The 10 companies shortlisted for Media Player of the Year in Marketing’s Nov. 19 issue were at the top of their game in 2012. We’ll be featuring each one online as a lead-up to our January 2013 issue, where you’ll find out which media company will reign supreme
The Torstar-owned weekly has livened up Toronto’s packed publishing world with its striking art and super-local content—and the cool kids like it, too
To be frank, the last type of publication you’d expect to be awarded “World’s Best-Designed Newspaper” is a free local tabloid—and a new one, at that. An iconic national title seems like a more probable shoo-in, but a regional offering with a staff that can fit in a school bus? Its chances stack up there with Honey Boo Boo becoming Miss America.
Leave it to The Grid, the stylish Toronto newspaper/magazine hybrid published by Torstar that replaced lifestyle and entertainment guide Eye Weekly in May 2011, to triumph in the Society for News Design’s competition earlier this year.
The Grid’s flow—which artfully mixes short and long stories with a healthy serving of visual elements and large photos—stood out from the pack for newspaper competition judge Scott Goldman. “As a reader you never knew what was going to come next,” says Goldman. “As a design tool, that’s very powerful.”
The “World’s Best-Designed Newspaper” accolade proves The Grid has made a strong impression on a global scale. It’s winning huge acclaim at home, too. In June, it scooped up four gold and two silver National Magazine Awards in editorial and art categories.
Publisher and editor-in-chief Laas Turnbull has a simple explanation for why The Grid has connected with consumers. “There’s a complete lack of snark in the paper.”
Instead, it engages readers by pointing out interesting things going on in the city in the same way a friend would. Goldman, who was director of digital and visuals at The Indianapolis Star when he judged The Grid in February, was impressed, for instance, that coverage about great drinks in Toronto didn’t talk down to readers. “It was, ‘If we were going to spend our money on a drink, this is what we would get,’ not ‘Here are five outstanding drinks you should be drinking,’” he says.
It’s a subtle difference, but powerful when paired with The Grid’s lucrative target audience, a group in their 20s and 30s that Turnbull describes as people who live and likely work in downtown Toronto and are curious—and affectionate—about it. Often equipped with decently lined pockets, these are the types of people that would go see a dubstep DJ at a gritty bar on a Saturday night and shell out $17 to refuel on an organic omelette the next morning.
There’s strong overlap between The Grid’s audience and the consumers that beer brand Grolsch targets, says Stewart Cowan, Grolsch Canada’s general manager. It was a great fit, then, for Grolsch—the official beer sponsor of the Toronto International Film Festival—to partner with The Grid and digital shop Blackdigital this year on an HTML5 mobile app and microsite that housed TIFF information in a one-stop hub. Filled with original content from The Grid, curated blogger and social media streams, plus a stream by Grolsch itself, Turnbull says roughly 10,000 social media and blog entries were posted through “The Grid Does…TIFF” program. Cowan calls it an innovative way to cover the festival and commends The Grid for being “a very progressive and forward-thinking media partner.”
The Grid also showed its ability to deliver standout print executions with a holographic cover featuring the Subaru BRZ in June. The lenticular treatment resulted in the paper’s best pick-up rate of the year so far.
Among other advertising accomplishments this year, Turnbull says the average net revenue per page is up nearly 8% over last year.
Reflecting on the year, Turnbull is most proud that while it’s hard to stand above the clutter in Toronto’s super-saturated media mayhem, “I think we’ve done that.” Judging by The Grid’s already well-stocked trophy shelf, so do lots of other people.
To read more about the companies that made the Media Players of the Year and Marketers of the Year shortlists, check out Marketing’s Nov. 19 issue, which is on newsstands now.
