Going For The Gut

Take one. Two eyes stare out at you "" eyes without irises, but eyes aflame, reminiscent of Sauron, the Dark Lord, in The Fellowship of the Ring. Above them, on a stark black background, there is staccato text on the misappropriation of religion for partisan ends. "Where's your Indian Express? Where's your fire?" the ad copy ends.

Take two. Two pensive eyes gaze out "" moist and sorrowful. But the flames in the eyes indicate resolve, grit, determination. Above it, on a white background, familiar abbreviated sentences recount the many ways women are abused in the country. "...Women as an issue are on dialysis. Alive. Then again, just about." As you let the meaning of the copy sink in, the copy ends with the same catchline about the paper.

For The Indian Express, which has always propagated "The journalism of courage", this in-your-face print campaign, which broke in December, is not entirely surprising given the "crusader" positioning of the papper.

What is interesting, however, is that the decision to go for a public campaign was based on an assessment of the brand's perceived "weakness" in general. Long-drawn succession issues throughout the nineties in the Goenka group had contributed to this "" but these issues, says the company, were resolved sometime in 1998.

"Our feeling was that the product was much greater than its perception," says N P Singh, director, corporate, Indian Express. "This campaign is not for The Indian Express reader: we wanted to take it out to the non-reader."(The Express's circulation figures are not listed with the Audit Bureau of Circulation.)

When the group launched The Sunday Express in March last year, it had gone for an advertising blitzkrieg across television, print and outdoors.

As a logical extension, in August 2002, timed in conjunction with the upswing in the advertising season, the group considered a public campaign for the mother brand, The Indian Express.

It had broken, among other leading stories, the petrol pump scam, so according to Singh, "the editorial page "" the very soul of the company "" represented the crusading spirit of the paper".

In October 2002, the company started holding talks with Equus Red Cell, the agency that developed the campaign, to decide on the

focus. Singh admits that the company did not go in for the staple procedure of market research. "Research is good, but research tends to tell you what you wanted to hear," says Singh. "We went with our gut feel and focussed on our values."

During the course of informal interactions with a wide spectrum of individuals ranging from college students at university seminars to

bureaucrats and politicians, the impression conveyed was that there was a general disillusionment with the "dumbing down of mainstream newspapers". "We're not appealing to the Page 3 reader, but to serious, honest people who don't want to see leggy models," says Singh.

Thus, the marketing team decided to focus on a copy-intensive campaign. There was some debate on that due to the generally visually-intensive nature of advertising that Equus was keen on doing for the campaign.

"Post-television, ads are conceived more in visual terms than in copy terms. So Equus said to us, 'Why waste space [on copy]?'" explains Singh. And given the expensive nature of media space, that was a strong point.

However, the company's counter was equally valid. Says Singh, "Those who read newspapers will read, so why won't those whom we're targetting read our ad? It's a risk we decided to take: if [our] ads are not looked at, they will not be seen. So we decided to use the eyes as a hook."

Says Swapan Seth, co-CEO/chief creative officer, Equus Red Cell, "The Indian Express brand is about 'fire' because of the in-your-face kind of journalism it does."

That was in tune with the brief given to the agency by the company "" which was to focus on the investigative personality of the news-

paper and the fact that, as Seth puts it, "it doesn't focus on the sort of issues that you can, say, discuss over canapes in the evening".

The nature of copy that the creative team focused on was topical and issue-specific. That was due to the long-term nature of the campaign, which will subsequently change in execution, thus "allowing us to be topical".

But why the decision to use a black background in one as against the plain white background in the other?

Seth explains that glossy magazine paper displays black very well while simultaneously serving as a dramatic contrast. Ninety per cent of

the print ads carry the ad with a black background; 10 per cent of the print ads have the one with the white background. "The main visual is the copy," says Seth. Endores Singh: "The heart of the ad is the copy."

Similarly, the financial heart of this campaign is equally significant. With Rs 1 crore set aside for the print and outdoor campaign, The

Indian Express is clearly serious about this new initiative. The company has rented backlit hoardings in cities where it is present: 18 inMumbai, 15 in Delhi, 12 in Pune, and 10 each in Ahmedabad and Baroda.

It's also taken out full-page advertisements in magazines such as Outlook, India Today Plus and Businessworld. Of course, Rs 40 lakh to 50 lakh of the total amount will be in hard cash terms, while the restwill be spent on barter deals with the media houses owning the publications referred to above. Additionally, there's a television campaign in the pipeline, slated for next month.

How has the campaign fared so far? "It has been noticed by the media planning community. We've received feedback on email and letters to the editor as well," says Singh.

Despite his ambivalence on research, Singh says that by the end of February or March this year the newspaper will commission research to test the efficacy of the campaign.

Until then, count on the two eyes to do all the talking.