The New York Times / Superstition Swap
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The New York Times / Superstition Swap /
Context
When The New York Times acquired The Athletic, they wanted to show fans what they offered that others couldn’t: rigorous, cogent, and highly analytical sports content. However, they sought to do so without alienating fans that aren’t just in it for the facts, but the feelings too.
Insight
We needed to speak in the language of American football followers and show them we were fans as well. We found our insight in something our analysis did not posses: superstition, or really any type of opinion or take influenced by a non-factual source.
Campaign
At the start of the NFL pre-season, we decided to offer fans a trade: you give us your unique superstitions and rituals, and we’ll give you our industry-leading scoops. In doing so, we would enable fans to pair their hopes and dreams with the media’s most rational analysis, thus empowering a slightly more... rational outlook on the upcoming season.
We started by identifying celebrities who already engaged with our content on social media. We then partnered them with illustrator @mnnfrr to capture their own beloved objects of superstition.
Fans were invited to join in by either writing out a description or taking a picture of a ritual or superstition core to their fandom, and sharing it with us via social media / campaign microsite.
In return for them sharing their superstitions with us, we dropped our paywall for them, with access to all pre-season NFL content including a new piece of journalism: the NFL Hope-O-Meter.
The campaign was promoted through a large scale media buy in key markets like New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
The fine print: our recommended copy line was “Superstitions make it fun. The Athletic makes it smart.”
Impact
This campaign received the most press coverage ever in the history of NYT’s earned marketing initiatives; a tough output considering we are asking editorial outlets to promote news around another editorial outlet.
Production credits include Eat Cold Pizza, Marianna Fierro, and more.
