(May 23, 2006; Steven S. Duke)

I keep hearing that newspaper people lack imagination, and particularly that their marketing efforts are uninspired. Not so. For evidence to the contrary, look at what’s been done recently by the Dayton Daily News and the Greensboro News & Record.

The Daily News and the News & Record both created quite cool marketing pieces on their Web sites to promote the relaunch of their print products.

For its April 2006 relaunch, Greensboro built an engaging interactive online guide to the new newspaper. The launch is over, so the guide has been moved to a less-prominent spot, but you can find it by navigating to the Greensboro News & Record home page and scrolling down to the News & Record Multimedia, where you will find a link to “Newspaper Redesign Guide.” Or, find it here.

Employing the interactivity that Web users expect, the promotion allows readers to explore the changes at their own pace and in their own way. Notice as you click through the promotion that it talks to readers about the experiences the News & Record is trying to drive, instead of the more common approach to redesign guides that dwell on typefaces, leading and column widths (yawn).

Everyday in the News & Record A-section readers will find “Talking Points,” and “Hey, did you hear …?” to drive the “gives me something to talk about” experience. There are other elements designed specifically to look out for readers’ interests, surprise them and make them feel smarter. Each is showcased in the promo.

The promo itself taps into a Web experience that is a strong driver of usage: “entertains and absorbs me.” So the promo designed to drive newspaper readership also improves the experience of using the News & Record Web site.

Dayton went a step further and created a cool interactive Web video game for their relaunch of the newspaper. Go to the Daily News home page and click on the “Reborn” promo in the upper right corner. Click on the black buttons that guide you through the new newspaper and you will see that Dayton, too, avoids any discussion of “inside baseball” design elements, choosing to focus on what readers will experience.

When you’re done navigating the new newspaper, click the orange “Relaunch” button to play the game. If you’ve got a competitive personality, the game is an easy way to waste an hour. (It gets more exciting when you succeed in flying the rocket off the launch pad, which I only did once. If you can do that and safely return the craft to the landing strip, let me know what the game does next. I only seem to be able to crash. But I digress.)

Like the folks at Greensboro, the Dayton team is trying to improve key newspaper reading experiences with their relaunch, and have found a way to promote themselves on their Web sites that also improves the Web experience.

Don’t believe those who question newspapers’ creativity.


By Steven S. Duke (s-duke@northwestern.edu)