The year of living dangerously Revitalizing an established brand and product

The South China Morning Post

• Began in 1903

• The paid local English paper in Hong Kong

• Award winning journalism

• Affluent English language readers in a Chinese speaking community

News industry in Hong Kong

• Strong print readership

• Chinese language dominated

• Niche English market

• Decline of the British Empire:

growth of bi-lingual readers

• Growth of free-sheets

• Growth of online and mobile news

Building our future

• Understand our audience

• Define and power-up the brand

• Maximize print, grow other platforms and revenue

Strategic Pillars

Engage Elevate Expand

And so our year began…

Embrace change with urgency

Asia’s first native iPad app for a newspaper

Launched on same day iPad launched in Hong Kong

July 2010

Understanding our potential audience

First ever audience sizing and segmentation study

Rare SCMP readers 1x a month

Infrequent SCMP readers <3 times per week

Frequent SCMP readers 4+ times per week

July 2010 Aug 2010

Learning from consumer insights

Focus groups

July 2010 Aug 2010 Sept 2010

Our brand challenge

The GOOD

Trusted

Authoritative

Independent

Integrity

Established

Upmarket

The BAD

Unexciting

Cold

Serious

Foreign

Remote

Daunting

What we needed to do

Live dangerously!

• Dare to change our look, our content and grow younger

• Dare to appeal to a broader, more Chinese audience

• Embrace new platforms wholeheartedly

• Boldly state our brand positioning

• Show our human side

What makes our audience tick

Empowered. Discerning. Engaged.

Caring. Smart. Successful.

July 2010 Aug 2010 Jan 2011 Sep 2010

New brand tagline

Make every day matter

Jan 2011 Feb 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010

Embracing the brand vision

Inform editorial redesign process

Inform and train all company departments

with brand workshops

Inform our brand campaign direction

Jan 2011 Feb 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010

The brand launch

Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010 Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010

Teaser launch

House ads

Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010 Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010

Teaser launch

Front page and P2 takeover ads

Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010 Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010

Campaign launch

Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010 Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010

Outdoor

Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010

Point of sale

Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010

Engaging conversations

Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010

Campaign website

Feb 2011 May 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010

Campaign website

Campaign website

Campaign website

The all new South China Morning Post

The new product

International rock star

design guru

Dr Mario Garcia

hired to redesign the

newspaper

The new product

Five new taboids: making every day matter

Version 2 iPad - making every platform matter

More broad interest pages

Interim website

Phase Two…the heat is on

Boosting subscriptions

May 2011 Feb 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010 June 2011

May 2011

Building trial…and being fun!

Feb 2011 Jan 2011 July 2010 Aug 2010 Sep 2010 June 2011

What living dangerously did for us

• Sustained increase in single copy sales

• Doubled our walk-in newspaper subscriptions in June

• Promotion entries 100x usual promotion response

• 4 fold increase in Facebook likes/built active community

• 229% month on month increase in iPad app downloads

• 184% increase in daily iPad edition downloads

Thank you