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It’s time to fly: launch of the "Times of India"

 

Posted on May 20, 2008
Baptiste Roynette

 

Although considered by many to be a “developing” or “emerging” country, with over 1 billion people, India is the world’s biggest democracy, producing brilliant students. Recently this country proved to the world that a whole population can be mobilized for a common “cause” and create a massive public debate surrounding one of the most creative political ideas of the moment.

Often buzz operations are combined with viral actions, but some of them try to serve a higher cause than just a product launch. This particular campaign is clearly worth a closer look, it’s the first time that we see such a project in the advertising industry. Imagine deploying a buzz & viral campaign throughout a whole country – we don’t think that this has ever been done before.

What happened? To communicate the launch of the world’s biggest English language newspaper “Times of India”, the JWT agency managed to create an extraordinary movement to mark the 60th year of Indian independence: they turned politics into a participative and most of all serious community effort, by choosing 8 suitable candidates after a long selection process.

How? Through over 100 print ads in the “Times of India”, an outdoor and television campaign, 3 websites (e.g. Lead India), 20 meetings, an 18-hour prime time reality show on national television, but also a plenteous dose of celebrity support (prominent film actor Amitabh Bachchan and Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan endorsed the campaign). The overall result was a huge success for the multi-media campaign.

"Of course viral advertising is not a low-cost magic wand. To make such an action a success you need to deploy marketing 2.0 (participative marketing) strategies by making wise use of all available media and techniques,” explains Gregory Pouy.

The campaign keeps winning prizes worldwide and will probably go down in communication history. An award in Goa, 3 International Newsmedia Marketing awards in Los Angeles, Cannes soon to come…

The most interesting fact about all this is that the Indian population completely supported the movement. The campaign reached over 1 billion people and resulted in 34 000 candidates, 8 future leaders and possibly one future prime minister!


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Comments

1. Monday 26 May 2008 attime 23:01, by Soji Odedina (soj)

This is the most profound usage of buzz marketing that I have ever read about. We have a lot to borrow from this Indian example by Nigeria, a country with similar heritage and historical experience.

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