THE TRUST OF INDIA

TitleTHE TRUST OF INDIA
BrandBENNETT COLEMAN & CO LTD
Product / ServiceTHE TIMES OF INDIA
EntrantBENNETT COLEMAN & CO. New Delhi, INDIA
Idea Creation BENNETT COLEMAN & CO. New Delhi, INDIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Kaustuv Chatterjee Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd Head of TOI & Languages
Suneet Johar Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd Project Lead
Priank Mathur Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd Project Lead
Himani Mehta Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd Project Manager
Abhishek Saini Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd Project Manager
Pinaki Bhattacharya Wunderman Thompson, India Strategy & planning
Bhavana Dogra Wunderman Thompson, India Account Management
Siddharth Prasad Wunderman Thompson, India Creative (Copy)
Nirmalya Chakraborty Wunderman Thompson, India Creative (Art)

Why is this work relevant for Integrated?

The Times of India is the leading English newspaper of India. And a newspaper brand leveraging the power of a range of media including the new age ones is what makes this entry a compelling one in the Integrated category. The brand’s consistent ability to deliver credible news and win the reader’s trust every single day was conveyed and amplified across dimensions of engagement with audiences. The communication idea was anchored in print but to give it a mass visibility and envelopment of audiences, various touchpoints were deployed, including social media, messaging apps and even on-ground activations.

Background

The newspaper category has been facing an issue of relevance for some time now. With news channels owning ‘breaking news’ and the youth accessing news on digital devices, newspapers have been facing the heat. And all this in the midst of a larger issue that is afflicting our times- that of credibility of news. The growing phenomena of fake news and partisan journalism was making people distrust news all together, or worse still, taking sides and getting trapped in echo chambers. In such dire times of trust deficit, the need of the hour was to remind readers of the credible, fact-checked, brave and consistently path-breaking journalism of the Times of India. All this with an eye on helping people navigate through the clutter and reach out for news they could trust. And that would also help in consolidating our leadership and getting young news-readers interested in The Times of India.

Describe the creative idea

The creative idea is best encapsulated in the line ‘Trust of India’. It was not mere wordplay with the brand name Times of India, but a powerful reminder of what the brand stood for. It was about the trust it had earned with its fiercely independent and honest journalism over 183 years. The idea was sharpened by the use of the ‘Common Man’ an iconic protagonist of a daily cartoon that used to appear in the Times of India for decades. The ‘Common Man’, a sharp observer of society and the times was trusted to observe and speak the truth and is richly etched in the memories of Indians. The execution idea was to present the ‘Common Man’ as an observer of the key events covered by TOI over the years. The humour added freshness while re-visiting some of the marquee stories that showcased the best of the brand’s journalism.

Describe the strategy

Broadly the campaign targeted all readers- current and potential- of English dailies. More specifically those who seek credible news. To envelop the audience with our messaging an eclectic mix of media vehicles and activations were deployed. At the heart of integration strategy was ‘shareability’. The print media was used to showcase a new story and a topical cartoon everyday. A website was created to host all the stories and toons and web banners were synced with the story of the day in the newspaper and all the content was shareable on social media. Stories with hashtag #thetrustofindia were also pushed across social media handles. Further, an Influencer campaign was initiated to spark debates and engagement that encouraged sharing and forwarding of stories. Thus, creating a circular model of shareability. Collectively all this helped in maximising reach, conversations amongst audience-sets across platforms and involved audiences with the Trust of India stories.

Describe the execution

Print- Creating an experience where a new print ad brought forward a new story every day Websites– While reflecting the same black and white look, with shareability icon integrated to get people to share on their social handles and start a conversation. Top banner, cartoons, ads also had a shareability feature– FB, Twitter, WhatsApp, LinkedIn Digital engagement- Platform was used to build the trust equity of The Times of India via digital channels for maximizing shareability of #TheTrustofIndia (hashtag) across digital platforms, maximize reach and impressions amongst relevant audience sets across top platforms. Cartoon Caption Contest- Invited India’s young, sharp minds to put their wits to work and come up with intelligent and quirky captions for their favourite Common Man cartoon Trust Icons- To further build onto the trust narrative, we created a series of Trust Icons where the most credible, trustworthy and legendary personalities were featured

List the results

Impressions: 505 Mn+, Visits: 4.28 Mn+, Page views: 9.06 Mn+, Engagements: 3.4 Mn+, Conversations (# shares): 0.15 Mn+ The organic conversations (# shares) helped earn 74 Mn earned impressions; 31 Mn earned reach The campaign helped trigger conversations and debates – positives, negatives on different trust stories and even the campaign as a whole. The campaign delivered a positive polarity of 95% which is quite high when benchmarked across industries/brands. Conversations increased from an average of 554 per day in the first week of the campaign and peaking to 1435 per day in September. For the cartoon caption contest for students, 24,800 plus entries received along with valuable data for students/parents. Active voting enabled on all entries got a total of 0.625 Mn votes Wining over youth: Audience between 18- 34 contributed to over 50% of website visits; Audience between 18- 34 contributes to over 65% of engagements received

Links

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