‘We’re for You’: News Corp editors join together to launch first national brand campaign
Editors of News Corp’s metro and regional newspapers have banded together in a major marketing push which sees the establishment of the company’s first united brand positioning.
News Corp’s metro and regional newspapers this morning launched the ‘We’re For You’ campaign, an advertising campaign emphasing the mastheads’ commitment to their readers, the company’s chief marketing officer Tony Phillips, told Mumbrella.
For the campaign launch, the editor of each regional and metro title has written their own letter to readers. The letters explain why each publication is made for their audience and will run on pages two and three. The Sunday metro newspapers will receive their letters on February 25.
The campaign will be followed up by a television advertisement targeted to each metro city, along with an outdoor campaign.
News Corp’s television advertisement launched on Sunday, and runs to The Beatles’ hit ‘A day in the life’. It focuses on the daily routine and how the ‘paper’ is part of that routine.
Phillips, News Corp’s chief marketing officer, told Mumbrella he had thought about the concept for some time, even before joining News Corp a year and a half ago.
He said in an increasingly “fragmented” world, it was important to celebrate News Corp’s “iconic” brands.
“There are pressures everywhere, but our job is to produce content that people want to read, and we give people a reason to want to buy it, so it’s a pretty transactional relationship,” he said.
“I don’t think we suffer from issues of brand awareness but we may have been suffering from issues of engaged brand relevance.”
Phillips explained previous research conducted by his team revealed two reasons for buying a newspaper. He said while the first was quite pragmatic, the other half were driven by emotion.
That revelation drove a change in strategy for the marketing team, which had previously focused its advertising on transactions and subscriptions. Phillips said two primary drivers have spearheaded the campaign: pride and love.
“Love is actually a very very emotive word and can be quite a tricky word, but in the context of where we were delving was this whole idea about pride of home, family, community – this kind of sense of belonging.”
What Phillips realised was the News Corp brands weren’t aligned, and therefore there was no “residual value” out of the investment.
“So the idea was that we need we need a common creative language. We need a common creative platform. We need something that is emotionally engaging,” he said.
“The first part of what we’re launching is within our own publications, because we are absolutely committed to, first of all, telling our readers what our commitment is, but secondly demonstrating that the power of press can launch a brand.
“This is as much about us demonstrating to ourselves, our customers, our advertisers that we are making a significant commitment in our own assets in the first week.”
Phillips tapped into his previous retail experience at Coles and Woolworths, to find an “audio cue” that would stick in people’s minds. News Corp’s new ad will run 60 second advertisements in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart, for the first week of the TV campaign launch.
“I wanted to make certain that we had something which gave us an audio cue which enabled us to get something in people’s minds. Melodic nemonic,” he said.
“The track is ‘A day in the life’, the Beatles track. There’s a middle stanza in there which you’ll hear more than once, which is ‘got up got out of bed’ which relates to – without torturing the metaphor – that we produce the paper every day. It also finishes with the ear worm: ‘I read the news today’.”
“Some people will overlay any form of music to drive an emotion, but very very few people can align the word and the song to a clear connection to what it is that you do.”
Phillips assured Mumbrella it was not the most expensive marketing exercise the company had completed. He said while he needed the rights for the Beatles track, it was not as expensive as he expected.
He also sees the campaign working as a long term brand strategy: “I’d like to think and hope that we’ve got to have the flexibility in the campaign and we’ve got the strength in the foundations of the campaign that it can go where anybody needs to go.”
“It’s very much a stake in the sand. This is our brand and this is who we stand for and this is our positioning.
“We’ve got a significant promotion coming up the subscriptions driver. We will then quickly go from establishing an emotional connection, a reason to purchase and a desire to purchase, into reason to purchase and we will start retailing this out.”
In a statement he added: “‘We’re For You’, in the context of our advertising clients, is about communicating how we deliver targeted solutions – not just selling ads. We aim to solve customer problems, which often means bringing together the best of News Corp to achieve this.”
The campaign was the work of Ted Horton’s Melbourne-based creative agency Big Red. Horton has had a long working relationship over the years with both Phillips and News Corp’s chief operating officer for publishing, Damian Eales.
Credits:
- Client: News Corp Australia
- Chief Marketing Officer: Tony Phillips
- General Manager Metro & Regional Marketing: Bettina Brown
- Head of Brand and Media Services: Louise Davis
- Agency: Big Red
- Print and Digital Production: News Corp Australia Creative Services
How do people “celebrate iconic brands”?
If you said that to an ordinary person in the street, they would laugh.
They are desperately depending on the nostalgia factor of newspapers.
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They seem to do a lot of “we”-ing on their audience… so I wonder what’s in it for me?
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I don’t know about the hoi polloi, but I like to celebrate with Dom Perignon and beluga caviar.
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Why are the ABC and News Ltd doing these ridiculous exercises…it reads more like a call to arms that should be an internal doc or for advertisers, rather than for end users.
If consumers need to be told your brand position you’re doing something wrong.
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“It focuses on the daily routine and how the ‘paper’ is part of that routine” Well, I’m certainly not in the target market, which might explain why it’s such a confusing concept.
They’re calling it a brand campaign but only having editors letters in print, the Australian’s campaign is paywalled and the message is all about the ‘paper’… feels like a last-ditch print retention campaign.
At least it isn’t Dame Edna…
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Being News, the things it declares it’s for – and that presumably unite us – will be its tried and tested cashed-up bogan values. Loathing of lefties, poofters, wogs, artistes, junkies, Abos (uppity), dole bludgers, layabouts, thinkers and the rest of us treacherous, un-Australian mob.
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Couldn’t help but notice the SMH ad with snappy, simple points about the new look website that just launched is appearing to the right of this article.
And it makes a lot more sense…
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We’ve just had one of these “We’re for you” spreads run in our regional, newly-News-owned local paper, and the “We’re for you” is shamelessly addressed to businesses as potential advertisers, not to readers. They might as well have just put a full page editorial saying that that their journalistic ethics are for sale to the highest bidder, and readers be damned. I’m sure that’s not what they’re going for, but it’s how it comes across.
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When I read your “We’re for you” I thought where were you when whole centres are being closed down in big business & staff are being made redundant & jobs sent over seas. Hardly a word was reported in the newspapers. Because of this a huge number of employees suffered great duress & no one is defending them not even the Unions. I wrote to several politicians & only one responded & she had no idea what she was talking about.
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