By: Karim Mostafa Newspaper Celebrates 200 Years With Multimediaut
The New York Post is celebrating its 200-year anniversary with an all-out multimedia campaign. On July 17, the tabloid famous for its colorful headlines unveiled a photo exhibition in Rockefeller Center to kick off the anniversary campaign and simultaneously posted online a special section.
The NYPost.com 200 Years section was "absurdly successful immediately," said Chris Shaw, assistant managing editor at the newspaper. On its first day, the special section attracted 20% of NYPost.com's home page visitors, according to Jill Carvajal, general manager of New York Post Interactive. Although it tapered off to 12% on July 24, that's still a large number of people visiting the section. NYPost.com had 1.376 million unique users in June according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
The special section, which the Web staff has been working on since the beginning of the year, consists of photo galleries, contests for best front- and back-pages, and a time capsule to include e-mail messages from users to Post editors in 2101. Certain sections will be updated weekly up until Nov. 16, the official anniversary date.
Shaw said the anniversary project "couldn't be something that only interested newspaper people. We had to ask ourselves, what are people going to be interested in?"
Shaw said that everybody at the paper was involved in the development of this package, from the top down. It was a lot of work and a lot of research since the beginning of the year, he said. "It has been a labor of love," Shaw said.
With a staff of only 11, New York Post Interactive built the entire package in-house, including the Flash introduction. Shaw said the package stresses what he believes the Post has become most famous for: headlines and photos.
Other features include a Who's Who list at the paper as well as the paper's history. On the print side, a brief historical item will run daily on the inside cover as part of the 200 years anniversary.
Carvajal said the interactive division worked closely with print to integrate the package, including advertising. The paper found three companies to sponsor the anniversary campaign, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Fleet Bank, and Insignia ESG, a commercial real estate firm. Only the MTA and Fleet will have ads rotate through the special online section.
Other advertising opportunities within the anniversary package include the photo exhibition, which will tour all five of New York City's boroughs, and print advertising that will appear in the special issue on Nov. 16. The paper is also offering contests to win tickets to concerts in New York. Last week, they offered tickets to Madonna's Madison Square Garden dates and this week they're pitching Janet Jackson tickets.
In general, the Post reports success with print-online advertising packages. A recent campaign for the movie "Pearl Harbor" generated 5,212 responses of which 1,661 came from online. "That's a 32% response rate," said Vin Montuori, vice president of marketing and promotions at the Post. "Not bad."
Karim Mostafa (kmostafa@editorandpublisher.com) is associate editor for E&P Online.
Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.
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