"Singular messaging in 10 seconds always helps": Dailyhunt's CMO Samir Vora on 6 new ads targeting youth

The content and news aggregator app's latest campaign focuses on the fresh nature of the brand and its young audiences. We spoke to the platform's CMO...

If your evening routine these days involves watching the most-loved cricket league – the Indian Premier League (IPL), it is likely that you will be aware of 'Sardar ji' dilemma. Doesn’t quite click? Well, it’s an ad by content and news aggregator application Dailyhunt staged at a bar, where a 'Sardar' is seen passing a napkin to a woman sitting close to him, asking her name and number. To his surprise, she writes back to him, only in a language (Thai) that he can't understand.

The ad ends with the message ‘samajh apni bhasha mein hi aata hai’ alongside Dailyhunt’s logo.

The film is a part of the brand’s latest campaign – a set of six films that, the brand claims, is an ode to all the benefits that Dailyhunt provides. The insight for this particular film focusing on regional languages is how one is most comfortable in his/her own language and, as a result, comprehends information the best in that language, the brand’s CMO Samir Vora told afaqs!.

The Bengaluru-based brand provides content in 14 Indian languages. “Currently, Hindi is our biggest language, followed closely by the four south Indian languages...,” added Vora.

Speaking about the film in question, he says, “This ad was one that the team loved right from the get go! Language is encoded in the DNA of Dailyhunt and as such is central to all our thinking. The creative articulation is a humour-laden take on that insight. Kudos to the director Prashant Issar (Sippy) for getting the expressions bang on.”

While Dailyhunt’s previous campaigns, such as #HarBhashaEqual and #KhudKiSochBanao, focused on the importance of linguistic diversity and inspired the audience to form their own opinion, the current campaign focuses on the fresh nature of the brand and its young audiences.

Vora says, “Dailyhunt has always aimed to connect with its audiences across real Bharat. This campaign reaches out to the millennials across Bharat, through quirky and fun videos, using humour to connect with them to highlight core benefits of Dailyhunt.”

Conceptualised by What’s Your Problem, a media agnostic problem-solution creative agency, each film is 10 seconds long. About the short format of the ads, Vora says, “Singular messaging in 10 seconds always helps.”

Commenting on the campaign, Amit Akali, managing director and CCO, What’s Your Problem, said, “We wanted to give people a reason to download Dailyhunt and bring alive its features. At the same time, we had to do it in the Dailyhunt tone of voice - cheeky, fun, witty. Something that appeals to young, mass India (Bharat).”

“The challenge with running on IPL, or most media today is saying your message in a short time. Sippy (Prashant Issar) made sure that they could express everything in a split second. And that’s what’s added to the humour. People seem to love the 'Sardar', or the odd couple buying the mattress, or the mother keeping tabs on her daughter,” he adds.

When we asked Vora about the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the platform’s consumers, he says that during the pandemic, the brand saw a ‘tremendous rise’ in consumption. “There is a massive increase in people's receptivity to information, and that has led to a huge increase in the number of people trying to access information.”

He credits this rise to Dailyhunt solving the information and entertainment needs of the consumer.

“In the quest, communication plays a vital role in building a brand and telling the target audience our reason to exist,” Vora signs off.