Making the Time

by: Adreana Young

In February, The Wall Street Journal launched their “Make Time” campaign hoping to garner global sales and subscriptions. Suzi Watford, chief marketing officer of Dow Jones, hopes the campaign will further engage current subscribers and attract new ones.

“’Make Time’ is designed to grow our global subscribers by educating consumers about the personal and professional value of subscribing to the Journal with a focus on highlighting success stories within the subscriber community,” Watford said.

The campaign can be seen in digital, print, on social media and television. In addition to the different platforms in which the campaign is being broadcast, the Journal enlisted celebrities such as music producer and entrepreneur, will.i.am; designer and philanthropist, Tory Burch; chief executive officer of SAP, Bill McDermott; Zhang Xin, co-founder and CEO of SOHO China, and Mike McCue, CEO and co-founder of Flipboard to promote the Journal’s brand.

With photos and video ads featuring these ambitious and busy celebrities, the Journal showcases its primary message: People who don’t have time, make time to read the Wall Street Journal.

The front page of the “Make Time” website features the spokespeople each with their own testimonial of why they make time to read the Journal. The website also hosts tweets and social media updates about the campaign and where to subscribe.

For “Make Time,” the Journal partnered with The&Partnership, a marketing agency, to help promote the brand. Nathan Stewart, group account director at The&Partnership, said they created the campaign to tackle the most common reason readers don’t renew their subscriptions—they don’t have time for it.

Stewart believes that in using these celebrities, who are “movers and shakers in technology, fashion, entertainment and real-estate” as spokespeople for “Make Time,” “it will be effective in driving reappraisal of the Journal, reinforcing to existing subscribers that they are in good company and ultimately bringing in new subscribers.”

While the campaign is set to run until June 30, Watford said she believes the overall idea of the campaign “has legs” that stemmed from the paper’s long-term brand platform “Read Ambitiously,” so people will continue reading the paper after the campaign has ended.

“We want Journal subscribers to know that they are members of a community, a very ambitious community,” she said.

For more information about the “Make Time” campaign, visit wsj.com/maketime.