Background

The Times of India is India’s largest English daily, but the newspaper was facing a challenge that the print category suffered from globally - the young were choosing social media over newspaper. This led to a declining youth readership and a marked threat to the future survival of the print industry. In order to revive growth for the future, The Times of India needed to capture the all-important youth market. TOI revamped its Metro Supplement (TIMS) to draw youth interest, with the specific objectives of: 1.DRIVE ENGAGEMENT THROUGH BRANDED CONTENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA 2.INCREASE BRAND PREFERENCE & DAILY READERSHIP The paper used the very digital medium that gave it stiff competition, to get young readers back to print.

Describe the creative idea

The Times of India Metro Supplement leveraged its core advantage over digital news – CURATED HYPERLOCAL NEWS OF THE CITY AND POPULAR CULTURE. With this advantage, we wished to tell the youth to start exploring their cities and rekindle the romance they had with their cities. This resulted in the core message: Flirt With Your City. The Flirt With Your City campaign sought to add back the spark to the relationship that the youth had with their city and get them to start referring to every column of the shiny new TIMS, as a veritable gold mine of information about their city.

Describe the strategy

The bandwagon vying for the Millennials’ attention was already full and we were at a disadvantage as the digital-obsessed youth was no longer looking at the paper. To re-enter their lives, we conducted 80 in-depth interviews with millennials across 5 metros - Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore. We realised, the youth are in a relationship with the cities they live in; sustained by many shared interests, shared progress and quality of life. But, over time they get stuck to self-imposed geographic confines and resign to the tried and tested hangouts and restrict exploration. TIMS leveraged its core advantage over digital news – CURATED HYPERLOCAL NEWS OF THE CITY – on digital channels. We rekindled love for their city, by becoming the largest digital and offline hub for all the city-buzz. From waterholes to hunger zones, for party animals and artists and everything that makes their city, their city.

Describe the execution

We executed a unique Print-Digital-Print strategy to leverage digital media to increase print readership; launching on print, amplifying on digital, eventually leading back to print. The campaign fuelled flirtation in innovative ways. 5 city centric signature rap videos released across social media and content channels captured unique local experiences of each city. Celebrities like musicians, bloggers, comedians, TV hosts, movie stars, fashion designers, chefs. fitness experts created their own exclusive flirt trails for fans to follow. We leveraged influencer tie-ups with POP icons creating challenges across social platforms, which their fans took to immediately – special dance steps to our anthem, hook steps to our city rap etc. Content flowed seamlessly between digital and print. Fans shared their own flirt trails, Dubsmash content and shared it on social media. We featured these in the paper. Readers finding their stories in the paper, gave us a shout out on social media.

List the results

From Flirting to Falling in Love All TOI’s social media handles came abuzz with comments, shares, likes as soon as the videos were released. The campaign reached 2.5 bn+, with videos garnering more than 55 million views and 3.5 bn+ impressions. #flirtwithyourcity trended for 5 hours on Twitter – reaching the #1 trending topic. More than 50% of our content was consumed by the bull’s-eye, 13-24 year olds across cities. UGC Storm: 5 music videos quickly became 16,000+ content pieces on digital. The youth didn’t just interact with the campaign, they talked about it, created their own content under #flirtwithyourcity. While the engagement numbers shot through the roof, the campaign also achieved real behaviour change; the latest brand track revealing a 58% growth in ‘Preference’ and 19% growth in ‘Read Yesterday’ metric.