Over the last one and a half years, The Economist has used interesting campaigns to boost its presence in the country.
What is red, white and says, “Interpret the world”? It is the latest advertising campaign of current affairs and economics magazine The Economist. Two weeks ago, the magazine came out with six creatives. Each of these has three unconnected visuals superimposed on one another. To complete the story, there is an option to message and ask for the interpretation. A short message will be sent back with the complete story. Interestingly enough, the campaign will primarily use the outdoor, print and online media to convey its message.
The first ad shows a suitcase, within that a television set and inside that an image of a pig. What the advertisement implies is that swine flu led to a lot of media coverage that impacted global tourism as people avoided traveling to the affected countries.
The second ad shows an overweight man with a silhouette of a game controller. Within the game controller is a tennis racket. Here, the company is conveying that outdoor sports are being overtaken by virtual games among youngsters. This is leading to obesity among young adults.
In the third ad, a large whale is shown with a bowl with chopsticks within it. Further, inside the bowl is the image of a factory. This meant that the industrial revolution in Japan expanded the workforce, which raised the demand for food and sparked the killing of whales.
The fourth shows a crawling baby with a silhouette of a tiger. Within that is the image of a gun. According to The Economist, one of the reasons tigers have become an endangered species is because their bones can cure male impotency.
Another creative shows a vulture. Within that is the image of a fuel filler and inside that a corn bushel. Here the interpretation is that the rising price of fossil fuel and its scarcity have forced developed nations to look for food grain as an alternative. This has contributed to famine and food shortage, especially in the developing world.
Finally, the last ad shows a polar bear, within that a small car. Inside the small car is a larger car, suggesting that big cars have given way to smaller cars, fuel consumption is down, reducing global warming and helping save the polar bear.
Consistent campaigning
“Events over time have consequences and are interlinked in a way that’s not always obvious to us,” says Suprio Guha Thakurta, managing director, The Economist, India. This is not the first time that The Economist is advertising in India. In fact, in a matter of one and a half years, this is its fifth round of advertisements.
In March 2008, The Economist came out with its first ever campaign with the positioning “Interpret the world”. These ads featured alphabets that gave the reader a unique interpretation of regular terms. For example, the letter ‘A’ and the word ‘Addiction’ were written beside the picture of a credit card, suggesting that people were addicted to credit cards. For this campaign, the brief to Ogilvy & Mather was to create awareness and interest. Interestingly enough, The Economist does not use taglines in any of its other markets, but in India it found them relevant.
Within six months, another campaign followed. This time, the magazine decided to use television as well. The brief to the agency was to use the outdoor and print campaign launched some months ago for television. Thus, one television commercial showed the letter ‘S’ for ‘Soldier’ where a man was seen with a shotgun in his hand. A closer glance revealed that it was a monk with a walking stick. Six such commercials were used for the campaign across mainstream English news and business channels, an audience the magazine is keen to tap. Instead of creating a film, it used the print-in-motion concept to preserve the brand’s look. Not surprisingly, the commercials have had the greatest impact on the magazine’s sales in the country. The print and outdoor versions of this ad were repeated in January 2009.
Then, in April this year, it rolled out a new campaign where headlines were written in what seemed at first glance to be a foreign script, even though it was English. The objective of this campaign was to highlight hard-hitting headlines and make the reader realise that the foreign script was actually English.
That was followed by the latest round of communication, which broke in the first week of November. Unlike the earlier campaigns, here the company has stressed on engagement. To ensure this, people have been asked to SMS to a particular number to get the full story.
A dedicated microsite has been created for the campaign. The visuals when clicked lead to the related article in the magazine. Further, an online Facebook game has been created, which is based on the familiar fill-in-the-gap model. The player, helped of course by hints, will have to figure out the full story based on the visuals.
So what prompted a brand that distributes in over 200 countries to focus its attention on India? According to Guha Thakurta, India holds great potential as a market for The Economist. “India and China have seen a dramatic rise and both countries have a young population. India has an edge over China because of the English education in India,” he explains. The thought behind the campaign is to convey that by reading The Economist one can understand the real story and get the connection between events and how they create an unexpected impact.
Yielding results
As expected, the consistent mass advertising has had significant results. Sample some numbers: In January-June 2009, sales increased 27 per cent, compared to the same period last year. In the last five years, the growth has been of the order of 130 per cent. And in the last ten years, it has been 187 per cent. These are significant numbers considering the fact that the magazine started operations in the country just 15 years ago. The current campaign seems to be faring well with 10,000 SMS responses already in, while the microsite has had 35,000 unique visitors and 75,000 page views. “This is our bravest initiative yet and the numbers are heartening,” says Guha Thakurta.
In India, the weekly magazine is priced at Rs 200. The closest in terms of price is Time at Rs 100 followed by Newsweek at Rs 75. Does that play spoilsport? Not really, says Guha Thakurta. The Economist is one of the few profitable magazines in the world. It has seen readership grow in India. While worldwide circulation was up 6.4 per cent in the last one year, India has beaten that by almost six-fold.
The Economist was established in 1843 by James Wilson, a hat maker from Scotland. Since 1928, half the shares are owned by the Financial Times, while the other half belong to independent shareholders.
