Metro, the free daily newspaper chain, is looking for an agency to create its first large-scale Canadian brand campaign.
The Swedish-owned brand, which is managed by Torstar in Canada, has recently redesigned its layout and content, and is enjoying a 12% readership bump that puts it in the hands of 1.3 million Canadians daily, according to NADbank 2009 statistics.
It is currently accepting submissions from creative agencies to work on a $2.9 million, eight-week campaign to launch in October. The creative/production budget is slated at more than $212,000.
“We’re hitting 10 years in Toronto, it’s time to make some noise about it,” said Jodi Brown, marketing and interactive director for Metro Canada.
Brown said many Canadians already know about the “functional benefits” of the paper–it’s free, easily available and provides a brief overview of daily news. But “we want to reinforce the personality attributes of our brand” to drive loyalty and encourage readers to pass the paper along to friends and co-workers.
The Metro brand, positioning it as “the world’s largest global newspaper” is managed internationally, so the agency-of-record’s duties will not include rebranding. Instead, it will need to find a way to make that brand relevant to “YAMs” or “young active metropolitans,” Metro‘s target market.
With a proposed media buy that includes outdoor and transit advertising (staples for the brand), Metro is also considering a presence on television and radio, although Brown said creative strategy will determine the media mix.
With publications in seven Canadian cities, the campaign would target Toronto and Vancouver primarily, with secondary focus falling on Halifax, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and the French-language market in Montreal.
Metro works exclusively with Starcom as its media agency, though no formal agency-of-record relationship exists.
Last year it hired Cossette on a project basis for a Toronto-only campaign to promote its mobile offering.
RFP submissions are due July 23. A three-agency short list will be announced in the first week of August, and the winner chosen the following week.
