'Soccer Moms' Help Sell S.C. Newspaper

By: Mark Fitzgerald Alexis Stroble is a star in Charleston, S.C., and it's all because she reads the local paper, The Post and Courier. "It's incredible how this thing has blown up, and I cannot tell you how many people tell me, 'You inspired me to read the Post and Courier,'" she says. "I can't go into a Starbucks without someone saying, 'Read the paper! Buy the paper! Get the paper!'"

Stroble is one of three moms who talk about how reading the hometown newspaper has literally changed their lives in an unusual broadcast and print advertising campaign. The Starbucks patrons are imitating her commercial, which ends with that spontaneous exhortation to read, buy, and get the paper, followed by Stroble's infectious laugh.

"It was absolutely unscripted," Stroble says of her TV moment.

The spots have been a word-of-mouth hit in Charleston, say officials from the newspaper and Rawle Murdy Associates Inc., the local ad agency that produced the commercials based on a creative concept from the paper's in-house marketing department. "The whole concept is to show how the Post and Courier has empowered our readers, to show that it has had a profound impact on their lives," says Craig Rogers, the paper's director of marketing. "And the best way to do that was to go out and get real people for it."

In her commercial, Stroble ? a teacher in a for-profit after-school program ? talks about how she is touched by the Post and Courier's education coverage. In another spot, a mother identified as "Carol" talks about the paper giving her information and hope regarding a cure for juvenile diabetes, as her son Luke skateboards around her. In the third spot, another young mother talks of reading about the ubiquity of potentially dangerous food additives as her twins clamber around her.

The spots target mothers aged 28 to 48 because "the research we have done identified that moms are actually the influencer of the household," says Bob Moquin, a senior account executive at Rawle Murdy. Topics focus on what the agency calls "free-floating anxiety issues" important to soccer moms, such as finances and health.

But the campaign, with its tag line "Knowing Makes a Difference," is part of a larger rebranding strategy for the Post and Courier that was developed by the Chicago agency Matrix Partners, says marketing chief Rogers. The strategy targeted 16 key ZIP codes most requested by advertisers and coveted by the circulation department. "These are quality subscribers who are going to stick with us, and not churn," he adds.

In addition to marketing changes, editorial changes were introduced to cover issues important to mothers with kids at home. Instead of focusing on fashion, food, or other traditional approaches to women, the newspaper is trying to appeal through coverage of those "anxiety" issues that hit close to home. "It really came out that Mom is key," says Rogers. "If we can sell Mom on the Post and Courier as a benefit to her and her family, we can get it in that household and keep it in that household."