The Farm wows USA TODAY with speed, efficiency and creative for Multimedia Marketing Campaign
Challenge:
Help advertisers embrace USA TODAY’s value as more than just a newspaper, but as an engaging multi-platform media choice of online, mobile and print.
Solution:
The Farm created a multimedia communication campaign and plan for digital, TV, print and street performances to demonstrate USA TODAY’s broad range of advertising solutions.
Result:
The eight-week campaign generated more than 112 million impressions and 150,000 clicks to USA TODAY’s advertiser media kit.
Overview
The newspaper industry has been besieged by negative press as industry reports show that advertisers are turning more and more to digital advertising in lieu of traditional print. USA TODAY, however, is the exception, remaining an industry leader with its digital innovations, including USATODAY.com and the company’s award-winning iPhone and iPad applications.
USA TODAY turned to The Farm to create a strong business-to-business campaign – one that would get media buyers to take a deeper look at our many innovations.
Speed and Creativity
Given an extremely short window of time – just one month – The Farm developed the “What America Wants” campaign for USA TODAY. The campaign highlights America’s relationship with USA TODAY, showcasing testimonials from celebrities as well as tech and ad industry leaders. “What America Wants” featured competitive ads targeting The Wall Street Journal. The campaign, echoing USA TODAY’s multi-media expertise, included home page takeovers of digerati trades such as Mashable TechCrunch, Adage, Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek, with digital videos and ads highlighting USA TODAY’s large presence in the media marketplace to ad buyers. A TV spot was also created, again targeted to media buyers, which aired on CNBC.
“What America Wants” also included guerilla marketing and social media tactics. Street performers captured the attention of advertising media buyer leaders in New York. Interactive Facebook ads, targeted at media buyers, generated more than 7,000 fans on USA TODAY’s fan page.
Media Innovation
It was important to provide a media campaign that reinforced USA TODAY’s uniqueness as a media choice. Behavioral targeting and re-targeting were used across ad networks to provide pinpoint impressions, increase impact and frequency of message and ensure the most cost-effective advertising strategy possible.
While the main objective of the campaign was to change perceptions about the USA TODAY brand, the digital campaign produced a 0.13 percent click-through rate, well above the 0.07 percent industry average. Within search engine marketing, the campaign produced a 1.04 percent click-through rate, also well above the 0.05 industry average.
“The Farm quickly demonstrated their understanding of our brand and they remained nimble and creative throughout the process,” Lavington said. “They’ve proven to be valuable assets and we are turning to their expertise again for our fall campaign.”
About The Farm
Since 1992, The Farm has been cultivating ideas and harvesting results as a creative, design, and production company in all media – digital, TV (both commercial and programming), print, radio, and corporate communications – with offices in New York and San Francisco.
About USA TODAY
USA TODAY was founded in 1982 with a mission to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. Through its flagship newspaper and popular Web site, USA TODAY engages the national conversation and connects readers online through social media applications, USA TODAY, the nation’s number one newspaper in print circulation with a total average daily print circulation of nearly 1.9 million, and USATODAY.com, an award-winning newspaper Web site that launched in 1995, reach a combined 6.1 million readers daily. The USA TODAY news and information brand also includes: USA TODAY Education, USA TODAY Mobile and USA TODAY Sports Weekly. USA TODAY is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI).