for the March 8-23 period this year, CNN Asia Pacific embarked upon a truly cross-platform campaign to raise awareness of Talk Asia as a high-profile weekly interview show featuring Asian achievers and newsmakers, whilst also driving tune-in for an on-air interview with Shekhar Kapur interview on-air. “Talk Asia is a dynamic, popular Asia-based program that has a loyal viewer and consumer base in India,” explains Nicky Robinson, director of marketing, CNN Asia Pacific. “Due to the relevance of the guest and the fact Talk Asia was taping it’s first ever live filming in Mumbai, it was important to capitalize on the buzz within the India market and build awareness for the show, anchor Anjali Rao and the program in general.” In India, CNN International is available in approximately 11.3million television households and in 16,000 rooms across 125 premier hotels that are enrolled in the CNN hotel partnership program. Worldwide, CNN International can be seen in more than 220million television households and hotel rooms in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, including more than 34million across the Asia Pacific region. Robinson says that even with the growth of news channels in India, CNN’s core audience and demographics remain loyal. According to TV viewership analysis firm TAM Media Research, for the period January 1 to April 30, 2008, CNN led with 2.9% relative channel share over a rival news channel’s 0.8%. She also points to the latest set of PAX (Pan Asia-Pacific Cross Media Survey) annual figures for the October ’06 to September ’07 survey period, with CNN reaching 33% of the total PAX respondents, 39% of Business Decision Makers (BDMs) and 49% of top management on a monthly basis. She says that, according to PAX data, CNN reaches 16% more of that survey’s respondents each month than all other news/business channels combined and that CNN.com maintains the leading position among regional media web sites, visited by 49% more PAX Internet users across a month than the next placed media web site. The campaign to promote Talk Asia with Shekhar Kapur, on the occasion of its first ever live filming in Mumbai, employed a number of media channels, including print, wireless, digital and outdoor. Mumbai and New Delhi were the primary target markets, followed by secondary targets Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune. 1.5million copies of Outlook magazine carried a Talk Asia print ad, which in turn promoted CNN’s new WAP site. Wireless promotions built interactivity into the campaign and extended support to program sponsor Nikon. “We also launched ‘CNN Live’ on mobile and our partner operators sent out 70million tune-in messages to their subscriber bases. We used the Talk Asia program as a hook to drive awareness about our new (live streaming) services,” Robinson explains. An SMS contest, promoted on all marketing collaterals, was also implemented to engage consumers with the program content as they competed for prizes of cameras from the show’s sponsor Nikon. Apart from print, online also extended the campaign’s visibility and reach. A special Talk Asia eDM (electronic direct mailer) was created to promote the show, and sent out to over 200,000 targeted individuals on CNN Marketing’s internal database and the Indiantelevision.com database. Outdoor was selected to provide a ‘larger than life’ presence for the campaign and raise the profile of the show. Prominent outdoor sites in Mumbai and New Delhi were carefully selected, with the campaign employing a 120ftx40ft prominent hoarding on the Airport Expressway in Mumbai; a 26ftx13ft stand-alone hoarding on the INA flyover in New Delhi; and mobile vans in both cities enhanced the campaign by covering key locations and busy commuter routes. The mobile vans were also strategically parked outside the TV18 studios on the day of the show’s live filming in Mumbai. This tactic was to create additional buzz amongst audiences actually attending the filming. TVAplus