Fighting the fake

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“Thank you, Mr Trump!” jokes Mark Cripps, The Economist’s chief marketing officer. At a time when the US president is under growing scrutiny over his relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the subject of several White House exposés, and raising eyebrows with his excruciatingly awkward behaviour during his UK visit, it’s perhaps a strange thing to say.

But Cripps makes a serious point. In this era of ‘fake news’ (whether that’s genuinely fake reporting or the term that Donald Trump applies to any news brand that criticises him), there is a rapacious appetite for quality journalism – and few publications are as reputable as The Economist, now in its 175th year.

“He’s done us really well,” Cripps says. “There are definite spikes related to the news agenda, from the UK elections, Brexit or Trump’s presidency… all have spiked traffic to our content, and even driven newsstand sales.” During Trump’s first 100 days in office, for instance, new subscriptions from digital channels grew 12% in North America year on year, and 15% globally. 

Cripps’ words are also borne out by the latest ABC figures for the UK; between July and December 2017, The Economist’s circulation grew 7.8% to 254,129, up from 235,670 for the same period in 2016.

For many publications, readers are less willing to pay for a subscription, but that is not the case at The Economist, Cripps says. And while it is flourishing in its UK home market, the publication has also seen positive reverses to its fortunes elsewhere.

“We think people want to pay for quality content – content that is truthful, not fake – and we’re even seeing that mindset change in China,” he says, referencing research that found 62% of prospects  cite trustworthiness as the main criteria for subscribing.

“A few years ago in China, for a dollar or something, you could get a complete copy of The Economist scanned in as a PDF. Now even people used to that kind of behaviour are starting to want to pay for legitimate sources.”

From direct to digital

Cripps is not a client by background. He has 25-30 years’ experience working at agencies, including McCann, with a “few dabblings into client marketing”. He joined the publisher full-time in 2013, as global head of marketing innovation and acquisition, and was promoted to executive vice-president of brand and digital marketing in 2015, before taking up his current role as CMO in April this year.

He was originally in direct marketing — a discipline once viewed as the inferior sibling of brand advertising, but which “morphed into digital”. “I’d always worked for direct marketing or direct response agencies and, within that, I specialised in technology clients,” Cripps recalls. “Then these @ symbols and dotcom things started happening and it became natural to get involved in digital, and – as a direct-response medium – that bloomed into branding and community.”

It was not always an easy transition, however. “I had huge arguments with people around 1998 – ‘this is the future, this is where marketing is heading, it’s inevitable,’” he says. “Creatives, in particular, were struggling with it. But it was clear where the discipline was going to go. It wasn’t helped by the phrase ‘below the line’; that felt dirty, and you’d get the creative or brand agency taking the lead and below-the-line agencies were very much subservient.”

So how does Cripps feel his experience serves him at what is, historically, a print-focused organisation? “[It brings] an absolute transparency on the ROI. It’s given me that discipline,” he says.

Structurally complex

The marketing team at The Economist is vast – “several hundred globally, directly and indirectly” – and market research and insight do not sit directly below Cripps.

“Specifically, we’re one publisher team now, under [chief operating officer and publisher] Michael Brunt,” he says. “That includes business to business, trade and circulation marketing, and event marketing. Historically, business insight and data sits outside of it. We’re a complex matrix organisation; it’s not directly into marketing, but it is a service division.”

Even so, Cripps’ team “very regularly has ongoing research commissioned by the marketing team and it’s very clear it’s a marketing remit”.

Research-driven publishing

Unsurprisingly, data analysis, market research and insight have played a leading role in The Economist’s circulation success, with bundles designed to entice new readers.

“On a regular cycle, I won’t say how frequently, we engage pricing consultant Simon Kucher & Partners,” Cripps says. “It tests price elasticity, and the impact of a change in price to volume impact and the subsequent revenue. It also looks at the product bundle types – how to bundle that, how to optimise the step-up strategy from the [ 12 issues for £12 ] trial up to full-blown subscription.”

For those prospective readers, The Economist uses first- and third-party data “where permissions are available”. “We use second-party data as well,” he says. “We structure it by acquisition and retention.”

The Economist uses a combination of those sources to find lookalikes – lookalike modelling combines different sets of data to find the best prospective customers, who are then targeted. 

“When we communicate, we suppress all subscribers so we’re not retargeting them,” Cripps adds. “Then, retention-wise, we track people’s consumption of content and engagement, and make sure we use data to get the right content in front of them, at the right time, so they revisit us or engage with more content.”

The Economist’s editorial is key to its success, a point backed by research conducted a few years ago by professional services firm PwC, which analysed what makes readers loyal and what attracts new subscribers. 

“Lo and behold, it’s all about the content,” Cripps says. “So we started serving content to prospects and subscribers. The more content they get exposed to, the more likely they are to subscribe. It’s all about the content – that’s the clear value exchange.”

The Economist employs numerous agencies – including, recently, Ipsos for a project aimed at attracting more female readers (see panel, Addressing the reader profile), and Universal McCann’s (UM) insight division, headed by Michael Brown.

“UM Insight, the consumer research team that sits within UM, is one of the newspaper’s key global measurement partners,” Brown explains. “The majority of the team’s output to The Economist has focused on evaluating ad effectiveness and understanding the news marketplace and the attitudinal atmosphere around it — no small feat, given the febrile tone, relentless pace and tumultuous nature of the past years’ global news arena.”

Elsewhere, The Economist uses a monthly reader panel to gain feedback on various issues. “The response rate is like no other brand I’ve worked on,” says Cripps. “It’s just through the roof.” A recent survey sent to 15,000 panellists was completed by 83% of recipients.

Wit and wordplay

It’s not often that market research and humour are linked, but if The Economist is best known for its quality journalism, it is also renowned for its humorous, instantly recognisable print ads. These typically feature a dominant red background, with a witty adage in a white font. Lines such as ‘Trump Donald’ and ‘Would you like to sit next to you at dinner?’ are funny, but make serious points.

Cripps admits that, while “lots of research has told us that the readers really appreciate our wit”, the global nature of its business requires a dose of caution.

“We have to be careful because wit and wordplay don’t resonate in all markets,” he says. “I won’t tell you which ones, but some in Europe are straighter than others. Some don’t understand sardonic wit or super-clever wordplay. Some of those are across the Atlantic.

“The wit is built into our editorial content and it’s our job to make sure the advertising reflects that – but it’s got to work. If the wit is too obscure, you won’t elicit a response necessarily. It’s a fine line. We use research to navigate how much, or how little, we can lean on humour.”

Research is also imperative to The Economist’s strategy to attract advertisers and brand partners. “We try to manage relationships directly with the brands, and we give CMOs of those brands good insight into our audience profiling and segmentation,” Cripps says.

“We’re organised around a vertical market as well – so we’re very specific to finance, for example, helping the CMOs understand their markets better, and how our audiences and content can address their clients’ needs.

“We track the efficacy and performance of the work that we do for those clients and we have ongoing dipstick research, surveys and panels.”

Emerging tech

Cripps is excited about emergent technology, such as voice, looking at how “it can be used not only for people to interrogate or be more curious, but also to deliver a meaningful audible experience”.

“An easy thought is ‘Wake up with The Economist’,” he says. “I’ve got Google Home in my house and, every morning, I say, ‘Hey, Google, play Radio 4 – and it does. But it’d be great to say, ‘Hey, Google, Wake up with The Economist, and it briefs me on the top five issues of the day and gets me ready.’ That’s a no-brainer. Where it goes beyond that, I don’t know.”

What Cripps emphatically knows is the role data, market research and insight will play in the company’s future. “Data is at the core of everything we do – so is insight and analysis,” he says. “It is an essential part of our brand make-up.”

Addressing the reader profile

Why does The Economist have fewer female readers than male ones, with women making up less than 30% of its 1.4m print and digital subscribers? That was the question the publication set out to answer.

Information and analysis experts Ipsos Connect and The Economist used semiotic analysis, focus groups and readership surveys targeting male and female current, lapsed and prospective readers. Semiotics helped to analyse communication style and marketing communications, creating insights that influenced the publication’s layout,
style and tone of voice.

Coinciding with 2018’s International Women’s Day, The Economist launched a paywall-free array of content, including a series of profiles of inspiring women – such as activist Betty Friedan and architect Zaha Hadid – while its social channels, such as Instagram and Twitter, targeted women. 

Readers were also able to download the profiles as a bundle, in exchange for registering online.

The ongoing strategy is addressing the imbalance, with the number of female subscribers growing 0.6% faster than male subscribers.