The talking newspaper

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Leading newspapers feature at least three to four car ads every day so Vento needed something that would grab the consumer's attention and keep it.

Inspiration came in the form of a talking greeting card. Volkswagen seized the opportunity to scale this up and drafted an ambitious strategy to execute the idea across all India's leading newspapers: The Times of India, and The Hindu across Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai.

It took six months to search for an audio chip vendor that could produce 2.5 million chips that were light enough to not tear newsprint and photo or motion sensitive enough to activate upon a newspaper opening. In this time, the team also convinced the Times of India to participate and negotiated costs that would make this innovation financially efficient. The audio boxes were then manually attached to the newspaper on a front cover imitation wraparound.

Results

Vento sales increased 200% in dealer showrooms. Vento was the hottest search word on Google and the innovation was the 'most discussed' across social media networks and video platforms such as YouTube, with more than 500 views. It was widely covered in national press across TV and print.