Last week’s In Circ discussed the newest circ marketing efforts of two newspapers whose very existence has been threatened: The Boston Globe and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
This week, we hear more about the Globe‘s efforts from Bob Powers, VP of communications and public affairs for the Globe.
DM: Why launch a new branding campaign now (April 5)?
BP: Given the recent news about our industry and our newspaper in particular, we decided to launch this campaign to remind our customers, our advertisers and the community at large of the value of The Boston Globe. In this difficult business environment, our goal is to keep our current customer base of subscribers and advertisers, and we hope that by reminding people of our value we can retain our customers, and potentially attract new customers as well.
DM: What does the campaign entail? What is the call to action?
BP: The campaign entails 30- and 60-second commercials that are only running on barter (free) space on New England Sports Network during Red Sox games. We also have a print campaign only running in The Boston Globe. Starting on April 13, we will have Web ads running on Boston.com. There are also Facebook and YouTube pages. We are looking into potentially expanding the campaign to more media, both on TV and in outdoor advertising.
We have a microsite which we have put on the ads: www.bostonglobe.com/onestory. This site leads people to either advertise or subscribe with us. On the TV spot, we have a soft call to action: To Subscribe, call 1-888-MY-GLOBE.
DM: Who are you targeting?
BP: We are targeting our core demographic, which is adults, mostly 40 years and older.
DM: What makes this different from campaigns you have done before?
BP: We have not done a branding campaign for the Globe in more than five years, and the business environment has changed. This campaign is focused on the value of the Globe and our editorial content, rather than on the product specifically.
DM: What is your goal with this campaign?
BP: Our specific goal of this campaign is to retain customers.
