Deccan Chronicle has been running a campaign in Bangalore, claiming that they are for Young Minds. And their interpretation of appealing to the young: skimpily clad women.
Forget the advertising for a minute. Let’s start with the product. I happened to glance at the Bangalore edition and could not find anything remotely youthful about it. The layout is archaic and the presentation no different from any other newspaper. A classic case of a mistaken belief that skin show is equal to being youthful.
SMRTR?The paper took out a pre-launch outdoor campaign, promising a Smrtr paper. Here too, with the use of SMS language, the message was, ‘Look ma, I am connecting with the youth’.
The Group’s ambitions are apparent – they’ve tried to taken on The Hindu in Chennai through a price war. They have now made an attempt at another two-brand (TOI and Deccan Herald) market. Tabloids like Bangalore Mirror and Mid-Day have also made an attempt at attracting a younger audience. They had the product format going for them – tabloid, spicier news and fun time-pass features. Nothing in what I cursorily saw in Deccan Chronicle stuck in my head as appealing to the youth.
3 Comments
what’ll get the youth? its the body copy, silly!! 😉 and to think i had a follow up line ready to go with the visual “hkr… less words, more s***ws” hmm, maybe i’m becoming mean, so edit what you will before you publish 🙂
And dude, rite now it has reached nearly 1.5 lakh in B’luru 🙂 … Hindu, IE were never any competition…it has easily overtaken Herald and (hopefully) will beat TOI too in the years to come..
oh man I was gonna post a comment but then you reminded me of the days i failed all my math exams…sob. Is Math the ONLy wya to prove I am human??? sob.sniff. anyway, i forgot what i was going to say (sniff…)point being – such stupid ads – you forget what the product is – thus – it’s a stupid ad.