Selling a big story for a news startup

Product Messaging | Brand Messaging

Scroll is a news startup with a mission to make journalism sustainable by disrupting the traditional online advertising model. Through partnerships with publishers, it offers a clean, ad-free reading experience across a network of sites for a monthly subscription. After closing a new round of funding, Scroll worked with Punchy to send a clear message that would gain traction with a wider audience.

“Punchy brought concision to our chaos, clarity to our confusion and coherence to our communications. Emma was quick to get to the heart of what we needed to say and then helped us say it well.”

Tony Haile, CEO & Founder

Challenges

Position their product so people “got it”

Nothing quite like Scroll had existed before, so it was hard to quickly explain it to people. The founders wanted messaging to convey the value of their product and why people should sign up to try it out.

Articulate their big story to drive interest

Scroll is a mission-driven company aiming to create a new business model for journalism, to secure the future of a free press. The CEO could talk all day about the mission -- however, the message wasn’t coming across in their marketing. Scroll needed a way to integrate its bigger story into its messaging strategy.

Solution

Making Scroll’s value clear & simple to everyone

Punchy ran a workshop with Scroll’s founding team to assess their current story. A key challenge was their product positioning. Scroll was positioning it as an alternative to a traditional ad-blocker, which wasn’t a favorable comparison. Most ad-blockers were free, and Scroll cost $5 a month. Who wanted a more expensive ad-blocker?

To highlight Scroll’s value, we dug into its broader features and matched them to the needs of their target audience of passionate news readers. Scroll didn’t just block ads, it offered faster loading times, a cleaner page layout and reading tools like audio; these were all valuable to readers who cared about a better online reading experience.

Punchy clarified their value proposition by highlighting the #1 problem Scroll solved: “read your favorite news sites without distraction”. This value proposition was supported by key benefits around a cleaner page layout, works on all devices and reading features like bookmarking and audio.

Shining a light on Scroll’s mission

Scroll was a news startup with a big-hearted mission to create a sustainable future for important journalism that served both publishers and readers. Their vision and driving purpose was at the heart of everything they did.

Punchy integrated their “why” into their product messaging: Better for you, better for journalism. This feel-good message made it easy to share their mission and lended a deeper meaning to their technology.

Better website & onboarding experience

Punchy translated the new messaging into product copy for a simpler onboarding experience.

Results

A clear & consistent message to the market

Now, Scroll sends a clear and consistent message to the market. The CEO has been quoted as “concisely explaining what the product is” and they continue to grow its network of partnerships. Scroll is growing with new focus and better marketing messaging.