The context
Accelerate a development plan
Founded in 2017, Les Surligneurs is an independent media outlet that fights political misinformation. Its mission: to strengthen the quality of democratic debate by making law accessible. More recently, Les Surligneurs has also been helping media outlets and organizations with fact-checking and legal expertise on current events.
In 2024, the media outlet faces a sharp acceleration of economic pressures: the gradual withdrawal of platforms, the freezing of public press subsidies, and the weakening of the business model of disinformation-fighting organizations. A transformation plan originally scheduled over three years, in view of the 2027 presidential deadline, must be compressed into twelve months. In this context, the team is calling on Médianes to structure and lead an ambitious fundraising campaign capable of ensuring the media outlet's survival and consolidating its economic model.
Structure and manage a fundraising campaign from start to finish
At a critical juncture in its development, the media outlet sought to launch a campaign aimed at consolidating its business model and asserting its positioning as an independent legal expertise resource, particularly among a new audience of business professionals (B2B).
We supported the team throughout the entire campaign cycle: defining strategic foundations (editorial and marketing), developing the campaign page (design and tech), and providing operational support throughout the collection period.
Overview of the fundraising campaign page
Campaign strategy
Establish solid strategic and editorial foundations
We launched the mission with a strategic briefing meeting to clarify the campaign's challenges, priorities, and ambitions. Based on input shared by the team, we co-developed a strategic and editorial briefing document.
This work made it possible to clearly define the communication angles and campaign positioning, overall and interim financial objectives, priority targets and mobilization circles (on the one hand, the community of Surligneurs readers, on the other, B2B companies and organizations that can use Surligneurs services), as well as key messages, slogans and structuring texts for the campaign page.
Financing page design
Make the campaign page clear, accessible, and appealing
A good editorial strategy means nothing without good design. Médianes supported Les Surligneurs in designing the crowdfunding page to offer a readable, accessible experience consistent with the media's identity, geared toward mobilization on both mobile and desktop.
Based on the texts and visuals provided by Les Surligneurs, we designed a web design system dedicated to the campaign, centered on the UI (user interface) — namely all the visual and interactive elements that structure the page experience (information hierarchy, action buttons, colors, typography, content blocks and reading flow…). This design system was then developed into a fundraising campaign mockup (via Figma) before being implemented.
We also worked on the key graphic elements for the campaign broadcast: an optimized opengraph image for sharing on social media, mockups, etc.
Preview of the mobile version of the launch campaign page
Pre-orders overview
Integration and technical implementation
Deploy a customizable and reusable page
Médianes ensured the complete integration of the campaign page on a dedicated subdomain of the Surligneurs site. We handled the integration; configuring pre-sales with WooCommerce; creating rewards; setting up a fundraising progress bar; and configuring automations (emails, CRM) in compliance with GDPR.
Team training enabled everyone to master the tool and reuse it in future campaigns.
Strategic guidance and project leadership
Support the team over time and secure decision-making
Throughout the campaign, Médianes served as project lead. Weekly video conference exchanges with a dedicated point of contact supported the Surligneurs team in its strategic decisions and operational management.
Each week, we produced a sales and performance report, complete with adjustment recommendations: message evolution, follow-up sequence optimization, financial targets tracking, etc. Depending on needs and priorities, we also shared our resources (community mapping tools, media kits, best practices and relevant references, and other methodological tools) to strengthen specific strategic areas.
We also mobilized different profiles from the Médianes team based on needs: support with framing the campaign video, strategy and media relations support, etc.
About
Les Surligneurs decodes current political and media news through a legal lens. Because rigorous information is essential to quality democratic debate, because law is a tool for citizens, and because it should not remain the exclusive preserve of experts.
Since 2017, journalists and researchers have worked together within a newsroom unique in France to strengthen the transparency of public debate and give citizens the means to exchange ideas with full knowledge of the facts, particularly during elections.
