Mid Day turns broadsheet for a day

The print innovations is to promote the sport entertainment reality show Ring Ka King -- Wrestling Ka Mahayuddh on Colors.

The Jan 25-issue of Mid Day was converted into a broadsheet. The objective was to portray the humongous size of the wrestlers from the show Ring Ka King -- Wrestling Ka Mahayuddh on Colors.

Manajit Ghoshal, managing director and CEO, Mid Day Infomedia, says, "This broadsheet innovation employed by us is a powerful and stimulating manner of advertising. It introduces a surprise element, which helps in better absorption and recall of the communication."

Along with this print innovation, Colors has developed two applications on its Facebook page -- 'Ring Ka King Face-off' and 'Which Wrestling Superstar Are You?'. The first one is a fun app which allows the user to participate in a virtual wrestling match with a friend. The user can replace the faces of the wrestlers with their own picture and the app creates a video of the user participating in an actual wrestling duel.

This second application familiarises the diverse moves and strategies adopted by various wrestlers.

Speaking about the digital initiative, Rajesh Iyer, head, marketing, Colors, says, "Ring Ka King targets young adults, primarily males, aged 15-25 years. This audience is digitally savvy and is addicted to Facebook. Hence, we are using Facebook as a medium to reach out to them. Both the applications created for the promotion have high potential for virality, and are being promoted across all the Colors digital platforms, as well as through other high visibility media across portals."

The creative agency for the campaign is Orchard India. The OOH agency remains Milestone Brandcom.

For the outdoor campaign, the primary aim is to showcase the scale and impact of 'Ring Ka King' in 70 trade markets, in order to amplify visibility across India. This will be executed through a mix of billboards and other mediums that reaches the targeted audience.

Partha Sarkar, vice-president, Orchard, Mumbai, says, "Ring Ka King is the first of its kind sports entertainment reality show in India on a GEC channel. The brief was to generate enough excitement amongst Indian viewers. The major challenge was to promote a sports entertainment show on a GEC channel, and get the viewers excited about it by lending an Indian touch to it."

High traffic junctions in Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai have been used for outdoor and the campaign will now spread to major cities in the Hindi heartland. It is planned to be a high intensity burst for 10 days, across 70 cities in India.

The creative is executed in such a manner that audiences will witness billboards being stretched or ripped apart by the wrestlers.

Explaining the concept behind the creative, Hemant Kumar, executive creative director (ECD), Orchard Mumbai, says, "Since the challenge revolved around Indianising this much-acclaimed property, we named it 'Ring Ka King - Wrestling Ka Mahayuddh'. While working on the creative, we also had to keep the aura around these international wrestling stars intact. The creative idea was developed to create awe around the characters which gave rise to the thought of 'Massive vs Massive'. This idea became the base for all creative executions across mediums such as print, outdoor, radio, OOH, and innovations."

The overall theme for the television, radio and cinema campaigns is 'Disruption'. Colors partners with Radio City to take 'Ring Ka King' on air and engage with listeners. Two special characters will be created on air who will talk about the show. To associate with the film Agneepath is also a part of the campaign.

Commenting on the campaign as a whole, Iyer adds, "The 'Ring Ka King' thriller campaign is the physical representation of the excitement that the show embodies. We wanted to bring the action of the ring alive throughout our communication. To bring out the adrenaline pumped exuberance of the show into our promotional activities, we collaborated with our creative partners to come up with a campaign which will do full justice to the thought. All our promotions for 'Ring Ka King', be it the print innovation with Mid-Day or disruptive campaign across outdoor, radio and TV, are high on volume and scale."