Pandemic Paywall
EL PAÍS · ESCOVID PROOF
The pandemic became the marketing campaign Spain's largest paper never had to write.
El País had tried this before. A paywall went up in 2002, traffic collapsed, and the paywall came down two years later. The institutional memory of that failure delayed a second attempt for nearly two decades.
The new metered paywall was scheduled for March 1, 2020 - ten free articles, then €10 a month. Two days before launch, the newsroom recorded its first internal case of COVID-19. The country went into one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns. Management argued. Some saw a captive audience. Others argued that paywalling vital public health information during a national emergency was indefensible.
The launch was delayed to May 1. In the intervening weeks, El País covered the crisis aggressively and openly - empty streets, overwhelmed hospitals, the daily death count. April alone drew 180 million visits. When the paywall finally went up, the audience had spent two months learning, in real time, what the paper was for.
In under 11 months, El País went from zero digital subscribers to over 100,000. Managing editor Borja Echevarría: the COVID became our best communications and marketing campaign. Utility, demonstrated under duress, outperformed every brand pitch in the budget.