But one thing has fallen into place for The Daily: an impressive
array of launch sponsors, including Macy's, Verizon Wireless, Land
Rover, Pepsi Max and Virgin Atlantic, according to people close to
those deals. In addition to sponsoring the project, they'll help
The Daily get off the ground by offering incentives for their
customers to download the app, such as frequent flyer miles from
Virgin.
Apple has an initial exclusive window for The Daily, but
over time the newspaper will be adapted to a fast-proliferating
category of iPad-like tablet devices running Google's Android or
operating systems from Microsoft, BlackBerry and Palm, now a
division of HP. A good portion of the Murdoch clan, including Daily
publisher Greg Clayman and newly appointed sales chief Christine
Cook, were all at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this
month to take in the new devices.
Mr. Clayman was busy showing a demo of the iPad paper to ad
agency chiefs and marketers (and spiriting it away from
journalists) at a private dinner at Aureole in the Mandalay Bay
Hotel, also attended by Mr. Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch and Elisabeth
Murdoch. "All these new devices don't mean much without content,
and content doesn't mean much without brands," Mr. Murdoch said in
his remarks.
The Daily will have a multi-story front page, but magazine-style
layouts within, as well as graphics that take advantage of the
iPad's capabilities in terms of rotating, pinching and swiping and
video culled from News Corp. outlets. A promo graphic turned up by
Damon Kiesow, digital media fellow at the Poynter Institute,
reflects what people who have seen the prototypes say about the
design: big use of photos in magazine-style layouts.
The design capabilities will extend to the ads. "We saw it in
the development stage and thought it was highly innovative in terms
of their use of imagery," said Porter Gale, VP-marketing at Virgin
America. "This will allow us to use images that can be turned
around in a 3-D motion and that's going to make it much more
creative and memorable."
Verizon Wireless sees its sponsorship as an opportunity to
strengthen its position among the Apple faithful; Verizon sells the
iPad at retail and next month will start selling Apple's iPhone for
the first time.
In part because the launch is being stage-managed by Apple,
execs close to the deal see The Daily as possibly the best
investment in terms of PR since the launch of the iPad itself. "For
many of our clients, being part of the first viable property built
for the iPad and not repurposed from print is interesting," said
John Nitti, managing director of Zenithmedia, which represents
Verizon and placed Chase Bank in The New York Times' iPad app last
spring.