Toronto’s Now Magazine had a problem: after 26 years, the weekly’s audience had grown up.
The common perception was that Now readers were young, hip urbanites but with more tattoos than money. The magazine catered to this crowd with strongly left-leaning news coverage complemented by an authoritative review and event listings section.
However, over time much of that urban readership had become suburban. The hipsters grew up, moved out of the downtown core and bought SUVs. It was confusing to media buyers, and made advertising to the readership a challenge.
So when it came time to design a new marketing campaign, editor and publisher Michael Hollett asked, “How do you not alienate the ‘maverick’ part of your readership, but identify that it’s actually a mass-market publication at the same time?”
Typically, the magazine creates and manages its advertising internally, ever cautious about keeping its credibility with young audiences. “It’s that thing where if you tell the world you’re hip, you’re instantly not hip,” Hollett says.
But wanting to get some fresh minds in the mix, Now decided to hire an agency. A handful of agencies were invited to present their credentials in April, with two making the short list: Taxi 2, approached because of its reputation as a hot shop, and Smith Roberts Creative Communications. Hollett was a fan of Smith Roberts’ provocative work on WonderCafe.ca, a website run by the United Church of Canada. One ad promoting the website showed a Jesus bobblehead doll and asked if it was “Funny,” or a “Ticket to hell.”
“It had an edge that we were very comfortable with,” Hollett says. He also liked that in addition to national brands, the agency had Toronto accounts such as WeightCare and Centennial College. It was a local-focus philosophy that Now shared.
Deliberations took approximately a month while Hollett and his staff looked at the metrics each agency presented to evaluate their suggested campaign ideas. Smith Roberts president Malcolm Roberts says he got anxious while waiting in “limbo” and decided to poke the sleeping bear.
“We wanted to give ourselves an advantage and test the creative waters to see if this was an account that we could do interesting creative work on.” He had his team create two seven-foot-tall storyboards for potential viral videos that could be sent to media buyers. They illustrated how Now appealed to mature readers while still resonating with the younger, more rebellious demo. One featured Hollett explaining the magazine’s diverse readership to the camera. Halfway through his speech about 35-year-olds with minivans, he is interrupted by a pierced-and-tattooed Now reader who punches him in the face and walks away. With Hollett on the ground, the Now logo appears and a voiceover says, “We’re not that niche little paper you might have thought we were. Sorry.”
The storyboards hit the demographic divide issue right on the head. Hollett loved them and the account went to Roberts’ crew. “They weren’t the flashiest people we saw,” Hollett says. “I think the fact that they were legitimately listening to us, rather than selling to us, really got our attention.”
When it came time to develop creative to attract both new readers and media buyers, Arthur Shah, the agency’s creative director, says TV and radio were never part of the plan. “We knew it wasn’t going to be a big-budget project,” he says. “But we wanted to keep it very street level anyway.”
The public campaign focuses on eight posters that play off key sections of the magazine. The music section is represented by the image of an indie rocker and the words “Don’t worry. These bands haven’t heard of you either.” The Life and Style poster features a pair of fishnet-stockinged legs and the words “Look less slutty. Or more.” The rollout is comprised of posters, transit ads and wild posting in the downtown core, with bigger billboard executions in outlying neighbourhoods where the aforementioned SUV drivers dwell. Roberts is especially proud of the 100 tear-away poster pads that dot the city. Each contains 25 copies of a poster that can be removed and taken home.
For the media buyer component, Smith Roberts and its partner Bang Media will mail buyers small pouches of marijuana (well, oregano actually). A small card inside reads “From your friends at Now,” and details readership stats. With the campaign now fully underway, Hollett is pleased as punch that his paper’s image has been maintained, and that his staff now has a creative tactic with which they can approach buyers.
Will they be working with Smith Roberts again in the future? “I’d be stunned if we didn’t,” says Hollett. “Sometimes when we’ve worked with agencies, we’ve left thinking ‘Gee, we could’ve done better.’ With this, we’re like, ‘Wow, this is better than anything we could have come up with.’ “
