Amar Ujala in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, brought retailers and consumers together for Shubh Labh in 2020.

In an INMA Ideas Blog, senior manager Neha Sikri tells how – while every year the festive season leads to “sales of goods in humongous amounts” – 2020 was a year like no other.

“The lockdowns caused by the pandemic had significantly shaken the supply chain arms of the print industry, making it challenging for businesses to serve customers as they had always done,” she says. “The pandemic caused a considerable drop in print advertising spending by advertisers in the market.”

Amar Ujala rose above the challenges to find opportunities in such unprecedented times: “We launched an initiative called Shubh Labh 2020 Mahotsav to ride in on a festive wave,” Sikri says. “This initiative brought together local retailers on one common platform and attracted potential customers by offering value add-ons to both the seller and the buyer.

A look at the promotional collateral for print and digital platforms.

Through a series of articles in both print and digital platforms as well as webinars, the publisher provided retailers with the right marketing mix for leveraging the festive season and created a positive market sentiment. “We offered them profitable festive deals with a lot of value additions that helped secure our market share.”

That included creating sales opportunities in the form of date and occasion-centric advertising. A drawing for Amar Ujala readers who shopped from our participating outlets further helped create a strong affinity toward the brand.

The campaign generated an excellent response in terms of engagement with both advertisers and customers. “Campaign promotion was done through print advertisement and hyperlocal social media, and we offered extensive digital promotion with a microsite on amarujala.com,” she says. “We enlisted local influencers and PR to urge people to shop from their city stores and included outdoor campaigns and branding of participating outlets.”

For the ease and convenience to participate, readers could participate in the campaign by giving a missed call only. This meant that they could call a number that would cut off automatically and send them a registration link via SMS. Exclusive benefits were offered to the consumers to encourage them to be a part of the campaign:

-51 silver and 5 gold coins were gifted to the participants on the auspicious day of Dhanteras – a propitious day to buy gold or silver items.

-Customers won a lucky draw coupon on shopping from any of the participating outlets and got an opportunity to be the winner of the respective city. They won hundreds of attractive gifts like cars, motorcycles, electronic appliances, etc.

-Winners were featured in Amar Ujala print and digital platforms.

Lucky winners were regularly featured in print and on digital platforms.

“The campaign results were exhilarating for the organisation as the revenue generation jumped 15 per cent over what was expected. It also created a strong buzz on social media and boosted offline engagement.

“The results were impressive:

-Total missed calls received: 11,121.

-Total registrations: 2,761 from 21 cities.

-Social media presence: 1.2 million overall reach and 2.3 Lakh (230,000) video views.  

“Seeing the market trend, where the business was at 43 per cent of the annual operating plan, the objective was to take the revenue achievement to 60-65 per cent in the festive period. Due to Shubh Labh, the achievement went to 80 per cent.

“Amar Ujala also had the highest market share in regional business at 37 per cent, whereas Dainik Jagran was at 30 per cent and Hindustan, Dainik Bhaskar, Excelsior, and Punjab Kesari were at 33 per cent,” she says.