The New York Times unveils first big brand campaign under its ‘essential subscription’ strategy

That value, the ads say, lies in gaining a fuller understanding of the world in all its complexity, through a vast array of content ranging from serious to playful across formats, platforms and subjects.

In one 60-second spot, for example, a story about sneakers in the Times’ Style section sends a reader down a rabbit hole of interconnected topics—from sports to science, news to cooking, The Athletic to Wirecutter, podcasts to The New York Times Magazine—before circling back to sneakers.

Amy Weisenbach, senior VP and head of marketing at the Times, told Ad Age that the company believes “we can mean more to more people than we mean today,” and that the new creative reflects that.

“At the core of that is our news offering, which in and of itself has quite a bit of breadth, but with our Games and Cooking and Wirecutter and The Athletic offerings, increasingly we're trying to get to people to subscribe to all the Times has to offer,” she said.

The spot ends with onscreen graphics of the Times’ various subscription products—News, Games, Cooking, Wirecutter, The Athletic—which are available separately or can be bundled together in an “All-Access” subscription.

The structure of the new spots, Weisenbach said, mimics the kind of content journey that’s typical of Times subscribers and should appeal to nonsubscribers who have similar curiosity about the world.

“We try to have every campaign be reflective of the journalism,” she said. “In this case, we’re exploring something that happens so often in our journalism, where a reporter will say, ‘To understand this, first you have to understand that.’ To understand something as simple as sneakers, you actually do have to understand a wide range of things about the world. We wanted to reflect that journey.” 

‘Bit of a puzzle’

Toby Treyer-Evans and Laurie Howell, executive creative directors at Droga5, said the expansiveness of the concept worked best when bookended by something focused, such as sneakers.

“We liked the idea of starting with a simple, singular topic and then see where it could take the viewer, sometimes to far, distant places or topics and right back again,” said Howell. “When you get dropped off at the beginning, the hope is that we re-dimensionalize that, and the way you see and understand that word.”

“It’s a process of diving into the journalism, reading through each piece, and in parallel copywriting what a potential journey might be for a reader. Where could this go, where does it lead to?” said Treyer-Evans. “And doing the same visually—does this feel like it’s showing the innovative and different products the Times has to offer? Does it show that topic in a new light? How does it link? Bit of a puzzle.”

A second spot begins and ends with “Gravity.”

Craftwise, even the headlines themselves interconnect—moving right to left, almost like a scrolling news ticker.

“We’ve been consciously building a unique storytelling language for The New York Times for around five years now—from the typography, the sound-design worlds, design cues, right through to the imagery,” said Howell. “With this campaign, we loved the idea of a single, continuous rope of type mimicking the trail you leave through the Times as you read.”

Weisenbach said the target audience is nonsubscribers as well as subscribers who maybe aren’t making the most of their Times subscription—or who could subscribe to more offerings.

“It’s a bit of a psychographic, more than a demographic, of people who really are interested in not just knowing what happened but why,” she said. “That's what’s so magical about the spots is they play on that idea that things are connected in surprising ways—and the Times helps reveal some of those connections.”

A third spot, with a theme of time, is forthcoming.

Droga5 worked with director Mackenzie Sheppard and his team in Berlin. The voiceover is a key piece structurally as well, holding the sometimes-frenetic journey together.

“The voice is there as your guide, the reader in your head,” said Treyer-Evans. “The tone of the read varies in each film a bit to make each one feel like a different setting, whether you’re home, on the subway or having a coffee—a mixture of tones reflecting the broad reader base the Times has.”

A more relatable tagline

The tagline, “More of life brought to life,” is “a simple piece of language that we like,” added Howell. “It is true to all the innovative ways that The New York Times dedicates itself to bringing stories to life through technology, new formats, mediums and products.”

Weisenbach said the tagline is often a source of heated debate between client and agency, but that this one felt “personal and relatable.”

“Some of the baggage that the brand maybe carries from its long life is the perception that it's institutional, that it's a little inaccessible or impersonal,” she said. “I love that [the line] is so familiar and feels like we're speaking to our readers in language they would use to describe what the Times means in their life.”

The spots will run in run in broadcast, online video, streaming, social and digital. The campaign launches today and will run through the end of July. 

Weisenbach said the main KPIs are around shifting perceptions of the brand among those who are exposed to the campaign—whether they believe the Times is for them, and whether they believe the Times covers a broad range of topics. The campaign’s contribution to subscriptions is another short-term metric they will be tracking.

The New York Times Company in February announced it had added more than 1 million digital-only subscribers in 2022, its second-best year ever, after 2020. That total does not include the 1 million who came with its acquisition of sports website The Athletic last year.  

The number of paying subscribers at the end of 2022 was 9.6 million. The Times has set a goal of 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027.