It advertises.

At least that’s the plan for a new campaign to promote the venerable British newspaper The Guardian, which starts on Monday. The campaign hinges on controversial American topics that include women in the military, Internet privacy, gun control and the use of condoms in the pornographic film industry.

A series of images created by the graphic artist Noma Bar are meant to show both sides of each issue, with contents that change depending on your point of view. The images are meant to be shown side by side on sidewalk billboards in selected cities around the United States and online.

To illustrate the topic of women in the military, for example, an image shows an outline of two navy blue tanks and a red helicopter encased in a white dome. “Military Liability,” the headline says, above these words: “Women aren’t as physically strong as men. We need our best soldiers on the front line.”

When the image is flipped on its head, however, the red helicopter becomes red lips; the blue tanks, eyes; and the dome, the outline of a face. “Military Equality,” the headline now says. “It takes more than brute strength to win today’s wars. We all have the right to fight for our country.”

For the ads depicting Internet privacy, one image shows a person at a desk with an open laptop and the headline “Keep Out of My Stuff” — but when flipped, the man at the desk turns into a masked face with the headline “Keep Out the Terrorists.”

The ads are meant to evoke a response from people who choose to take a side on the issues. “For us it’s about telling the story through the editorial lens,” Jennifer Lindenauer, director of marketing and communications at Guardian US, said in an interview at the publication’s New York office.

“When you look at the debate in this country, at the core of it tends to be the government in our lives versus personal freedoms,” Ms. Lindenauer said. “It’s culture, it’s news, it’s technology. It allowed us to show the multifaceted areas of coverage that we provide for our readers.”

Passers-by who see the sidewalk billboards will be asked to take a photograph of the ad that represents their point of view and upload the photo to Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #VoiceYourView. A Web site will collect the votes as they come in and will feature links to the Guardian’s coverage of those issues.

Despite editorial successes — most notably coverage of the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of e Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World — The Guardian has had a rocky, albeit short, history in the United States. In 2009, it laid off a handful of editors and reporters who had been hired to work on an American-focused Web site. In 2011, it opened offices in New York and has since hired a number of notable journalists it hopes will attract readers, including Ana Marie Cox and Naomi Wolf.

“Not very many people other than the news cognoscenti know about The Guardian,” said Alan D. Mutter, a lecturer for the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former newspaper editor. He added that The Guardian was “very much a new, marginal entrant into an already very busy, very fragmented U.S. media market.”

Instead of focusing on advertising, Mr. Mutter said, the company should focus on another tried-and-true technique to lure readers: reporting.

“I would be looking for really big stories, gobsmacking stories that get people to tune in and get people to share that content,” he said. “The kind of people they want to attract as customers are not going to stop and do a billboard poll.”

According to data from Kantar Media, part of WPP, The Guardian from January to September 2012 spent just $202,000 on advertising in the United States. Its new campaign is estimated to cost in the mid-six-figure range.

The Guardian worked with Bartle Bogle Hegarty, the publication’s agency of record, on the campaign. The agency also created the provocative “Three Little Pigs” campaign for the newspaper in 2012 that featured a modern day retelling of the children’s story with the pigs at the center of a media firestorm.

The Guardian’s Web site finds itself well behind The Daily Mail, a British publication that has surged ahead in the last few years with headlines laden with celebrity gossip.

According to data from ComScore, The Daily Mail has the largest online newspaper audience in the world, with 54.2 million unique visitors in January 2013. The Guardian had the fourth-largest international audience that month, with 41. 2 million unique visitors. Less than a third (29.7 percent) of The Guardian’s Web traffic comes from readers in the United States, while The Daily Mail counts 36. 5 percent of its audience from American readers.

Ken Doctor, a media analyst, said The Guardian’s core readership in the United States had been largely driven by social media, Google searches and coverage like the hacking scandal in Britain. The ad campaign, Mr. Doctor said, could be meant as a way for The Guardian to reinforce its brand with its core readers by reintroducing itself to readers through advertising.

“It’s really tough for nonnational brands to break through the clutter and habit, and that’s why an unusual ‘second look’ request is worth testing as an investment,” Mr. Doctor said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/business/media/the-guardian-begins-american-ad-campaign.html?partner=rss&emc=rss