The Economist has switched up its marketing strategy to target a younger audience with a tongue-in-cheek style in a series of out-of-home ads.
It has displayed the ads in London’s Old Street, London Waterloo station, Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf, High Street Kensington, Leicester Square and the Hammersmith flyover.
Copy for the ads includes “For fact’s sake” and “Paint the town read."
The Economist has also debuted the tagline “Independent journalism for independent thinking”, which is designed to show it can provide its readers with “clarity in moments of noise and confusion."
The campaign, which was created by US agency Loyalkaspar, includes a digital ad. The film will go live on The Economist’s YouTube channel this week, as well as on the streaming service Hulu in the US.
The publication had conducted all media buying for the campaign in-house.
Nada Arnot, executive vice-president of marketing at The Economist, told Campaign the main driver behind the campaign was “raising brand awareness that we’re the place to get unbiased, fact-checked news."
She said the work was "slightly in-your-face and provocative, but also appealing to the masses", adding that it intended to showcase itself as a "reliable source of journalism against a proliferation of fake news, confusion and high levels of mistrust around news."
Other elements of the push—a 30-second TV spot, ads on 1,000 New York taxis, and radio ads— will only be available in the US as the brand seeks to expand in that market.
The campaign comes amid workforce changes. Luke Bradley-Jones, general manager of EMEA at Disney+, has been hired as president and managing director. He joins in the summer. Leon Saunders Calvert, partner and chief product officer at data and tech firm ESG Book, also joins as president and managing director of Economist Intelligence in April.
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