Crikey

For the past couple of years I’ve been the lead copywriter at Private Media, the publisher of Crikey, Smart Company and The Mandarin. I work on the creative strategy based on visitor analysis, come up with the ideas and write the advertising to turn readers of these popular online magazines into subscribers.

2020 has been 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 2020 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.