Diário Catarinense celebrates 30 years with research-based re-branding

By Gabriel Casara

Diário Catarinense

Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brasil

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After years in an industry full of transformation and economic crisis, Diário Catarinense, the largest newspaper in the state of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil, celebrated its 30th anniversary in May 2016. We decided it was time for a brand re-positioning and modernisation.

Reinforcing its commitment to the public reader, Diário Catarinense began the re-branding process with a series of objective and qualitative research and focus groups to gain customer feedback.

Subscribers, former subscribers, opinion leaders, clients, and agencies were interviewed. The feedback confirmed Diário Catarinense is still highly relevant to the local community, but identified three areas for improvement:  

  • Strengthening the bond of its brand with the public.

  • Broadening newspaper content across the state, covering all regions of Santa Catarina.

  • Adopting a priority social issue, chosen by readers, and looking for solutions to address it.

Utilising feedback from the research, as well as digital diagnostics that measure Santa Catarina’s media consumption behaviour, we modernised the brand and implemented several key product and platform changes.

The newspaper was already widely referred to by just its initials, DC, so chose to embrace the abbreviated form for our logo, and we adopted the tagline Nosso Estado de Ponto a Ponto, “Our State from Point to Point.”

Diário Catarinense celebrates its 30th anniversary with a new, modernised look.
Diário Catarinense celebrates its 30th anniversary with a new, modernised look.

Based on the research about local readership habits, DC chose to combine the Saturday and Sunday editions into a single weekend newspaper: a super edition with more content, more in-depth local reports.

A new daily section was added called “Point to Point,” which includes highlights from all regions of the state, and we debuted our magazine Donna+ with expanded lifestyle content, including fashion, home, travel, and gastronomy. 

Our subscriber loyalty club, Clube do Assinante, focused on loyalty strategy, offering a weekly Club magazine to promote the benefits, discounts, and cultural programming of Santa Catarina.

In the digital environment, the DC Web site was redesigned with the user experience in mind. The main editorial sections of News, Lifestyle, Sports, Entertainment, and Voices (focusing on opinion) form the portfolio site.

The digital platform was modernised with the addition of more interactive features, such as video, audio, and photo galleries. We also launched a Sunday digital edition, focusing on weekend events and curated content from DC.

To present our new brand to the public, DC went on a road show through the seven major cities, showcasing our new look and products to institutions, customers, agents, partners, opinion leaders, and readers. We also held workshops for our employees, and implemented a more effective, transparent communication policy.

At the official launch in October 2015, our updated brand was unveiled to the public through a wide communication campaign using digital, social media, print media, radio, and television.

Readers voted for DC to adopt public safety as our priority social cause for the year. We created the slogan #Segurança SC – Essa causa é nossa!, “SC Security — This is Our Cause!” and worked this theme into our investigative reporting, communication campaign, debates in the main cities of the state, community activities, educational material, and partnerships with private institutions, public organisations, and the Santa Catarina society.

The brand transformation and campaign were hailed by readers, customers, advertisers, and the government. Our newspaper increased its relevance in the state of Santa Catarina, grew audience, and performed best in advertising among the RBS Group (communication group with eight newspapers, radio and television stations) during the first quarter 2016.

About Gabriel Casara

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