We made our most transparent campaign ever. We honestly told consumers we were trying to sell them a newspaper, while telling them which tricks we were using to do so. But not without adding that it was all for a noble cause because the more newspapers De Standaard sold, the better its journalists could investigate the truth. We did research on which tactics and strategies worked the best for every specific medium and then turned those insights into bespoke creative messages. Boosting both immediate sales and De Standaard’s image as a reliable source for truth. Even in its advertising.

After having gathered data and insights about the tricks in every medium, we made custom creative messages for each one of them. The campaign ran for 3 weeks, over more than 10 media channels. The ad placement was a major part of our execution, as every creative message referred to the medium we were using.

By honestly telling costumers which tactics we were using to convince them we could use some cheap advertising tricks that actually worked. As far as immediately measurable results go, this led to:

• An increase of over 30% in click-through rate on our banners

• Average time spent looking at our social video ads went up with 19%

• 17% more subscriptions sold.