Overview of this campaign

In January 2024, Bergens Tidende finally entered the age of TikTok. It turned out to be the start of a strategic and pivotal shift: Let's do news as young people want it. A mini task force of two dedicated journalists combined with some enthusiasts in the newsroom has got BT connected with youngsters in a way never seen before. The lessons and surprises have been many.  

# Young people love breaking news. Yes, news avoidance is an industry challenge, but we are not doomed. Give youngsters news that is relevant and many will respond. They also interact with investigative reporting and feature stories. 

# Young readers are super valuable sources. Getting in contact with the young gives us stories we otherwise wouldn't. For instance, we are now doing a major project on youth crime, based on this contact.     

# What works in social media, works in your own brand as well. The success got us thinking: Can it be reproduced on BT? With the help of VG, we introduced videofeed and frontpage shorts carousel. Our aim is not to create a social media of our own, but to adapt to the way young users (and a lot more elderly as well) interact with news. And guess what? It is a huge success.

# We are not influencers, we are newsfluencers. We use tone of voice and look and feel from social media, but we are true to brand on reporting. Our TikTok reporters get the attention of influencers, though. They have become very popular.  

# A new revenue stream. A lot of big spending advertisers are in the same situation as us. They need to reach out to new generations. The income potential from vertical videos is substantial. 

 # Sure we can be trusted. We're all hearing the same story: Media trust is declining, especially amongst the young. IN BT, that is not true. Actually, our trustworthiness has risen significantly last year amongst young people.     

 

 

Results for this campaign

# From zero to the skies. We created our first TikTok video in January 2024. Now we have more than 30.000 followers, and during 2024 we had close to 50 million views. Followers have produced 155.000 comments and provide 2,5 million likes. No news outlet in Norway has grown faster this year, and we have overnight become the biggest channel in our region. The go-to-feed when something happens. 

# A vertical revolution. Even more strategically importantly, we've seen a massive boost in onsite video traffic when flipping from horizontal to vertical. Up to 20 percent of all our users interact with the short video stories during the week. Some stand out videos have been producing engagement numbers we've never seen before.     

# Success fuels change management. Preaching the gospel of young user habits in a legacy media can be a lonely and demanding task. With a smash it project like this, it's much easier to get the rest of the newsroom going. And now they certainly are, to a degree that we don't always have capacity to produce all the videos we want.     

# A strategic epiphany. We are finishing our new newsroom strategy these days. Vertical videos have become one of the most important aspects due to the project's sudden and surprising success. Our new strategy is vertical videos only. We will stop doing widescreen video.  

# The trust and awareness boost. Perhaps the most encouraging consequence of the vertical project is the increased trust and brand awareness we see amongst users between 18 and 29. Actually, the awareness has increased by nine percent in the last half year, our latest numbers show. And several parameters on trustworthiness have been equally increasing, as the attached presentation will show.  We relate this to presence in social media and youth friendly content. But we have also spent a lot of time on ethical guidelines for vertical video reporting. And we make a lot of content explaining how we work. 

 

Contact

To contact a company representative about this campaign, click here for the INMA Member Directory