The Village Voice was founded in 1955 to capture the nonconformist political ideology and social currents of the Beatnik movement emanating from Manhattan's Greenwich Village. Publisher David Schneiderman affirmed that "the Voice will remain the Voice." HISTORICAL CONTEXT
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Most importantly, though, the campaign maintained the radical tone of the paper to insure its readers that the move to free circulation, which ran the risk of appearing as a transformation from a hard news journal to a soft "shopper"-a mere advertising medium-did not represent a sellout but rather represented a means of spreading the liberal word further afield. The campaign, which ran throughout the circulation transition and into the spring of 1997, reached audiences as far away as Israel and Japan, where critics appreciated the ads as examples of America's freedom of expression. The ads helped smooth the transition to free circulation, doubling both circulation and advertising. Another depicted two older upper-class women sitting together with crossed legs commenting demurely, "It's so nice that homosexuals, Jews, and terrorists have a newspaper to read." Yet another simply showed a copy of the Voice strapped into an electric chair.
One ad showed a member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) at a shooting range with the choice of targeting a bull's-eye or a copy of the Village Voice, his rifle was pointed squarely at the newspaper. The ads relied on the stereotyping of the Voice's nonreaders, the types against whom Voice editorials ranted. The print ads appeared mainly in the Voice itself but also appeared in other New York City newspapers (the Voice bartered ad space with other papers on an even trade) and on walls around the city. The strategy was to regain the Voice's position as the favorite paper of New York City's subcultures. Mad Dogs created the tag line "Not America's Favorite Paper" as an ironic appeal to the Voice's readership, who prided themselves on living outside the mainstream. Mad Dogs responded with a campaign that maintained a tone consistent with its previous work for the Voice but capitalized more profoundly on the paper's truculent reputation to bolster the risky move to free circulation in Manhattan (readers in the other four boroughs and outside New York City still had to pay the $1.25 cover price). In anticipation of this change, the Voice commissioned a new advertising campaign from its agency, New York City's Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Web site: NOT AMERICA'S FAVORITE PAPER CAMPAIGN OVERVIEWīeginning April 10, 1996, The Village Voice-a liberal New York newspaper expressing the concerns of intellectual and political freedom-was distributed free throughout Manhattan in an attempt to boost its circulation and advertising.
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