Informing Creative Messaging

Faced with the growing threat of free content, a leading media brand wanted to learn more about its potential subscribers and their thoughts on paying for news services, in order to inform creative messaging territories that would drive subscription. To that end, we aimed to illuminate this audience so our client could understand their lived experiences with the news category and brand perceptions, motivations for engaging with the news, and barriers to subscribing — to inform a poignant and strategic messaging direction.

We quickly moved into a series of pre-tasked virtual discussion groups. The pre-task allowed us to gauge the impact of the election and the current political climate on their relationship with the news & media, and the virtual discussion groups allowed us to dig deeper into the role the brand played in their lives and the drivers and barriers around the subscription model. We then shared out two potential messaging territories, illuminating the insights which resonated the most, the promises from the brand that were the most impactful, and the potential proof points that helped to drive credibility for the brand in the long run.

Within a week of the fieldwork, we shared a robust topline report that described how well the creative messaging territories performed across key metrics. We also outlined executional opportunities and strategic recommendations for creating highly resonant marketing campaigns to drive subscriptions now… and in the future.