‘Mail Today’ paints the capital red

With a campaign beginning with outbursts in outdoor, and in radio and print, ‘Mail Today’ has earmarked Rs 30 crore as its marketing and advertising spend for the fiscal

The human eye cannot miss the colour, bright red --neither can it miss the outdoor campaign of ‘Mail Today’! As you walk down the roads of the Capital and its suburbs of Gurgaon and Noida, you cannot miss the outdoor campaigns put out by the new daily launched by the India Today Group, ‘Mail Today, which gives a strong sense of the India Today heritage in the bright red colour that fills all its print and outdoor campaigns.

‘Mail Today’, the compact newspaper which is published through a joint venture with the UK based Associated Newspapers, publisher of the ‘Daily Mail’, hit the stands on November 16. The campaign – outdoor, print and radio – broke simultaneously.

The tagline of the daily, ‘The Stimulating Newspaper’, was designed together by the creative agency, Capital Advertising, and ‘Mail Today’. Suresh Balakrishnan, COO, ‘Mail Today’, explains, “With every other player in the category being a newspaper that reports facts, we wanted to be something different, and our product proves it – our effort is to make the reader spend more time with the newspaper, that’s why the tagline and positioning.”

The outdoor campaign carries messages such as ‘At last, a paper tiger that bites’, ‘The newspaper takes a you turn’, and ‘Bold type’. “The differentiation that we played with was an editorial stance that the newspaper would take – it wouldn’t be ‘a newspaper on record’, but a newspaper with a point of view – we don’t mind calling a spade a spade. There is no camouflaging of news and, thus, we have something which says, ‘At last, a paper tiger that bites’,” reveals Balakrishnan.

“‘The newspaper takes a you turn’ speaks about the layout of the newspaper, which is non-modular. Balakrishnan explains, “Readers want news based on the importance of the news, and not based on geographies. On the right hand side, there are light feature stories, on the left hand side there are heavy political stories – there is a rhythm in the paper. We have played with the light and shade approach. The back page of the paper is the front page of the newspaper, where again we used some consumer insights – that people read it front-back, or back-front. The sports page was kept last, with a continuation in the middle pages, to get the reader into the book.”

In most circumstances, a teaser campaign usually precedes a launch, but ‘Mail Today’ went in for an outburst on its launch day, and nothing before that. Balakrishnan says, “Our offering being a totally differentiated product, we thought the best way to get the consumer to experience the product was to see it, rather than us talking about it.”

Parshu Narayanan, creative director, Capital Advertising, and the mind behind the campaign, says, “There is a large section of readership which is intelligent, educated and which occupies the leadership zone in the new, rising, emergent India. This section demands a wider national as well as global perspective. With more immediate news needs – in terms of television – one is updated on the news part of it. With this, only small parts of the newspaper are read. Considering the general movement of dumbing down, there was the need for a path breaker which would set an opposite trend to this entire dumbing down process. ‘Mail Today’ has emerged as one. The campaign is purely a reflection of the various dimensions of the product’s personality.”

Seventy per cent of the people living in India are under 30 years of age. The product is aimed at young people, but straddles all age groups. The readers might be younger, but it is the kind of mindset that the reader would bring to reading this newspaper that matters, adds Narayanan.

With an ad and marketing spend of Rs 30 crore for the fiscal, ‘Mail Today’ began its launch with outdoor, print and radio. Currently, it has its outdoor campaign up on 205 hoardings and bus shelters across Delhi and the NCR region. Competitors ‘The Times of India’ and ‘Hindustan Times’ did not carry the print ads, but ‘Business Standard’ did. Thirty second radio spots have been running on the top six radio stations – 120-130 spots a day have been taken up for more than a week. A TV commercial is being considered.

Talking about advertising in the daily, Balakrishnan says, “There is a trickle of advertising, but it is better this way, as the reader is able to experience the product entirely. Roping in advertisers at 12-13 per cent, we are targeting at achieving a content and advertising ratio of 70:30.” LG and Airtel made it to the newspaper on the first day. Unitech, Jaypee, Provogue, Forbes and MP Tourism have all shown interest in advertising in ‘the stimulating newspaper’.

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