TAKEAWAY: With about three weeks left before the launch of new thinking and new design for all of its platforms, the team of the New Straits Times of Malaysia, prepares for the big day. The marketing department has already mounted the internal campaign: to get the team excited in house. Then will come the media campaign. The theme of both: publishing with a sharper edge.
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The staff keeps the countdown to 11-11-11 going
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Giveaways include very sharpened pencils, emphasizing the campaign’s theme: Sharper Edge
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Sharp as a needle, hanging from the ribbon, a visual concept we explore starting on Page One of the new New Straits Times
Signs all over the newsroom: Sharper Read (this will be the external campaign, but it all starts with the newsroom journlalists understanding it)
Words and phrases that define what the new spirit of the New Straits Times is all about
Many times people ask me the question: how do you get people in the newsroom excited about an incoming relaunch?
Indeed, not an easy thing to do, although, eventually, the team rallies around the project, but it takes a little time to get there.
After you have worked together for months making changes on everything from typography to story structures and color palettes, making prototypes, dissecting them and discussing them in an environment where opinionated people abound , then comes the time when you have to get everyone onboard, and everyone excited.
It is buckle down time as the relaunch date looms in the horizon.
The day is almost here when we go from the fantasy and rehearsing stages to D Day here at the New Straits Times
Launch date is 11-11-11.
It has a nice ring to it, and, I don’t know about you, but 11 is not necessarily a very significant number for me, but to many here it is. We hope it is a lucky number as we triple it in all manners of marketing and discussions.
The internal marketing campaign
Many times, marketing departments concentrate heavily on how the project will be presented to the outside world, to advertisers and, of course, readers.
This is, indeed, important.
But I am quite happy to see that in the case of the New Straits Times, the marketing director, Zuraida Mohamed, has also decided to get people inside the organization excited and ready for D Day.
To that effect, she and her team have placed signs all over the building emphasizing the importance of the change.
Zuraida’s campaign is all about a Sharper product.
“I want to make sure everyone internally is excited and ready for the big day,” Zuraida tells me while we meet in her office to do a final review of the media campaign she is preparing, based on the same Sharper Edge theme. “Come launch day, our editors, reporters, designers, everyone has to be aware of how important these changes are to our brand, and one way to create this feeling of excitement is by reminding them one month before about the essence of the campaign, what it means and how it translates to our various platforms.”
Zoraida is preparing a campaign that, like the newspaper itself, runs across platforms:
“We will do radio, television, print (in both newspapers and magazines), online, billboards, you name it, and we will take the message there,” Zuraida says.