Form your own opinion, urges Dailyhunt in new campaign
Conceptualised by What's Your Problem, the campaign using the Indian metaphor for repetition, a tota, urges people to evaluate if they are repeating someone else's opinions
Dailyhunt, a news and local language content app, has launched a new ad campaign, Dailyhunt Chalao #KhudKiSochBanao, with the message ‘Iss election, kisi ka tota mat bano!’ The message attempts to reiterate on the significance of forming one’s own opinion at a time when the presence of multiple channels of information often leads to the misrepresentation of facts, biased coverage and impacts neutrality.
The campaign is conceptualised by What's Your Problem, a Mumbai-based creative agency.
Elaborating on the brief, Tejas Mehta, Director, Strategy and Account Management at the agency, said, “The brief given by the brand to the agency was to own the upcoming elections and make Dailyhunt the preferred destination for people to seek facts and information. Moreover, the task was to clearly establish Dailyhunt’s stance of being an unbiased source of news, that’s as comprehensive as it is informative. The app saw a huge user spike during the election results day last year; we were tasked to sustain that spike.”
Using the very Indian metaphor for repetition, a tota, the film urges people to evaluate if they are, knowingly or unknowingly, repeating someone else's opinions, and to use Dailyhunt's unbiased news coverage to form their own opinions.
The film starts out by identifying a few places where people become totas (repeat other people's opinions), and the sources that turn them into totas. Towards the end, a voiceover makes the people realise that they've turned into a tota, and tells them to use Dailyhunt during the elections to form an informed opinion.
Amit Akali
Amit Akali, Founder and Creative Head, What’s Your Problem (WYP), said, “There were many reasons why the tota metaphor worked successfully to bring the ‘Khud Ki sochBanao’ thought alive. In an extensive research, we found that even across the diverse cultures of India, the tota metaphor meant the same thing – a mindless repetition of words. It’s a word used by masses, something that fit extremely well for the brand Dailyhunt.”
The idea of generating such content came from the observation that most sources of information are a major influence on one’s decision. The WYP team did a research and a brainstorming session with the clients, and decided to go with ‘Unbiased source of news’ as the core proposition this election season.
Prakhar Deogirkar, Associate Creative Director, WYP, said, “Once we decided to go with a topic ‘Unbiased source of news’, we worked on a few ideas but ‘tota’ as a metaphor was most relatable and a great visual device to cut across different social strata. Since the clients were working with us through the entire process, the idea pretty much sold itself. It resonated as instinctively for them as it did for us. The entire team found the device very unique while conveying the message very strongly.”
Following this idea, the agency created a signature soundtrack for the film – by setting the word tota in the many languages of the country to a catchy tune.
The campaign was launched with two 30-second TV spots. The ad is currently running on TV and social media and digital platforms.
However, the brand plans multiple platforms and more releases leading up to the national elections.
According to Akali, “The brief given by the brand to the agency was to own the upcoming elections and make Dailyhunt the preferred destination for people to seek facts and information. Moreover, the task was to clearly establish Dailyhunt’s stance of being an unbiased source of news, that’s as comprehensive as it is informative. The app saw a huge user spike during the election results day last year; we were tasked to sustain that spike. To give people more reason than ever to download the app and to amplify that traffic through the months leading up to the elections, and beyond it too.”
The campaign #KhudKiSochBanao was soft-launched during 2018 to catch the five assembly elections.
Speaking about how well the ad has resonated with the brand, Akali said, “The ad has resonated well with the brand at two major levels. Firstly, through the campaign we are communicating the brand activities and functions by highlighting the scale and regional nature of our content. Secondly, the content on Dailyhunt is licensed from over 1000+ publication partners. With this, the brand is one of the unbiased sources of news this election season. The same has been communicated through the main campaign and the campaign line #KhudKiSochBanao.”
What were the challenges while executing the campaign?
The biggest challenge was to ensure that the campaign is unbiased without sounding preachy. The topic was sensitive and hence it was important to be conversational and not controversial.
The next big challenge was to get the ‘tota’ imagery right. It was a time-consuming process and the execution should be visually right.
Dailyhunt being a product reaching the masses, another challenge was to ensure the regional nuances, be it the situations in the films, set-up, colours used; to the product window and even the words used in music. Music director Subhajit Mukherjee composed a unique soundtrack by using the word ‘tota’ from different languages and mixing them together into a catchy tune.
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