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The Washington Post was reportedly about to launch a new marketing campaign tied to the United States Constitution last year until the paper’s leaders encountered an important problem: the tag line had been taken.
The Post plans to launch a campaign aimed at conveying its connection to America with the tag line, “We the People,” according to Semafor. But before the newspaper released the new ads, MS NOW aired the same idea.
MSNBC officially changed its name to “My Source News Opinion World,” or MS NOW, on Nov. 15 as part of Comcast’s rebranding after Comcast divested its cable assets into a new company called Versant. The new company launched a multi-million dollar advertising campaign that included the tagline “We the People.”
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The Washington Post was reportedly about to launch a new marketing campaign last year until the paper’s leaders encountered an important problem. (Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
“The MS NOW campaign and its huge budget forced the Post to freeze its campaign,” Semafor reported.
The Washington Post did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The controversial tag-report effort came one day after Washington Post CEO and publisher Will Lewis announced he would step down amid widespread backlash over his handling of the company’s layoffs.
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Former Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis. (Elliott O’Donovan for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Lewis struggled with absenteeism as Washington Post editor-in-chief Matt Murray was tasked with announcing sweeping layoffs on Wednesday that affected a third of the entire workforce. Lewis has come under fire again following his layoff after being spotted at a pre-Super Bowl party on Thursday in San Francisco.
“After two years of transition at The Washington Post, now is the right time for me to step aside,” Lewis said in a letter to staff on Saturday. “During my tenure, tough decisions have been made to ensure a sustainable future for The Post so that for years to come it can publish high-quality non-partisan news to millions of customers each day.”
While the “We the People” tag line argument is blind to Lewis’s overarching tenure at the Post, Semafor noted that it highlights “the paper’s inability to think creatively.”
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The preamble to the United States Constitution begins with the words “We the People.”
“The paper’s new tagline was so unoriginal that another politically oriented media company in need of a rebrand had a similar idea, but it was quickly killed with more money,” Semafor wrote.
In an interview with Fox News Digital before Lewis stepped down, Murray defended the way the layoff was handled.
“Will has been working with me a lot on this for a long time,” Murray said of Lewis. “And there were a lot of things that the company was doing and Will was dealing with the whole company, and I wasn’t. He had a lot of things to do today.”
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Fox News Digital’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
