The Mississippi Press Association, a trade group representing 122 newspapers across Mississippi, turned to GodwinGroup to help communicate its story. While print journalism is being painted as a dying industry, Mississippi newspapers are not only surviving, but thriving.
Utilizing data compiled by American Opinion Research of Princeton, New Jersey, in a 2013 survey, Godwin developed an animated video to illustrate Mississippians’ connections to their local newspapers. GodwinGroup’s creative department concepted, wrote and produced the animated video.
The 2-minute, 36-second video debuted in late January before several hundred MPA members, community leaders and elected officials at the MPA’s roast of Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. The unique production, titled “The Truth of Newspapers,” pointed out that 1.5-million Mississippians read newspapers weekly, 7 out of 10 Mississippi adults are active newspaper readers and nearly 6 out of 10 Mississippians consider newspapers the local advertising source they rely on most.
“When we started the project we didn’t really know where we would go with it, but we knew it was imperative that we fight the negative perception of the newspaper industry,” said Lane Bruce, MPA executive director. “Through our partnership with Godwin, ideas flourished and the project took its final form. We are extremely pleased with the end product and know it will be of great use in educating readers, advertisers and the public at large.”
For GodwinGroup — which interacts with newspapers throughout the state weekly — the work hit home as well.
“The Mississippi Press Association assignment was very important to GodwinGroup because as a communications company we realize the importance of a strong newspaper industry,” said John McKie, GodwinGroup’s managing partner. “This is a story that needed to be told, and we needed to grab the audience’s attention. GodwinGroup is constantly looking at new ways to communicate with our audiences, and we felt the animated video enabled us to best achieve our goals.”
The video can be viewed on MPA’s website, www.mspress.org.
