Back in the day, there was an age-old saying that a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, but little did we know that the to-die-for scent of vanilla or the bibliosmia would soon be on the verge of succumbing to the World Wide Web- the Internet.
This year, on the occasion of National Reading Day, Times of India (ToI) Metro Supplements came up with a classic long copy ad “The Book Thief”, which befitted the topical by not only establishing relation with lovers of the written word but also lived beyond the pages of the newspaper through the nationwide title hunt, whose objective was to create something that was print in form but digital in function, i.e- a gamified print ad.
The ad was released across eight city supplements- Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Gurgaon, Noida and Pune.
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Prajato Guha Thakurta
Speaking to BestMediaInfo.com about the same, Prajato Guha Thakurta, commonly known as Projo, stated that since ToI Metro Supplements has been Manja’s client for the past few months, so when they tasked the agency with creating something that could engage their readership, it was only fitting that they wanted to own a day like this.
“With this ad, we wanted to gamify reading but also glorify the reader. It was, as social media would call it, a chance to flex. To show just how big a bibliophile you are. This is what drove the shares and reposts that we received. As reading becomes more niche, we need to give readers the chance to be as vocal and visible as possible,” he said.
Further, Projo also pointed out that this was a humble first step to make reading cool again.
“And yes, while this execution and this topical day was a one-off execution, our goal to blur the line between print and digital remains a continued effort across our work with the Times of India Metro Supplements,” he added.
Commenting on the target audience for the particular ad campaign, he said that it comprised of anyone who has ever fallen in love between the pages of a book, because they’re the ones who’d instantly want to grab a pen and find as many beloved titles as they could, no matter their age, demographics, cities and psychographics.
“We didn’t chase our audience, we gave them a challenge they couldn’t resist,” he said.
Upon being questioned as to whether long ad copies in Print still hold a similar significance today, as in the earlier times, Projo replied that even though long copy ads are certainly less common today, that doesn’t mean they’re dead!
“Long copy is a way to tell a story, and if you have a story that demands 300 words written in two beautifully justified columns of text, then so be it. In this case, it fitted perfectly, both to the brief and our execution,” he said.
Further, he also suggested that there’s certainly merit in taking mediums outside their given boundaries and that it is what helped them bring this piece to life- A long copy ad that’s actually a social media activation!
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