THE CHALLENGE

In April 2010, The Wall Street Journal took on the Gray Lady in her own hometown. It put a reported $15 million behind Greater New York, a daily local section built to win the readers and advertisers the Times had long counted on. The NYT Metro Section was losing readership, and the Journal was poised to convince New Yorkers it could cover The City as well as it covers the world.

THE SOLUTION

My art director and I developed a campaign built on one idea: you have to know New York to cover New York. Each execution used an observation only a real New Yorker would recognize, so a national paper could stake its claim as New York City’s paper of record.