A Slate of Innovation
The roll-over time-travel PBS campaign borrowed elements of Slate’s front-page Visa campaign, run earlier this year. For an entire day in February, Slate readers were shocked when they found a complete mirror image of the front page. When they rolled over the Visa banner, the site reversed back to normal and the user was greeted with the Visa tagline, “Life takes perspective.” The innovative welcome mat/buyout approach to advertising integration earned the site a well-deserved pat on the back from the online community.
Last year, Slate packed its bags and embarked on a trek across Europe. Sponsor Cool Capitols—a promotional collaboration between the cities Amsterdam, Antwerp, Vienna, and Zurich—worked with Slate to give readers an up-close look at the culture and lifestyle of their cities. “We built out a section on the site around these special bloggers who went to the cities and blogged about them,” Sloan explains. “People could email in questions about the cities and have online discussions with the four bloggers. They were all established writers, and they wrote interesting and compelling content.”
The Cool Capitols campaign was a perfect opportunity for both Slate and the advertisers because it catered well to the artistic and internationally oriented interests of the site’s audience. The blog also delivered substantial content that added to the overall Slate experience rather than merely filling ad space.
Yet when advertising becomes this closely camouflaged in a site’s environment, the issue of retaining the trust of readers comes to the forefront. Like the “Advertising” or “Paid Announcement” disclaimer at the top of a print advertorial, online audiences still need some kind of boundary between ad and edit to build and maintain a reliance on the voice of the publication.
“We’re always very clear about what is advertising and what is editorial and make that very clear to the users,” Sloan points out. “We do think that’s a very important principle to follow. But while following that principle, there are all kinds of things we can do to try new approaches and new ways of reaching the user. You don’t have to keep going with the same formula over and over.”
In these campaigns, Slate has indeed abandoned formula in every way. In addition to the unique buys from Cool Capitols, Visa and PBS, Hyundai and JC Penny have previously made one-day personalized buyouts of all Slate sites; MSNBC made a buyout across Slate, WashingtonPost.com, and Newsweek.com; and MiniCooper is currently running a “Good News Gallery” minisite, a collection of inspiring news items from the Slate slate.
When I spoke with Mr. Sloan, I asked him if he viewed Slate’s recent campaigns as experimental. “They’re effective experiments,” he responded. “They’re experiments that are well thought-out, and I’m happy to say that they are working out very well for the advertisers… Certainly, trying new ways of reaching the users and having it be something that’s closely integrated into their site experience is something that we’re finding to be very successful.”
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