The Economist looks to expand its globally curious audience by inviting them to ‘Read, Watch, Listen’ to its content

The Economist looks to expand its globally curious audience by inviting them to ‘Read, Watch, Listen’ to its content

Coinciding with the second Wake Up with The Economist event series being held at the Cannes Lions festival this week, The Economist is today rolling out its “Read, Watch, Listen” engagement strategy, which invites its potential audience of 132 million progressives worldwide to consume mind-stretching Economist insight and analysis through multiple formats across a broad range of digital platforms.

Since its founding in 1843, The Economist has been primarily consumed mainly via the written word, whether in its weekly print edition, on economist.com or in its apps. Through a variety of launches over the past year and other planned initiatives in the works, The Economist is expanding to include film, radio and virtual reality, and enabling a global audience to interact with the content in whichever way they want. The 'Read, Watch, Listen' strategy reflects The Economist’s objectives of increasing its reach through brand awareness across multiple platforms and providing its advertisers with more opportunities to reach this expanding audience of the globally curious.

With the launch of its stand-alone film unit in June 2015, The Economist began producing high-end factual programmes that capture the voice and identity of The Economist while standing alone from the regular output of the newspaper in print and digital formats. Having attracted millions of views and successful sponsorship deals, the Economist Films unit has expanded to include a larger video team that will produce daily short clips both for The Economist’s website and its daily app Espresso, which will include Espresso TV.

With more video content, The Economist can now distribute its “Watch” content to a video-first audience (ie, those who prefer to graze online), rather than waiting for them to visit economist.com. This has led The Economist to distribute its video content to the places this video-first audience frequents, including on-demand television. The Economist has in recent months set up partnerships with Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast and Android TV to feature Economist documentaries in their video line-up.

All of this film content is available for advertisers on a sponsorship basis, and Economist Films has already launched sponsored content with Salesforce, Virgin Unite, Turkish Airlines and EY. In a further extension of the “Watch” strategy, The Economist’s Virtual Reality content will soon be available on Littlstar, the virtual reality network (this content is already available on Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear).

Economist Radio launched in 2014 with a daily offering of analysis that listeners could consume on economist.com during their daily commute. Now the daily audio product can be consumed via iTunes, online via aCast or through a subscription to personal radio service Aupeo!, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation of North America that provides connected service solutions for the automotive industry, including brands such as BMW, Mini, Ford, Lincoln, Jaguar, Land Rover, Range Rover, VW, Skoda and Seat. This platform allows users to access the audio content direct from their car radio and again extends the reach of Economist Radio significantly.

In addition to its daily radio offering, The Economist is starting to partner with other organisations on special podcasts. The US election podcast series “Special Relationship” together with Mic is an example of this type of podcast partnering, with the aim of introducing younger listeners to Economist content.

“Our brand has never been more relevant - to understand Brexit or Donald Trump, people around the world turn to The Economist. When we started in 1843 there was only one way for us to do that; today our audience is reading, watching and listening to news so it’s only right that we build products on these platforms for them. Obviously this gives us new ways for brands to engage with this powerful audience,” said Paul Rossi, President The Economist Group Media Businesses.

The Economist has not forgotten its traditional audience of readers, though, and continues to distribute its articles on new and existing digital platforms. Its social team of 10 is continuously testing new content posts on Twitter and Facebook, where The Economist has an audience of 21 million (total of 34 million across all platforms) and is expanding to more social platforms. This was evidenced by its launch on the Asia chat app LINE earlier this year. The Economist this week launched on Facebook Instant Articles, allowing it to engage with its audience directly and to offer advertisers another platform to communicate with Economist fans.

Lydia Kaldas, SVP, Strategy and Channel Relationships at The Economist, said, “We no longer live in a world where individuals consume media in one way and on one platform. That is why we are bringing our mind-stretching content to our globally curious audience through “Read, Watch, Listen”, helping them to understand what is happening in the world.”

-ENDS-

Media enquiries

To speak with Paul Rossi, President of The Economist Group Media Businesses, please contact Ravi.Sunnak@havasww.com for US media, and oli.miller@tvcgroup.com for rest of world media. To speak with Lydia Kaldas or another member of The Economist team, please contact hollydonahue@economist.com or economist@lansons.com

Marketers at the Cannes Lions 2016 festival can register to attend the Wake Up With The Economist events by visiting http://wakeupcannes.economist.com.

Alternatively social media roundups and video recaps will be uploaded on a daily basis and available from The Economist’s YouTube channel.

https://youtu.be/A8LbKBp1QRw

Notes to media:

About The Economist (www.economist.com) With a growing global circulation and a reputation for insightful analysis and perspective on every aspect of world events, The Economist is one of the most widely recognised and well-read current affairs publications. The paper covers politics, business, science and technology, and books and arts, concluding each week with the obituary. In addition to the web-only content such as blogs, debates and audio/video programmes available on the website, The Economist is available to download for reading on Android, Blackberry PlayBook, iPhone or iPad devices. The Economist Espresso, our daily briefing smartphone app, is also available for download via iTunes App Store or Google Play.