The Truth Is Worth It
THE NEW YORK TIMESBENCHMARK · 6:1 ROI
The most commercially successful journalism brand campaign ever run. 6:1 ROI.
The Truth Is Worth It is the most critically decorated and strategically effective journalism-marketing campaign of the modern digital era. Developed in 2018 by Droga5, the campaign demystified the arduous, perilous mechanics of reporting. Kinetic typography set against the rhythmic tapping of a journalist’s keyboard simulated the real-time assembly of major investigations - Caitlin Dickerson’s exposure of migrant family separations, Rukmini Callimachi’s embeds with ISIS in Iraq, the documentation of the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.
The visual language forced the viewer to inhabit the dead ends, legal threats, and physical dangers required to extract facts from hostile environments. The campaign achieved staggering reach - 5.12 billion impressions, $16.8 million in ad value equivalent, a reported 6:1 return on investment - and swept the 2019 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, capturing Grand Prix awards in both Film and Film Craft, an exceedingly rare dual victory.
Arriving at the height of the Trump administration’s fake news rhetoric, Droga5’s campaign brilliantly inverted the narrative. It stopped demanding that readers blindly trust the publication as a legacy institution, and instead demanded they look at the sheer, undeniable labor of the reporting. The argument: truth is not an abstract pre-existing concept. It is an expensive, highly manufactured product that requires direct financial patronage to survive. Journalism’s highest advertising achievement was an ad about why journalism costs money.