New York Times Celebrates Successful Paid-Subscription Model With Online Campaign

For the first time, the New York Times has started an advertisement campaign using online video as a medium. The campaign has been launched on many sites, such as Gothamist, Bloomberg and Comedy Central.

The campaign is to celebrate the first anniversary of the New York Times paid subscription model, which they had commenced after more than 15 years of providing its journalism free on the web. The reason why they started charging for it was that since readers could access it free on the web, sales of their print edition dwindled, eating into their revenue and posing questions of financial viability.

The paid digital model, surprised everyone concerned with it, by the success it enjoyed and have given the world’s most influential newspaper, justified reason to celebrate and rejoice.

The campaign includes four new 60-seconds spots that highlight the rich experience of using the website.

The ads use a similar method adopted by Google in its popular ads that made static web pages feel vibrant and lively and seemingly come alive. The music is inspirational and the pan-and-click approach of Google is also employed here with great effect.

The ads are designed to enlighten people about areas of coverage and features that they can find on the web model, but that may not be available to them in the paper. The four videos cover different themes. Two videos focus on how the New York Times covers creativity and relationships, not really the type of topics associated with it, the third video coves invention and the fourth politics.

The 60-second spots effectively convey their messages with relevance and value. They have been greatly inspired by Google and the creativity video is almost identical to the “Dear Sophie” video released by Google. The evocative rolling piano score is virtually the same and has the same mesmerizing effect.

The new spots remarkably create a fantasy, a chimera that using the web would be to your advantage and would improve your life.

Laura Langdon Vice-President of Marketing for the New York Times said that she was buoyed by the success of their venture and that the initial media buy is four to six weeks.

According to Audit Bureau of circulations the paper saw strong circulation growth for the six-month period ending March 31, 2012.

Scott Heekin-Canedy, president and general manager, The New York Times said, “This latest ABC statement illustrates the great strength of the overall New York Times brand and our strong performance in the period is a tribute to the success of our digital subscription strategy.”