By: Joanna Wolper A Look At Top Marketing Campaigns
Awards are given annually for best promotion of a newspaper online
service in the 2000 E&P/International Newspaper Marketing Association
Awards. This year's winners are:
Under 50,000
1st: The Herald-Times, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, Josh Hampton, E-M@LL
(3b)
2nd: Daily Camera, Boulder, Colorado, USA, Lulu Tupper, 'GoShopBoulder'
Brochure (1b)
50,000 -125,000
1st: Basler Zeitung, Basel, Switzerland, Daniel Fasnacht, 'The
Informative Click' (3b)
2nd: Morgunbla_i_, Reykjavik, Iceland, Margr?t Sigur_ard?ttir, 'Always
Something New' (3b)
125,000 - 300,000
1st: Lexington Herald-Leader, Lexington, Kentucky, USA, Dave Wilkinson,
'kentucky.com' (1b)
2nd: Dayton Daily News, Dayton, OH USA, Kelly Mikesell, 'Click Click
Sold/Hired' (1b)
Over 300,000
1st: Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, USA, Julie Rowey, 'latimes.com'
Relaunch Campaign (3b)
2nd: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Grit
Voss, 'The F-A-Z Job Market' Online Edition (3b)
We profile one of the winners, Kentucky.com:
Three Words and a Kentucky Kind of Humor
If you know anything about Kentucky politics, you know it can cause
migraines. And a throbbing headache was just one way Kentucky.com popped
into the minds of the people of Kentucky.
Dave Wilkinson and his team at the Lexington Herald-Leader had
two major problems to solve and only eight weeks to do it. The
Herald-Leader was renaming its Web site from Kentucky Connect to
Kentucky.com and wanted to relaunch with the new name and eliminate the
other without losing clickers. The Kentucky-specific Web site offered an
overwhelming amount of information that had to be boiled down into more
easily digestible nuggets.
Wilkinson, along with writer Julie Smead and designer Minna Jenkins,
brainstormed with the team at Kentucky.com, led by Mary Epple-Ekhoff and
Kevin Brumfield. Together they came up with an effective tagline: One
state. One site. Period.
'We started with a print campaign,' says Wilkinson, who has been with
the Kentucky newspaper for 20 years and wears two hats as vice president
of marketing for the Herald-Leader and head of Knight Ridder
Productions, an advertising agency for independent newspapers. 'We
wanted our ads to stand out. We didn't want clutter. So we used lots of
white space with our logo, which is whimsical and very colorful. And
then for each ad, we came up with three words that would play off the
cadence of the tagline.'
Two of the words highlighted information offered on the site. The third
had a Kentucky twist on a topic. 'For entertainment we had 'TV, movies
and George Clooney,'' Wilkinson explains. George Clooney and a Web site
in Kentucky? What could possibly be the connection?
'George Clooney is our local boy who made good,' Wilkinson replies
matter-of-factly. 'Everybody in Kentucky keeps up with Georgie boy.'
'Okay, what's next?' asks a non-Kentuckian. ' 'Stocks, sales leads and
basketball stats,' ' Wilkinson says. Women in Kentucky race to the
basketball stats? 'Everyone in Kentucky is basketball-crazy,' Wilkinson
asserts. 'That's why everyone reads the stats. Especially when it comes
to the Wildcats, our University of Kentucky team.'
Then there was 'News, politics and migraine therapy.' Clearly this was a
Kentucky kind of campaign. So the ads ran in the local papers and
magazines in Louisville and Lexington. After that, the marketing team
introduced other elements, including ads featuring the logo on outdoor
transit throughout the state that is world famous for the Kentucky
Derby.
But the coup de grace of the campaign, as Wilkinson describes it, was
the 10-second animated TV spot promoting Kentucky.com. 'The commercial
was the final piece of the marketing puzzle. It brought everything
home,' Wilkinson says proudly. 'We had our logo wiggling around the
screen, and in the background a Jimi Hendrix soundalike is singing My
Old Kentucky Home in the same manner Hendrix did at the Woodstock
festival when he sang 'The Star-Spangled Banner'.'
For Wilkinson, the Herald-Leader, Knight Ridder and the gang at
Kentucky.com, their winning promotion of an online newspaper service was
a huge success. Traffic to Kentucky.com increased 83% one month after
the launch of the media campaign and increased another 81% by the end of
the eight-week promotion. In addition, Kentucky.com achieved an 'ever
used' reach equal to that of the two most-known local competitors.
'Our word of mouth was great,' Wilkinson adds. 'We moved from Kentucky
Connect to Kentucky.com without missing a beat.'
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