LA WEEKLY
CASE STORY
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LA WEEKLY
IN-CINEMA
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LA WEEKLY
PRINT & OUTDOOR
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LA WEEKLY
WEBSITE
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Since their purchase by conglomerate Village Voice Media, the LA Weekly faced certain marketing challenges. Ignited had to help the Weekly assure its audience that a corporate buy would not result in content driven by conservative bias and that the Weekly would remain an independent voice of the people.
The world of independent newspapers was shrinking and the City of Angeles feared what could befall its beloved paper. In the face of a conglomerate takeover, the LA Weekly needed to secure its footing as an free-thinking spirit in Los Angeles.
The campaign started with thousands of newspaper dispensers using images from the paper’s artists and photographers in addition to creative from past front covers, including work by guerrilla poster artist Shepard Fairey. Other executions, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on a cell phone ("Monitor closely") and a punk rocker swallowing a microphone on stage ("Care deeply"), used a "blank blankly" verb-adverb construction that even became part of the cultural dialogue for internal communications at the Weekly.
A revamped online presence provided a soapbox from which any Angeleno could be heard. With 1.2 million unique visitors a month, Laweekly.com traffic increased by 200 percent.
This was a first-of-its-kind branding campaign for the Weekly and, in the end, they reestablished themselves as the voice of Los Angeles.
