challenge

With the 2018 evolution of the Truth campaign, the team set out to validate that, when there is an inflection point in culture that intersects with Times values, brand marketing can punch above media spend and create demand.

Campaign

On the heels of a bombshell investigation that reignited the #MeToo movement, the campaign shined a light on The Times’s relentless pursuit to hold the powerful to account, without fear or favor.

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The Truth Has a Voice launched at the Golden Globes, the first major gathering of Hollywood following the report, continued through the weekend of the Women’s March and was bookended on International Women’s Day with a look at the state of women’s issues around the world. Then, as the nation tuned in for the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, the campaign reminded readers of how The Times’s reporting changed the rules. Times journalists, despite threats of lawsuits or attempted suppression of the facts, pressed on to expose the pervasiveness of concussions in the NFL and Russia’s elaborate cheating scheme.

Results

The campaign put the report in the spotlight, turned headlines and ledes into commercials and featured the investigative journalists behind the byline. The work surpassed primary campaign targets and proved the correlation between attitudinal shifts and propensity to subscribe with a sustained 3% increase in key engagement metrics among those exposed, earning executive leadership’s trust and commitment to invest in always-on brand work.