growth was really not that great… 25%.
Is your international presence a response to Politico’s arrival in France?
Not at all! We’ve been in Brussels for six years now, we already have the biggest French-speaking editorial team there, and we’ve had this dual culture for a long time. The next step was to have this dual culture from a business point of view, by addressing the entire European market. Today, we’re not yet looking at the logic of localising our markets. We just want to structure a real EU product with relevant verticals. We’re starting with Energy, but we’re also looking at other subjects… which I can’t talk about yet!
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to media organizations who want to rethink their subscription offer?
Stop seeing it as a simple pricing issue! You need to build a real value proposition, based on real usage, and above all, tell a clear story. Because if you simply announce a price and features, nobody will really buy the idea behind it!
