Results and Effectiveness

By focusing on what mattered to parents - bringing back the ritual of storytime – we were able to bring back another ritual – purchase of the daily paper. We smashed our target driving an incremental 365,000 newspaper sales. We also saw a brand halo effect with paper subscriptions growing by 16% in the following four weeks. Our strategy engaged not only consumers but producers too, delivering $7.1m in media value. Our integration in morning breakfast show, Sunrise, totalled 51 mins alone - more than any other brand in a 2 week period. But the real good news story? Story-time was back.

Creative Execution

We conducted research to highlight the decline in reading to kids. The results were promoted across editorial including our papers, TV and radio. We also engaged celebrities, child psychologists and parents to join the reading revolution. The message was clear: give books higher priority. Radio host, Fitzy, supported the campaign on-air by reading an extract of that day’s Mr Men book to his son Hewie. Hewie’s excited reactions reminded parents to make time for bedtime reading. In online and social we created tips around settling your child in for a good night’s sleep which included the all-important nightly story. To deliver our retail message, each morning we focussed on the Mr Men title available that day, and each evening, the book that would be available on the following. Alongside our spot schedule we sponsored popular family shows, developing billboards and in-program integration with the daily Mr Men character.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

To revive interest from lapsed readers News Corp launched a major promotion. Over a 14 day period, they offered a Mr Men book for $1 with the paper. Our goal was to - Drive 300,000 incremental newspaper sales across the promotional period. - Get people completing the 14 day collection to re-establish their paper buying habit A simple human insight informed our strategy. There is a sacred moment for parents at the end of each day – the magical minutes when they read their child a bedtime story. Yet our research also told us that parents weren’t reading to their children as often as they wanted to. Our strategy was to bring story-time back. We would remind parents of the magic of reading a bedtime story, and show that with the help of your local paper, there was now a new story to read every night.