Solution: Create a central website for readers to access all publications
Created a digital hub with a unique brand voice that greatly increased consumer awareness and engagement.
Chicago Tribune produces 39 suburban news publications across Chicagoland. Their digital presence consisted of small category archives, buried in chicagotribune.com. The only way users were aware these publications existed or could subscribe was through direct mail or if they walked past the newspaper in a store.
The central website not only created a new brand voice, it reduced the barrier of entry for consumers to find the right publication based on their suburban location.
Deliverables & Tasks
Market analysis, digital strategy, ideation workshops, user/campaign flows and journey mapping, wireframes, clickable prototyping, visual designs, stakeholder presentations, custom WordPress development and development specifications
Brand
Chicago Tribune Suburban Publications
Role
Senior Creative Director
My Contributions
- User Experience Design
- User Interface Design
- Digital Strategy
- Wireframing
- User Flows & Journeys
- Creative Direction
- Visual Design
- Custom CMS Development (WordPress)
- HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, PHP, WordPress, XML, MySQL, SEO
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The Brand Voice
A way of renewing the connection between consumers of any of the 39 suburban publications was to find an emotional tone while building on the benefit that each publication includes the best local news by local journalists. With local as the focus and value, the ‘neighborhood’ was created. Moving away from the label ‘suburb’ and talking about each area as a neighborhood helped strengthen the connection to local and create a feeling of ownership to the surrounding community.
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Establishing a Digital Presence
Since no single digital presence existed for these publications the decision to design and build one was an easy one. Our marketing campaigns for building awareness would be geo targeted and create the ability to immediately suggest the right publication of the 39 available to the user without requiring interaction. Once a user found a publication we not only clearly communicated the benefits of the product, but populated a collection of past stories as a taste of what to expect and populated a UI with popular content categories that linked back to that suburban section on chicagotribune.com.
Once we connected a user to the preferred publication they could then subscribe or preview that publication’s local news. Each product detail page linked to Chicago Tribune’s payment portal. We were able to integrate into the typical conversion flow allowing new subscribers to immediately gain access to all benefits and enjoy their local news without any restrictions.
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