A marketing campaign that became a movement

The underprivileged should have access to books and education and the Hindu Group of Publications' partnership with Aviva Life Insurance is one such effort, Mr Suresh Srinivasan, Vice-President, Advertising, The Hindu , said here on Tuesday.

“We need to build a sense of community,” Mr Srinivasan told the fifth Asia annual conference of International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA) here.

He said

The Hindu and Aviva partnered to create the Great Wall of Education which comprised book donations from readers. “We built this huge wall in the mall to showcase the power of education to the underprivileged. It ultimately resulted in the mammoth contribution of 2.75 lakh books within a short span of just five days thanks to an editorial and marketing campaign carried out by The Hindu . It generated a lot of consumer interest.”

The experience did not stop there, pointed out Mr Srinivasan. “We also piloted it in schools and built mini-walls there. We set up drop boxes in 220 schools for contributions. This became a movement and many celebrities came to the venue,” he said.

INMA, which is present in 81 countries, has 588 newspaper companies and 5,865 executives as members. On the second day of the event organised by INMA, several case studies and presentations were made on newspapers around the world.