Gulf news:咖啡杯上的头条

文/vivi

清晨那杯热腾腾的咖啡，旁边似乎总该有一份新鲜出品的报纸。可惜，电子时代，早餐都越来越匆忙的人们，愿意拿份报纸悠哉品读的实在太少了。

Gulf News阿拉伯海湾新闻报试图改变这种现状，让咖啡和报纸这种传统捆绑延续下去。当然，这需要与时俱进的新花样。

他们选择了环球咖啡连锁店Tim Hortons做试点。在Tim Hortons门店，Gulf News设置了一个咖啡杯套打印机，每当有客人来买咖啡，就会有附有当前最新头条新闻的杯套打印出来，随咖啡杯递到客户手上，而人们的视线自然会聚集在手上唯一可以阅读的杯套上。杯套上的头条新闻还附有二维码，手机扫描之后，就和Gulf News的推特搭上了关系……

Gulf News对人们咖啡时间的捕捉仍然是成功的，推广之后，官方twitter粉丝数和报纸订阅量都有了不小的上升。

抓住固有的关联，并围绕这个关联点进行创新，也许可视为Gulf News这次活动策划和执行的关键点。

 Brief: Gulf News, the UAE’s leading English daily newspaper, wanted to reach even more readers and convert them into subscribers. Our target was to gain 1.5% more subscribers, help promote their twitter channel and increase traffic to the Gulf News website by at least 25%.

Strategy: Consumption habit suggests that people read newspapers while having their morning cup of coffee. Tim Hortons is one of our clients in the UAE and they serve 35-50,000 coffees per month, per outlet. Realising its untapped potential, we decided to create a campaign around them to meet our target.

Idea: Since fresh news goes well with fresh coffee, we adapted the coffee cup sleeve of Tim Hortons, a global coffee chain, into an advertising medium and we created The ‘Headline News’ Cup Sleeve. Every cup. Every hour. Every day. When Tim Hortons customers received a cup of coffee, they also received the headline news of the hour, printed using a special printer that pulled out tweets from the Gulf News Twitter account. The short URL and QR code on the sleeve then directed them to the Gulf News website where they could read the full story.

Relevance: Timing is everything. So we interacted with our readers when they normally read the newspaper — when they enjoy their freshly brewed coffee. The ‘Headline News’ Cup Sleeve allowed us to be the
first throughout the day to deliver breaking news to potential subscribers and make a meaningful connection with them.

Results:
• Until now, over 1,440 headline tweets have been printed on more than 840,000 coffee cups.
• More than 2,900 new Gulf News Twitter followers in the first two weeks of the campaign launch.
• The traffic on the Gulf News website grew by 41%.
• Subscription’s up by 2.8% so far.
• We’re rolling out this project in Tim Hortons outlets across the UAE and in 14 new outlets soon to be opened.

Advertising Agency: Y&R, Dubai, UAE
Chief Creative Officer: Shahir Zag
Creative Director/Copywriter: Shahir Zag
Creative Director/Art Director: Joseph Bihag
Copywriter: William Mathovani
Head of Production: Amin Soltani
Agency Producer: Leng Panganiban
Business Director: Zaakesh Mulla
Account Director: Kandarp Baxi
Technical Developer: Pixel Plus Media
Photographer: Mojtaba Komeili/Arturo D. Smith
Editor: Subash Mishra