2018 Gold Best design or art direction
12 Dec 2018
Agency: Pulse Creative London
Client: The Times and The Sunday Times
Campaign name: Another Busy Year
Campaign overview
Happy new year – and hello new subscribers
The brief
January is a vital sale period for The Times and The Sunday Times.
The challenge, then, was to find innovative ways of bringing new subscribers into the
Times stable.
Strategy
The typical Times audience member relishes being absolutely in the know.
However, as news-cycles get faster and always-on lives prove more hectic, it can be easy to miss things.
Which is why for subscribers, The Times and The Sunday Times play the role of anxiety mitigators: providing information, insight and perspective to power conversations and help readers prepare for any professional or social situation.
The campaign strategy set out to show how The Times would fulfil this function.
The work sought to highlight how quickly events change, how that induces a sense of information anxiety, before presenting The Times as the antidote.
However as a premium and intelligent brand not in the business of scaremongering, the key was a light-touch humorously highlighting all the twists and turns that key stories were likely to take in the year ahead.
Creativity
Theresa May could well be in (or out) of Downing Street.
Donald Trump would be up and down in his chopper, or off to play golf.
And Boris Johnson would be, well, Boris Johnson.
The Times and the Sunday Times campaign humorously featured dozens of high-profile protagonists in their natural environments, with twelve months of news stories on each.
Every execution placed a prominent, newsworthy individual in multiple guises and varied contexts.
So for sports readers “‘Jurgen and Again”’ is set at Anfield, in the Liverpool dugout, and showed a year filled with last-minute winners, nail-biting moments, dodgy decisions, and maybe some new glasses for Klopp.
And for politically-minded readers, there was “Trumpety Trump” showing the American President – on the White House’s south lawn – facing a year filled with ups, downs, helicopters and a lot more golf.
Results
The work delivered 4,860 print subscriptions (up 17% year on year) and 7,158 digital subscriptions (up 59% year on year): a total of 12,018 new subscribers (a 39% increase year on year).
An overall ROI of 14:1 reinforced the success of the campaign.
Beyond key sales metrics, endorsements rang out, far and wide.
Journalists and readers engaged with the campaign on social media unprompted, praising the attention to detail in each execution.
Team
Pulse Creative London - Deborah Kerr, Chief Executive Officer - Jim Dyer, Managing Director - Oliver Egan, Chief Strategy Officer - Robin Garton, Executive Creative Director - Andy Peel, Creative - Paul Alderman, Creative - Maria Dang, Senior Account Manager - Matt Hunt, Head of Design - Dean Fournier, Head of Studio
The Times and The Sunday Times - Catherine Newman, Chief Marketing Officer - Matt Walton, Content Sales Director - Graham McDougall, Head of Marketing - Subscriptions - Carla Gordon, Digital Acquisition Executive