Background

The Times of India, India’s largest English daily, was facing a big problem which plagued the newspaper industry globally - the young were increasingly engaging online and not reading newspapers. This put the future for print at risk. It was time for The Times of India to take drastic measures to engage with the youth. In order to do so, 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 Having revamped the paper though, we still needed to create a reason for the youth to pick up the paper, especially since newspapers no longer entered their consideration. The following case outlines how TOI, a legacy newspaper re-entered the lives of Indian youth, getting them, not only to read, but participate in content creation for the paper and the TIMS campaign.

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. While rekindling the love for the city, the paper sought to get direct youth engagement, driving up co-created videos across multiple platforms, ensuring the brand entered youth lives in the way all their favourite media was embedded.

Describe the strategy

The young today tweet, like, post, swipe; they don’t have time for newspapers. To regain a role for the paper, TIMS played up its unique advantage, over digital news – CURATED HYPERLOCAL NEWS OF THE CITY – across digital channels. Depth interviews conducted with millennials across 5 metros - Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore revealed that the youth love the cities they live in. But, over time they get stuck to self-imposed geographic confines and resign to the tried and tested hangouts and restrict exploration. While TIMS took on the task of rekindling love and exploration of the city by becoming the largest digital and offline hub for all the city-buzz, the campaign ensured the content created made the youth wear their love for their cities on their sleeves. Thus starting a long chain of user participation in content creation, amplification on TOI channels and trending content.

Describe the execution

We executed a unique Print-Digital-Print strategy - launching on print, amplified on digital to engage content creating youth, eventually leading back to print. The campaign fuelled flirt-backs at every step. 5 city-centric signature rap videos released across social media and content channels captured unique local experiences. Celebrities shared exclusive scoops on how they flirted with their city and called on their fans to share their own flirt trails. Celebrities created their own version of the flirt raps - the all-star raps, inspiring fans to recreate. POP icons created challenges - hook steps to our anthem and the city raps etc, which fans took to immediately. Facebook frames, tag-and-snag, gifs further encouraged two-way flirts. When fans shared their own content on social media. We featured these in the paper. Delighted readers finding their stories in the paper, gave us a shout out on social media –creating an exponential loop of User-Generated-Content.

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.