HT looks outdoor for the youth

Recently, Hindustan Times revamped its content presentation with the intention of attracting the younger generation of readers. Now, Lowe, HT's creative agency, has come up with an OOH campaign titled 'It is time', which gives a peek into the minds of young India.

The tagline is common to all the creatives, and individuals appearing in each creative explain how it is relevant to them.

One of the creatives has the picture of a woman sipping her morning tea saying, "For newspapers to make sense of the world around me," followed by the tagline -- It is time. Another creative shows the same woman, saying it is time "For newspapers to look at the world from my point of view".

The fourth one shows a waterlogged road in the backdrop -- because of a heavy downpour -- with a young professional saying that it is time "For governments to become a lot more accountable."

The fifth creative is set in a classroom and a young man is shown raising his hand to say it is time "To stop being a mute spectator and start taking part."

According to Shantanu Bhanja, vice-president, marketing, HT Media, "The overall objective behind the relaunch was to refresh the brand HT with a new positioning, more relevant for the new generation of readers, who are used to news sources other than newspapers. This new positioning is all about HT providing complete understanding of all news and issues, to help the reader move forward in life."

The campaign, targeted at young readers in the age group of 25-30 years, kicked off with outdoor backed by print. Lowe plans to come up with a series of TVCs and radio ads shortly. The outdoor campaign, executed by Primesite, Mudra group's OOH division, principally focuses on Delhi, Mumbai and Chandigarh, with further visibility built in Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar and Lucknow.

"The all-new Hindustan Times reaches out to the young minds with changed outlooks that are results of the events that happened in the last four to five years in India. This is an impatient, questioning set of individuals, who don't accept things on face value, don't give an ear to excuses and want to be an active part of the ever-evolving Indian democracy," says Anand Suspi, group creative director, Lowe.

The outdoor campaign is planned in a phased manner. Similar to the first phase that began early this month, the second phase will have a separate set of topical ads covering other youth-related issues.

Though Bhanja refused to disclose the spends on outdoor, he acknowledges the crucial role of the media in this campaign. "Given that our target audience includes young, outgoing and active people, OOH does play a significant role in our campaign. This complements very well the high reach of print and the very active nature of radio," he points out.

According to IRS (Round 1, 2009), Hindustan Times continues to hold the No. 2 position among English dailies in the country with a total readership of 63.4 lakh. The Times of India (TOI) is the No.1 English daily in the country, with a total readership of 1.33 crore.

OOH has traditionally been a fairly large part of HT's media plan, be it the launch of HT City, A R Rahman show on Fever 104, or large editorial series, such as the Hot New Careers and Mumbai Project.