FT woos broader readership with new branding campaign

Jocelyn Cripps, marketing director for The Financial Times (FT) in Asia told Campaign the newspaper had a loyal readership amongst the C-Suite of the banking and finance industries. Her current mission is to further promote FT.com to a broader range of business readers - the likes of middle management staff and below, or business school graduates who may not yet be familiar with the paper.

Cripps declined to say if the campaign would pull in more paying subscribers, but stressed that the goal was about "engagement, rather than subscription". She says the FT's global circulation "shows a growing demand" for the product.

As of the end of June this year, 585,681 (Deloitte-audited) people were forking out money for FT's print and digital circulation - this out of an average daily readership of 2.1 million people (PwC audited) worldwide.

Created by Rapp, the new campaign centres on a ‘glass city’ CG-animated image that is an extension of the FT’s Cityscape campaign which ran worldwide for more than two years. Cripps explained that peering into the transparent glass city with your mouse cursor would enable readers to "get under the skin of the business world whenever they need to decode the news below the surface".

The campaign, launched today and running only in regional media in Asia, will feature TV, outdoor, print, direct mail, digital to target prospective readers via a dedicated microsite. Visitors to the site can explore 16 different financial scenarios in the 'glass city' buildings that each link through to news topics, sections and tools on the main FT.com website.

Media agency Universal McCann will buy space in The Economist and Fortune magazines, as well as through Bloomberg TV, CNN.com and BBC.com until November.

Outdoor media will focus on sites of high visual impact and long dwell time in the central business districts of Hong Kong and Singapore, with Chater Road bus shelters underground walkways in Raffles Place key locations in each.

Online elements will consist of advertising on LinkedIn, Yahoo, Google, and electronic direct mailers also geo-targeted to Hong Kong and Singapore. Angela Mackay, managing director and head of Asia Pacific for FT, said "the campaign takes users to online content and tools that help in daily business decision making.”

Cripps added that the effectiveness of the campaign would be measured internally with data analytics generated from page views and new registrations to prove if the 'glass city' has truly created "intrigue and interest about the FT brand".