The Atlantic has a 164-year history of rigorous reporting, nuanced perspectives, and quality writing. In a time of mass disinformation and distrust in the media, they provide a north star of journalistic integrity to follow. With such a crowded media space, and an aging, male-skewing reader base, they came to us looking to reach a younger, more diverse audience through a paid social media campaign. We allocated a budget of $350,000 for the campaign to run on Facebook and Instagram, with a $20,000 budget to create 16 ads monthly. Our goal was to acquire as many new subscribers as possible with a marginal CPA of $75, while elevating a brand already widely respected in a time where the media was constantly under fire.

With the world exhausted by the news cycle, we distinguished The Atlantic from the online media machine with an idea celebrating curiosity, growth, nuance, and rigor.

Enter: Read. Think. Grow.

Our campaign championed journalism as a tool for growth and exploration. We drew upon The Atlantic’s history in print, and editorial design, to create numerous collage style animations, which highlighted the inspiration and awe that good writing provides. We used language like “Read. Think. Grow.” and “Calling all thinkers. Calling all searchers. Calling all curious.” to invite readers to discover “Writing Worth Reading” and “Fascinating stories, moving perspectives, and challenging ideas”

The campaign framed The Atlantic in a way that was accurate to its history -not the place to find the news, but the place to understand the world. It touched viewers' emotions, inspired their intellects, and asked them to let their minds wander past catchy headlines.

To bring this concept to life, we researched The Atlantic’s history and explored traditionally print and editorial visual languages. Collage was the perfect medium to juxtapose themes of history and fresh perspective, nuance and simplicity, curiosity and growth, to make visuals that stood out in a world of clickbait. The Atlantic is itself a collage of an entity, juxtaposing these themes every day.

With collage as our backbone, we found industrial imagery to pair with surrealist visuals. We scanned gears and spectacles to contrast against natural imagery that spoke to curiosity and growth, like hummingbirds and galaxies. We used textures to add age and employed white space to embolden the visuals, almost floating in space, with thinly stroked borders that felt like they lived on the printed page.

Following the initial collage series, we created equally powerful sequel ads that employed these themes of layering, collage, and fascinating image reveals.

The results of the campaign exceeded everyone’s expectations. We saw major success across all channels these ads ran on, generating 41 million impressions across the nation. We scaled spend in the account by 92% spending $362,686 within the first two months. This resulted in a 129% increase in subscriptions from Facebook and Instagram. Despite increasing spend so drastically, we actually saw efficiency improve as cost per acquisition came down 16% within those two months to hit $36 (well below our $75 CPA target). We saw a dramatic spike in subscriptions from women and millennials, important audiences for The Atlantic.

We did all of this while creating ads that spoke to The Atlantic’s long history of journalistic integrity, and helped craft its future in the minds of its readers. We used their editorial history to position that future as one where writing is a tool for growth, understanding, and discovery.