Crikey

From 2018 to 2022 I was the lead copywriter at Private Media, the publisher of Crikey, Smart Company and The Mandarin. I worked on the publisher’s creative strategy based on visitor analysis, came up with the ideas and write the advertising to turn readers of these popular online magazines into subscribers.

Crikey is known worldwide as a news org that shouts truth to power, and it was my job to help push that reputation, marketing-wise as far as humanly possible. It was sometimes a scary gig because we did upset some very powerful people.

But it was also fun. Have a look what I put up all over Canberra airport on the first Sunday the politicians and their minders arrived for the first sitting days of parliament.

2020 was an incredible year at Crikey. In a familiar story to all independent online publishers, our backs were already against the wall at the start of the year.

Then COVID-19 hit. Our advertisers coiled back, and we thought the worst.

Luckily, thanks to some fantastic journalism and advertising campaigns I consider to be the best I’ve written, we turned into a record year.

Here’s a collection of the advertising I created.

First campaign, our first ever pay as you feel sale. No other Australian publisher and barely any other worldwide have tried a pay as you feel model. It was uncharted waters. Will people just pay the minimum? Will they pay more just to support the journalism? The brief was to structure the model and make it work.

And it did.

Spectacularly.

Thanks to the idea of boosting goodwill to the brand (people just love being asked to help out), and by getting everyone at the company involved, it was Crikey’s most successful campaign ever by a long, long way.