The Wall Street Journal is a leading media company that for over 125 years has constantly produced and innovated in journalism, content, products and platforms, driven by a variety of factors. In 2014, with ambitious growth goals, the WSJ decided they needed to focus their business and put the customer first – in everything they did.

To do this we launched a Customer Knowledge Program, with the goal of knowing our customers inside out, and as part of this a comprehensive segmentation project was undertaken. The data we collected showed ten key segments for the The Wall Street Journal.

This segmentation study helped us understand the barriers and opportunities to subscription, from which we identified what united WSJ customers was a shared emotional drive: relentless ambition to succeed. It led to a galvanizing global brand idea, Read Ambitiously.

We built the Ambitious House campaign entirely through contextual media placements, which most never saw. For the early morning riser, 5-8am was our window and for the night owl it was 9pm-midnight. OOH and digital communications placed in high trafficked business hubs were time stamped, so early risers saw various messages such as: “It’s 6:25, and you’re headed to the gym”. Whereas those burning the midnight oil saw specific evening messages like: “It’s 11:30, and you’re just leaving work.” The campaign also included targeted early morning TV, which spoke to ambitious already awake, rather than tucked in bed.

We even went on to create two WSJ-branded coffee blends. “WSJ WAKE UP” and “WSJ STAY UP” to give the truly ambitious a little boost. Through social listening, the coffee was distributed as a surprise and delight reward to those working during the early morning or late night hours.

The campaign was supported in TV, OOH, digital and social. Sampling teams also covered the streets of New York, handing out specially wrapped free editions of the Journal during the early morning hours. They targeted ambitious early risers at various transportation hubs, gyms and big financial companies who were watching global markets 24/7.

Results showed that mobile orders were up 39% from the previous quarter and 97% of all tablet orders over the course the campaign came through Ambitious Hours ads, which proved that our new Ambitious readers were up and on the go- and we knew exactly where to meet them. Website traffic also saw a 21% lift in unique visitors to the site which contributed to over 6,000 new subscriptions during the campaign period.

'Ambitious Hours’ combined with marketing efforts across the business lead The Wall Street Journal to see it’s first sustained period of growth in years.