News Corp recruits Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson to spruik tablet app for metro papers
News Corp has recruited comedian Barry Humphries to use his alter egos and “living national treasures” Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson to spruik the tablet apps for its metro papers.
While Sir Les tries to push his “well-informed image” the ads also feature a cameo by model and Myer ambassador Jennifer Hawkins, highlighting his sleazier side, with Dame Edna bailing him out of some embarrassing situations.
Created by Archibald Willaims the two-minute film sees the duo using the tablet and mobile editions of The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, The Courier-Mail and The Advertiser in a variety of different situations to highlight their features, including crosswords and sudoku. Humphries also pops up at the end of the spot.
Speaking to Mumbrella News Corp Australia managing director metro and regional publishing Damian Eales described the duo as “living national treasures in Australia”, adding the app was important as people who used it spent more time on site.
“They’re recognised by such a broad spectrum of Australian society and they’re celebrated by that same group of people,” he said.
“Incorporating them into our campaign just made a lot of sense because we know they’ll get cut through, they’re engaging and they’ll do a great job of bringing to life the features and benefits of our tablet editions of our metro mastheads.”
Explaining the choice to throw in Hawkins, Eales denied it was an effort to target a different audience.
“We did some qualitative research in terms of Dame Edna and Sir Les and we found they were both recognised and appealed to a broad age groups and communities within Australia,” he said.
“We incorporated Jen into the mix because we thought it added great humour and there’s nothing like throwing in a great cameo into something like this.”
The campaign is running across social, digital, TV and print targeted at the main metro centres of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide for 8 weeks starting from Sunday September 27.
Eales
Eales said pushing the metro masthead’s tablet and mobile apps is important “because the consumers who have already subscribed and started using our tablet app…have a much higher engagement in terms of time spent with us and they also have a far higher retention rate”.
“We know that the apps are highly valued. We see it, unlike websites or social news posts, when you consume our daily tablet or mobile edition, you’re covering all the news of the days, not just the tid-bits you might snack on throughout the day,” he said.
“We know that our customer values that but we also know that not all our customers have trialled that or been exposed to the rich and immersive experience those apps can provide. We want to bring it to their attention, we want existing customers to trial these apps and we want to get new customers who don’t currently have a subscription relationship with us to see the value of the app and take up a subscription with us.”
Eales is confident the campaign will drive acquisitions however confirmed the company will continue to refuse release digital subscription data for the Daily Telegraph, Courier Mail and The Advertiser. It does release subscription data for The Herald Sun.
“We don’t release those three and we have no intention to release those at this point of time,” he said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1URd24iS8g&feature=youtu.be
“This [campaign] will drive acquisitions and we’ve had some significant growth in our business in recent years across all of our mastheads. A lot of our more recent growth, particularly in the more mature portfolios like The Herald Sun, the new tablet edition we’ve seen it significantly increase the base of that portfolio. We believe it will do the same right across the board in our business.
“Importantly, not only do we think this will drive acquisitions, but it also drives retention of existing customers because it adds so much value to their subscriptions,” he added.
According to the most recent Audit Bureau of Circulation figures, The Herald Sun saw its weekday digital subs on the paper grow by 18.5 per cent year on year, while digital subs to the Saturday edition were up by 19.3 per cent with the Sunday Herald Sun up by 19.7 per cent.
When asked why News Corp is not releasing subscription data for the other mastheads Eales said “we just don’t feel it’s the right time and when we do we will,” adding they “haven’t announced a date” to do so.
Miranda Ward
Campaign credits:
Archibald / Williams team:
Executive Creative Director: Matt Gilmour
Producers: Christina Wilmot, Liz Nunan
Creative Director: Jonny Browne
Producers: Christina Wilmot, Liz Noonan
Managing Director: Chris Yong
Group Account Director: Belinda Palmano
Account Executive: Sarah Hughes
Account Manager: Geraldine O’Donnell
Creative Technologist: Ahmed Meer
Production Company: Moth
Director: Michael Gracey
Executive Producer: Jonathon Samway, Nerissa Kavanagh
Producer: Kate Rule
Post Production: Blackbird
VFX Supervisor: Nick Ponzoni
Blackbird Producer: Bonnie Wilkinson-Smith
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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like the ads, but not sure they’ll do much to drive digital subscriptions.
Wasn’t NewsCorp giving away tablets earlier this year in an attempt to pump their numbers up — any word on how that went for them?
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Genius, the young people love Dame Edna
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Is that sarcasm?
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If they really did the research they claim (as opposed to asking a couple of editors what they thought), perhaps they would benefit from a new research agency.
“We did some qualitative research in terms of Dame Edna and Sir Les and we found they were both recognised and appealed to a broad age groups and communities within Australia,”
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Communications students will be studying the subtext of this for years to come.
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Man. They wouldn’t come cheap.
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not bad.
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Personally I liked it. I’m 30, and not exactly in the target market, but certainly can relate to them. Everyone has a seedy uncle like Les.
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Who is the young guy with Dame Edna in the ad and whats his significance in the ad. Great ad.
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great ad
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