In the pursuit of making newspapers more appealing to advertisers, the newspaper industry spent $75 million last year on an ad campaign touting newspaper advertising as "a destination, not a distraction." Another year of cirulation and advertising declines later, the industry has recast its campaign from the Martin Agency.
The campaign now tells the story of how newspapers have morphed from piles of newsprint to cutting-edge media - websites, podcasts and email - in effect become "the multi-medium," reports AdAge. To make the point, one piece of early print creative features a newspaper reader of the future, hooked up to satellite dishes, computer keyboards and monitors.
The campaign also includes ad-sales materials that many papers will adopt, and beginning in April ads will run in general-market as well as trade publications.
Last year's campaign trained 20,000 sales representatives to give presentations based on Newspaper Association of America research; it was exposed to more than 100 million adults and drew 150,000 unique visitors.