Unsubscribe From "No One Likes Us."

The language of "unsubscribing" used to argue for subscribing.

In 2024, The Philadelphia Inquirer confronted the brutal economics of local media by weaponizing the city’s notorious civic chip on its shoulder. Developed by local agency Red Tettemer O’Connell + Partners, the Unsubscribe campaign leaned heavily into the region’s aggressive pride - asking readers to unsubscribe from tired clichés, outsider stereotypes, and national media condescension, and to subscribe instead to a defiant, unapologetic Always Philly perspective.

The campaign plastered the city’s transit systems and billboards with hyper-local inside jokes, leveraging phrases like Corrupt and Contented and the cultural weight of the city’s sports franchises. The strategic pivot from traditional journalistic piety to raw civic attitude paid off. The work captured First Place at the 2024 INMA Global Media Awards for Best Brand Awareness Campaign, drove over 50 million impressions in its first year, and accelerated the Inquirer’s push toward 90,000 digital subscribers.

Unsubscribe is a masterclass in the new economics of regional journalism. Surviving the collapse of local advertising requires more than just printing the news - it requires cementing the publication as an indispensable component of local identity. By mocking the concept of objective distance, the Inquirer proved that the surest way to secure financial patronage is to actively feed the audience’s regional bias and shared grievances. The language of unsubscribing used to argue for subscribing.