Tag: New York Times

Inside Story on Marketing the New York Times

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The Q&A below is simply the amuse-bouche of one of the most delicious podcasts I’ve recorded to date.  Please note that it was an honor just to get the interview with Meredith Kopit Levien, the Chief Revenue Officer of The New York Times. (Kind of like getting a table at Sylvia’s.)  Meredith is responsible for both marketing and sales AND has been a driving force behind The New York Times digital transformation and their stunningly timely “The Truth is Hard” campaign. For the main course, chomp into this podcast!

Drew: Looking back at the last four years at the New York Times what would you say is the most innovative thing you’ve hatched?

Meredith: I think the most innovative thing we’ve had to do fundamentally change our ad business. We really had to change what business we’re in, or expand the idea of what business we could be in. In the past, marketers have bought audience and adjacency from us. They wanted to reach our audience or or be next to our content because of what that content does for their brand. So much of our work now is also driven by what goes into the space that they buy from us. We launched T-Brand Studio initially to be really effective at making branded content, and it has morphed into a whole enterprise that can serve any need a marketer has around strategizing for making, distributing, or measuring content. We believed and continue to see whitespace in the market here. Who should help a marketer decide what are the stories that are going to engage people best? Surprise or interest people most? Know the right formats to really make people interested? That’s what the New York Times as a brand does for a living every day. So who better than us as an organization and a brand to help marketers do that.

Drew: Take us behind the scenes in the development of “the Truth is Hard” campaign and what inspired you to really to launch it.

Meredith: Thanks for that question; it’s my favorite one to answer of late. I’m going to go all the way back to a year ago, maybe more than a year ago. We made a decision probably 18 months ago that we needed to start thinking about The New York Times as a consumer brand and take its power as a brand much more seriously. The staffing decision we made around that was to bring somebody in to run brand. We hired a guy a year ago named David Rubin who is the Head of Brand. He works as a peer to our brilliant Head of Consumer Marketing, Clay Fisher. So it started with bringing in talent with deep, deep, deep brand thinking, brand planning, brand execution, experience.  So for the last year there was a budding intent to face the world more as brands do. And behind that intent was a sense that we are a world-class news brand, which to me means we define the category that we’re in and we deliver the work that we do and its products very very well. But we also had this opportunity to also to begin to become and behave like a world-class consumer brand.

Drew: Can you talk about the strategy development?

Meredith: We spent quite a bit of time on core brand principle definition, with deep, deep involvement from the newsroom at The Times. We arrived at a very simple brand statement, which is essentially that The New York Times helps people understand the world, and we arrived at a set of principles around which we would operate. Then as we’re doing that and as we’re beginning to really think like a brand thinks (what is our narrative, what are the messages, how do those messages look, where’s the consistency?), this stunning thing happened in the world: We had a presidential election. We had an extraordinary moment in terms of news cycle. We saw our traffic and engagement go to a place beyond anybody’s expectation. And then the news became the news. And so you asked why did the Truth Campaign happen?I imagine we would have done a brand campaign had the news not become the news. But I think what that brand campaign was, which was really about the process by which the world arrives at truth and the role that journalism plays in that, I’m not sure that that would have happened had the news not become the news. We did that with Droga, which we feel very proud of the work that they’ve done and very lucky to work with them. We broke the campaign the weekend of the Oscars. The first phase of the campaign essentially was meant to remind the world of the role that journalism plays in speaking truth to power, holding power to account, and how important it is to have journalism and high quality journalism as a partner on any individual’s path to finding truth. The second phase of the campaign, which we’ve launched just a few weeks ago, is a short film series that we’ve done with Darren Aronofsky, the incredible filmmaker, which is more about the craft of journalism at the New York Times. It’s about the commitment, the resources, and the expertise that it takes to cover the world and to find the truth, and to do so in a way that people can believe in and trust; in a way that gives people a tool to help make sense of what’s going on around them. And you can expect that we’ll continue the campaign on the other phases.

Here are a couple examples of The Times’ latest ads:

Are the Olympics Good?

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Having attended three Olympics myself (’84, ’96, ’02), I truly believe that the Games bring people and countries together, making the world smaller and closer. I believe the Olympics can affect positive change like precipitating South Korea’s transformation into a democracy from a dictatorship (this really happened). And I believe that Olympic sponsors are doing good by supporting the Games. So you can imagine how it pains me to even ask “are the Olympics good?”

Let me start by saying this is not an issue you can race through. Opinions abound. Over the last few weeks, protesters doused the Olympic torch in many countries in protest of Chinese actions in Tibet and Darfur. Hillary Clinton, in the midst of a heated Presidential nomination bid, suggested “President Bush should not plan on attending the opening ceremonies in Beijing, absent major changes by the Chinese government.” And a New York Times editorial by Buzz Bissinger, called for the end of the Olympic Games altogether! It was this last one that really stopped me cold.

Mr. Bissinger, the author of sports TV shows like “Friday Night Lights” and “Three Nights in August” (I guess this makes him an expert), provided a history of all the problems associated with the modern Olympics since it founding in 1896. No doubt there have been many. He cites the (failed in his opinion) ideals of the modern Olympics as stated by founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin:

May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure.

But that’s about the last positive thing Bizzinger offers. Fortunately for those of us who love the sport and can overlook the darker side of the Games, an article in the New York Times by the long-time sports writer George Vescey, offered a different perspective. Here are a few highlights from Vescey’s column:

Every time I hear talk of boycotting ceremonies or canceling the Olympic Games, I find myself strangely defensive of the Games, as pretentious and bloated and dishonest as they may be.

…those Atlanta Games in 1996 gave two blessings to the world. The first was Samaranch’s very real support for female athletes like the softball team of Dr. Dot Richardson and the soccer team of Michelle Akers and their worthy competitors. The other came in the opening ceremony when Muhammad Ali, once reviled in his homeland as a draft dodger and Muslim convert, emerged on a platform to light the Olympic flame.

I would not trade the success of the women or the honor to Ali for any reflex action to shut down the Olympics.

In the meantime, Good Magazine ran an extensive cover story on why we needed to engage China and embrace the Beijing Games. That’s right, Good Magazine, which introduced its story called “What’s Up with China?” as follows:

In just a few months, the Olympic flame will arrive in Beijing, signaling the start of the 29th Olympiad. Beyond medal counts and race results, we will be engulfed in news about China—from government-sponsored agitprop about rapid modernization to alarmist drumbeats about a growing military and potential economic disaster. Somewhere in between the propaganda and the hysteria will lie the truth.

If the United States is the last remaining superpower of the imperialist era, then China is rapidly becoming the first of the information age. When the world last found itself with two superpowers things didn’t go so well; we’re hoping these stories will contribute to a more rational dialogue this time around. China’s deplorable record on human rights, political freedom, and the environment cannot lightly be cast aside, but it is sometimes necessary to look beyond it. Our two countries are inexorably linked, so let’s find out who our Eastern neighbor really is.

We have a better chance of affecting China’s policies in the future if we engage them now on all levels including the Olympics. Sponsors should not be boycotted for supporting the Olympic ideals even if those ideals are not wholly embraced by the host country today. These sponsors are an important part of the economic riptide that will ultimately pull China in a good direction, affecting the kind of change those calling for boycott are really seeking.

Call me sappy but I actually believe the Olympics are about the athletes and the ideal they represent. Like many sports fans, I love watching the intense competition and seeing the underdogs win. I’m generally amazed by the stories of the athletes and the hardships many endured to get to the games. And I’m partial to the sponsors who find meaningful ways to support the athletes (like Home Depot’s jobs program & Panasonic’s EyeOn Performance System at the US Olympic Training Facility).

And so I say with little hesitation, “let the games Beijing.”