La Presse has brought its different sales and ad departments together into a single service called Atelier La Presse, a venture that has been a long time in the making.
The idea for the new entity came about a year ago, Valérie Beauchesne, managing director of media solutions for La Presse, tells MiC.
“We were starting to see how we had a disconnect from the actual mission of La Presse, which is a not-for-profit organization, and our mission in sales, which is to drive revenue for the news outlet,” explains Beauchesne.
“It became pretty obvious that we wanted to create a clearer separation between our two missions and to send a message to our partners and advertisers that we are there to work complementary to what they are doing.”
The team also wanted to showcase the depth of its expertise internally in various departments. A rebrand was the way to go.
In some ways, not much has changed. Beauchesne says the teams at La Presse have been operating according to their new model for a while. The new entity was simply created to showcase that work in “a modern way.”
“It’s a culmination of our best efforts over a long period of time,” she says. “The new rebrand is about making it understood that we are an ideal partner for today’s challenges.”
The most prominent of these challenges is the labour shortage. “We know that a lot of our clients are struggling in that area. They are lacking expertise in production and creation of content as well as in research and data.”
This is where the new entity can step in and help, particularly when it comes to data.
“In the last two years, we have really been focusing on our data approach, making sure that we are more than ready for the transition into a cookieless world,” Beauchesne explains. “We have become experts at better understanding our first party data and being able to leverage that for our advertisers.”
Finally, Atelier La Presse will seek to drive conversations about local media and how it can be a better driver of meaningful change. “We want to collaborate with all partners to make our industry move faster,” concludes Beauchesne.
