HT No TV Day: 2013

No TV Day

The "No TV" campaign by Hindustan Times doesn't seem as successful as the "No Electricity" campaign (by RED FM?). Although HT floods its newsprints with 'how successful it was' today, I feel all this hype is just constructed. to begin with, locating problem in TV is highly political.

To begin with, they never explained why No TV day instead of say, No Travel Day...What was the benefit to the people by watching No TV? Without even justifying why, they went on to give alternatives for what can be done if you don't watch TV. And they contacted all the cafes, restaurants, art people and heritage walk people around the city to come up with offers, in favour of / support of the event. In turn, they must have given them coverage and publicity. Basically they made you step out of the house. Most people took their cars, or flood the public transport without any reason - burnt petrol (read 'waste energy') just for not knowing why they weren't watching television. These are our educated people, wanting to support a cause, which has no justification!

Today's Hindustan Times ad reads "We had fun" (see pic).

Of course, they (HT) had fun:
1. They got a lot of publicity from the event (after all, they want to establish themselves in Mumbai)
2. They earned lot of advertisements (money).
3. They did a lot of marketing and developed PR.

All of the above done still keeping people wondering why 'No TV'?

If one sees the amount of advertisement that HT has got out of this NO TV campaign (check Sunday HT), it is phenomenal. It got about more than 100 brands to endorse themselves though placing an ad in HT. Free coupons, discounts, sales, etc...And I am sure people were ready with their scissors to cut coupons for pizzas and 10% discount meals - a complete Kishore Biyani Big Bazaar trick. Completely market driven.

(Obvious reasons for watching TV will be enlisted by beginning to blame TV as the Idiot box, which is much a transferred epithet - It's saying that 'people who watch the kitchy TV programmes are idiots'. The they would criticise the saas-bahu soaps; its ready material for them. They would also say that the reality shows are no more real, and go on and on and on - BUT, they would never talk about channels like Discovery, TLM, or Nat Geo. Or for that matter, they could have asked for a movement to create more sensible TV programmes. But the problem was that they did not know why No TV)

So let us reflect what No TV day did:

Clearly, it escalated the sales/profits of Hindustan times.
It made more people step out of their homes on a holiday, making them burn fuel and congest roads.
It prevented people from watching TV - even the people who watch news, or their daily dose of 'pravachan' or discovery or TLM...
It increased the people's consumption of outside food, making them waste more money by stepping out of their homes.

Okay, i have no complaints for people who painted a picture or two at their homes, or looked at a butterfly fluttering outside their window or just listened to some music on their i pods. But my argument is that they would have done it anyways.

Here is something from the Society of the Spectacle:

"The spectacle grasped in its totality is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. In all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choice already made in production and its corollary consumption. The spectacle's form and content are identically the total justification of the existing system's conditions and goals. The spectacle is also the permanent presence of this justification, since it occupies the main part of the time lived outside of modern production. "

Hindustan Times No TV Day back with a Bang on January 28, Mudra Max-OOH is the OOH agency! TV OFF. MUMBAI ON.

Mumbai: Mumbai’s favorite newspaper Hindustan Times returned with it’s unique, popular and inclusive initiative on January 28 this year. Last year on 29 January 2011, Hindustan Times Mumbai created No TV Day and made the entire city come to a standstill. What started as an HT initiative became a people’s movement in Mumbai. That made Mumbai the only city in the world to have it’s own special day. Hindustan Times called upon Mumbai to switch off TV and be open to the immense possibilities that their relationships and the city had to offer.To drive the message, TV OFF. MUMBAI ON, Mudra Max-OOH planned and executed an effective OOH media campaign for No TV Day (NTD)beginning 13 Jan 2012.The agency deployed a wide mix of OOH media namely Billboards, Gantries, BQS, DBQS, Pole kiosks, Inside train branding, Bus back/side panels, station branding & Domestic Airport branding.
Considering the growing population preferring air travel these days, a few interesting media vehicles inside domestic terminals (cutouts on conveyer belts & standees at strategic locations)were deployed.

To break through the clutter, Mudra Max -OOH executed a couple of innovations at marquee sites in Mumbai (Juhu Koliwada & Mahim Causeway).
Innovation 1: This was executed at Mahim Causeway (one of the important congregation points for vehicular traffic in Mumbai), the idea was to create the NTD facebook homepage on a billboard.The way one updatestheir statuses, likewise there was a daily change in the status & the number of growing facebook fans on the billboard. The status updated continued was for 5 days as a build up towards No TV Day.

Innovation 2: This was executed at Juhu Koliwada / Juhu Tara Road (one of main arterial roads of Mumbai), since the core essence of NTD is TV OFF, MUMBAI ON, this execution tried to bring that alive on a billboard by showing a father – son having fun in a park. Father pushing the swing, while the kid enjoys being on it & the copy read as ‘TV OFF, FUN ON’. The swinging movement on the billboardcaught a lot of attention & was really talked about.
Like last year Hindustan Times organized a plethora of activities on Jan 28,encouragingMumbaiites to step out of their homes and explore the citythey love with their family and friends.The activities ranged from school painting competition attended by around 34000 children with their parents, helicopter rides, and exclusive discount deals at more than 400 outlets in the city, heritage rides, dance workshops and many others.
Across the city around 250 housing societies registered for the No TV Day Best Society contest. A city specific treasure hunt was organized across three zones in Mumbai (western suburbs, Navi Mumbai and South Mumbai). While 1300 participants raced against time to reach the finishing point, 3 winners were selected in each zone. The engagement with Mumbai was sustained in the social media spaceas well with the HT Mumbai No TV Day Facebook page and a special microsite. In just 3 weeks, 1.5 lakh new fans were added to the No TV Day Facebook community taking the total strength to 2.5 lakh fans.The Facebook page also generated 6.5 million unique impressions and was the among the top branded Facebook pages in India in terms of engagement. On Jan 28th, the strong buzz about the initiative resulted in No TV Day featuring among the top trending topics nationally on Twitter.
There were various partners who joined in this initiative. These include organizations like Railways, Prince of Wales museum, MTDC, over 300 schools….etcand brands like Surf Excel, Toyota, Lays, Micro Technologies and Scrabble.
Mandeep Malhotra, President, Mudra Max (OOH, Retail, Experiential), “NO TV DAY is an annual property built by HT and we required to createa history connecting the brandwith Mumbaikars. Our aim was to establish a property better and louder than the last year’s campaign. In a city dominated by competitors, it was an indispensable task to keep Mumbai ‘On’ for a quality life. We along with HT, aleading national daily of India delivered the message effectively and took OOHfrom the position of a reminder medium to a call for action platform.”
Says Ajay Dang, Marketing Head (West and South), Hindustan Times, “Very few times does an initiative by a brand/ newspaper becomes a people’s movement. Hindustan Times has added an important day in the calendar of Mumbai when the city pauses and takes time to reconnect to important relationships be it family and friends or the city that we call home.”

Hindustan Times No TV Day: TV Off, Mumbai ON!

The much successful Hindustan Times (HT) campaign last year – ‘No TV Day’ is back again in season two on 28^th Jan, 2012. And this time it is bigger, much more organized and might just give you the right incentive to stay away from the idiot box. No TV day is all about creating your own day with family and friends and in a way discovering life without TV for a day. Hindustan Times has planned out a number of activities that could encourage you to go out that day. For e.g. all shows at Nehru Planetarium will be free that day. There’ll be food discounts, painting competitions, nature trails, dance, writing, yoga and craft workshops around the city of Mumbai. In addition to the offline contests, there are exciting contests running online over HT Facebook fan page with even exciting goodies to be won such as mobile phones, helicopter rides and digital cameras.

The campaign has been well-publicized in the digital medium with a dedicated website and an engaging Facebook Page. The site gives a live countdown of the number of hours remaining till NO TV day and the number of Mumbaikars who have joined the movement which at current count is a whopping 270,426! The Facebook community is also a massive one with 2,34,045 fans and 68,320 talking about it. The sheer number of contests and activities lined up for the day can be seen in the number of tabs on Facebook.

HT NO TV Day - Landing Page

I was particularly attracted by the ‘101 Priceless experience’, wherein you can share memorable stories of fun, laughter and kindness. Going by the comments, you can see how such little contests can connect with fans. Another exciting activity would be the ‘Mumbai Treasure hunt ‘and it is certainly going to pull large crowds.

I have liked this campaign running on Facebook and really wish to see more of such extensive campaigns being run by. When I saw this campaign, some first thoughts that crossed my mind were:

1. For a media/news/publishing company, Hindustan times has done excellently in adoption of social media unlike its other popular counterparts.

2. Tying an offline activity with a bunch of online engagement methods on Facebook is cool. Not only do you create buzz but you can also build a long term relationship.

3. The objective of the campaign has been well-aligned throughout – to encourage you to get away from the idiot box. Nowhere does it force you to ‘like’ its Facebook page though some may debate that HT lost the opportunity to increase its fan count; you can participate in the various contests even without liking the page.

4. Winners of the various contests have been announced on a separate tab in keeping with the Facebook promotional guidelines.

However, some things can be worked on for the next season to make it even more user-friendly and engaging:

1. The videos tab shows some funny videos around ‘No TV Day’ concept but I was looking forward to videos put up by fans and couldn’t find any.

2. As there are an array of activities lined up for the day, it is difficult to really bring it up together. And this shows on the Facebook page. There are so many tabs that I didn’t know what to see first and where to navigate next.

Nevertheless, this campaign is built upon a great idea but it could have fine tuned its execution and has only improved from the last season. So it sure gets my vote. I pledge to stay away from the idiot box on NO TV day and read about some more wonderful uses of social media. What about you?