Off late Bangalore has been plastered with gigantic hoardings announcing the arrival of DNA, the newspaper initiative of the ZEE-Bhaskar combine. The campaign, which had an elaborate teaser phase, is now carrying ads which are supposedly insider’s take on what makes Bangalore a place to be proud of. There are references to cult eateries like Koshy’s, lots of software lingo etc. to mention a few. As someone who considers oneself to be a bit of a media-vore, the campaign, although eye catching, leaves me cold. The primary reason being that as an insider in the advertising/media fraternity, it is so templatized a launch, that one can see right through the kind of conventional thinking that has gone into it. In today’s times one is so inundated with exciting creative stuff all the time, particularly on the net, that this piece of work is just too passé. I can recall at least 5 such city launches of big brands across media and telecom space which have tried this hackneyed approach of trying to connect to a city’s culture.
Douglas Holt, whose book How Brand Become Icons, talks about brands that become a part of the cultural landscape and to me that is what a media brand strives for in the long run. He distinguishes three kinds of audiences- the insiders, who may not consume the brand but their nod of approval is necessary for a brand to get accepted, the followers, those who form the core consumption base of the brand and the feeders- who just emulate the opinion leading followers.
For DNA in Bangalore, the insiders are people in the media, advertising, journalism, theatre space i.e. the kind of crowd that populates a place like Koshy’s. While they may not buy DNA as they source their information and opinions from the net and the blogosphere, they feeling acknowledged and understood is critical for a Bangalore brand to be treated as an insider. To me this campaign, with its superficial understanding of the city, just doesn’t cut it with this audience.
Ideally this campaign should have focused on the core anxiety of the Bangalorean which is around the loss of innocence of the city in the pursuit of modernity and material prosperity. If DNA has presented an understanding of how Bangalore can make a role model for a dramatic reconciliation of the value of Openness, while simultaneously maintaining rock solid rootedness in some timeless values, my hunch is that DNA could have shown an understanding of the DNA of this city.
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