When TOI smelt of 'HE'

The deodorant brand came up with an innovation across six city editions of The Times of India on November 19.

Emami-owned HE Deodorant came up with an innovation in several editions of The Times of India by creating a newspaper with a fragrance. The idea was to make the newspaper sample the brand for a large group of audience on the International Men's Day, November 19.

The brand took an inner page of the city editions and placed their creative and gave it fragrance. The innovation was done in TOI across Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore. Kolkata, Pune and Ahmdabad. While the creative agency for the ad was Leo Burnett, the media agency for it was Prachaar (Mumbai).

Sheena Kapoor, head, innovations, Times Group, says, "The brand wanted an impactful launch of its men's deo HE, creating awareness of the brand and getting the target audience to experience the brand and fragrance, thereby driving adoption. As the category is based on 'fragrance', the brand took the ideal route to large scale sampling that could lead to creating new consumers who like the perfume."

The TOI team collected the fragrance concentrate from Emami, and sent it to the respective production centres, ran trials and finally executed the fragrance whereby it was sprayed onto press while printing the editions.

Speaking about the issues in it, Kapoor adds that any high impact innovation calls for a concerted effort across various stakeholders. "In this innovation, there is major effort in collecting the fragrance concentrate, managing the logistics across six cities, ensuring it has the right consistency such that the HE Deo's signature fragrance lingers and yet does not adversely impact the newsprint," she adds.

The brand also launched a digital campaign with #ShowMenSomeLove on the same day.

"He" Deodorant has a slew of interesting fragrances bottled in six variants-Smart, Confident, Extrovert, Recharge, Ruler and Magician. The fragrances range from the citrus, oriental, marine, fougere, woody & musk families.