Oystercatchers supported a “co-creation pitch,” Weiss said. Instead of providing agencies with a brief and expecting they present a single big idea, it incorporated touch points into the process, allowing agency talent to showcase how feedback from the Dow Jones team impacted its strategic vision along the way.
“What we were evaluating was not just the work that was coming out, but how all the teams engaged with each other. Because it’s really about the work and the partnership,” she added.
The new relationship with EG+ in particular, Weiss said, means Dow Jones can create more, faster. Supplemented by the Omnicom network, the production agency can tap into global resources, while relying on AI automations to create multiple content iterations. “They were able to meet us where we are in our transformation journey,” she said of the agency.
EG+ will partner with the newsroom to amplify its coverage, like college rankings, supplement imagery and ensure those images meet quality standards. Editorial leaders can sometimes, without sacrificing confidentiality, let the marketing team know an important story is coming up soon and should be promoted. But, Weiss stressed, the news organization continues to draw clear lines between its marketing and editorial operations.
Centralizing operations
The smooth process capped a transformative year, in which Weiss overhauled Dow Jones’ old marketing organizational structure and scrutinized brand partnerships, including the brand’s marketing technology stack and in-house talent.
Before, there were different marketing strategies in place for each Dow Jones brand, and a siloed subscription strategy. The organizational structure needed to change, the CMO told Adweek, so that marketing teams could learn from each other and more quickly tweak strategies. Plus, cutting down to a single practice opened up previously nonexistent growth opportunities for marketing employees who previously serviced specific Dow Jones brands.
Amidst the agency changes, Dow Jones is also formally launching its in-house media team, a once-small and now-scaled practice founded prior to Weiss’ arrival. The new in-house function executes performance marketing, acquisition and media, and outsources strategy to Mediahub.
A history of change
The agency change follows Dow Jones’ premiere brand, The Wall Street Journal, implementing numerous changes to make the brand more salient to readers. In 2021, WSJ redesigned its site, and it introduces new taglines every few years. See: “Make Time” in 2015, “Read Ambitiously” in 2017, “Read Yourself Better” in 2019 and “Trust Your Decisions” in 2021.
The&Partnership, helped develop those slogans. The independent agency is known for its work on publisher rebrands, and its other clients include PBS and the New York Stock Exchange. Dow Jones’ relationship with it and mSix goes back to 2014. Neither incumbent could be reached to comment on this story.
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