In 2021, Fædrelandsvennen set a clear and ambitious goal: to reach 45,000 subscribers by the end of 2025, the year of our 150th anniversary. Internally, we called the strategy 45in25.

Over the following years, we grew through a long-term focus on quality journalism, reader engagement, user experience, and customer care. That took us from 34,000 subscribers in 2021 to an average of approximately 40,000 in 2024.

But the final stretch was always going to be the hardest: How could we gain the last 5,000 subscribers within a year?

The obvious answer was to keep doing impactful journalism and continue editorial innovation. But we also needed to get on people’s radars in a broader, more visible way.

To strengthen our other initiatives, we launched a brand awareness campaign, Behind a Story. It ran from May 21 to July 6 and was designed to lead into our autumn sales campaign, Go Big or Go Home, which ran from September 17 to November 15.

Together with other efforts, these campaigns contributed to an all-time high of more than 47,500 subscribers in December 2025. We reached the 45,000 target on October 8.

Asking the right question

The campaign began by asking one central question: For our readers, in this exact time and age, which aspect of our product is most important?

The answer was simple, yet complex: content you can trust.

That insight became the foundation of the campaign. In a world full of impulsive takes, rumours, fake news, and conspiracies, both facts and trust have become scarce commodities. We believed that if readers were to value our journalism, we also had to explain what makes it trustworthy in the first place.

Making the journalistic process visible

In Norwegian, the campaign was called Bak en sak. The rhyme does not survive translation, but the meaning does: Behind a Story.

The concept was built around 11 questions and answers explaining the essence of editorially controlled media: how journalists work with sources, evidence, context, and fairness in accordance with the Press Code of Ethics and the Editor’s Statute.

In other words, we wanted to show what lies behind the finished story — and why that process matters.

The questions were direct and practical: Are Fædrelandsvennen’s journalists objective? Can I trust that what I read is factual? Can politicians use the comment section to influence voters?

These were not abstract brand slogans. They were concrete questions that many people either already had or should have had about journalism. By answering them openly, we were not only defending our role but also asserting our authority. We were explaining our value.

A cross-channel campaign 

The campaign ran across both owned and paid channels. On our own platforms, it appeared in ads on fvn.no, print newspaper ads, newsletters, and on a dedicated campaign landing page. Outside our own channels, we used outdoor advertising, cinema advertising, and social media ads on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook.

We also used guerrilla marketing, placing 65 posters on the ground in the main shopping street and in a city mall. By scanning QR codes on posters and paper ads — or clicking digital ads — users could watch journalists answer the questions in videos on the campaign landing page.

One of the strongest activations was placed in the town square, outside our newsroom. We installed a large interactive screen and combined live camera footage with 3D mapping on pre-recorded video, creating the illusion that very large, somewhat realistic animals were heading toward the viewer.

The message was simple: “You can’t trust everything you see. Can you trust us?” The QR code led to a video featuring editor-in-chief Eivind Ljøstad explaining why readers should trust our content.

What we learned

The campaign delivered both visibility and engagement. It reached thousands of people in the main shopping street, the city mall, and the town square.

Across social media, it generated more than 240,000 impressions, reached more than 160,000 people, and drove more than 7,600 link clicks. Several ads achieved click-through rates of up to 10%. A Snapchat video was also used to reach younger audiences aged 18–34, including a humorous newsroom scenario set in “a world without press ethics,” where every wild rumour was approved for publication.

For us, the key lesson was clear: trust is not just an editorial principle. It can also be a powerful brand message. Journalism does need to be done well. Sometimes, it also needs to show its workings. 

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