Economist

9-710-441

REV: JULY 14, 2010

FELIX OBERHOLZER-GEE

BHARAT ANAND

LIZZIE GOMEZ

The Economist

In July 2009, The Economist launched “Red Wires,” a commercial showing a wire-jumper walking

through a city on a series of red wires (see Exhibit 1). The strapline “Let your mind wander” pointed

to the pleasure of connecting ideas and places, a service the current affairs magazine aspired to every

week. Red Wires represented a break from the publication’s famous Red Poster campaign, a series of

billboards that claimed, in often less-than-obvious ways, that readers of The Economist were

particularly smart and successful (see Exhibit 2). Well-known Red-Poster phrases included “You can

so tell the people who like don’t read The Economist,” and “I never read The Economist.

Management trainee. Aged 42.” In contrast, Red Wires, which was shown in movie theatres,

presented no clever puzzle. And the young trapeze artist, dress shirt untucked, appeared to be an

unlikely Economist reader. This, of course, was the point of the new campaign.

By 2009, The Economist Group’s management team, led by chief executive Andrew Rashbass, had

come to believe that the magazine’s target audience had increased substantially because more and

more readers developed an appetite for sophisticated and challenging information. The change,

which Rashbass called “a new age of Mass Intelligence,” reflected a general trend that appeared to

soften many traditional patterns of consumption. For example, consumers could be seen to mix and

match mass brands and luxury products – an EasyJet flight with Prada luggage or pizza with a glass

of champagne. Similarly, readers seemed to be prepared to consume both elite and mass media.

Rashbass explained:

In the era of Mass Intelligence, people move between mass and more challenging media

quite happily. They are a great target for advertisers, both because of who they are and how

they think.1

To seize this opportunity, The Economist needed to...