Celebrate the Holidays
2021 Finalist
Media associated with this campaign
Overview of this campaign
With many Tribune Publishing readers forced indoors because of the pandemic, Celebrate was meant to entertain, spread joy and encourage people to shop local. We gave users a fun, engaging and easy-to-use platform to shop local (in our gift guide section), get entertained (with kids’ activities and how-to articles for grown-ups) and also interact with friends and neighbors (via a virtual photo booth that could be shared). Studio 1847 achieved all these goals — and also offered gift giveaways in our other markets, too.
Strategy: Our strategy to build Celebrate was simple: build a site that would work for every market — one that would allow us to drop in content, the logo and more anytime a new client bought in. First, our designer created an easy-to-navigate design that would work in every market. Next, the ad directors in each market shared the site with their team. Last, the reps started selling. As new clients joined in, the Studio content team would edit copy and do whatever was needed to make the site robust and exciting. Internally, we used SharePoint to track progress for every market. We then partnered with our in-house video team to create a short video to promote the sales efforts (Vimeo link attached).
Challenges: This was an experiment in a year full of challenges! Since we created this page for five different markets, quite a few pivots were necessary over the course of production. Though not all markets were able to sell every section, we kept those portions of the hub in play by convincing some markets to sponsor the section themselves and offer their own prizes.
Results for this campaign
The Tribune Publishing Celebrate the Holidays campaign has made almost $100,000 — $94,515 to be exact, as of December 11 (the campaign is still running). The Hartford campaign earned $38,096, as of December 11 and had much success with its partnership with Foxwoods Resort Casino, which included a gift giveaway and a Facebook Handshake linking to the page (see attached images). This $100K was a great boost for Q4 in a time of greatly reduced advertising revenue. All work was done internally, so we kept costs down and are exceptionally proud of the results, as are all of the markets. We’ve decided this will be a new annual feature, and we’ll start selling earlier next year.
