Asahi Shimbun in readership drive

Leading Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun has run a month-long campaign to promote its new look in the market. The commercial, named "safecracking", features a young man digging a tunnel to reach the safe of a bank which, unbeknown to him, had already closed down. When the young man finally manages to reach the safe, a worker comes up to tell him that the safe no longer existed and said: "This place has gone out of business, I don't think you've read the paper, have you?" "The commercial targets young people, who increasingly spend less time reading newspapers, and it incorporates the message that newspapers are indeed important, even helpful," said Dentsu CD Masaharu Nakano. "The commercial conveyed the paper's determination to transform itself into a newspaper that is both more interesting and necessary," said Mr Nakano. The promotional campaign, entitled "Asahi Shin2bun", with the word "Shin" meaning new in Japanese, stressed the paper's latest improvement. Circulating to 8.3 million people in Japan, Asahi Shimbun aims to push subscriptions and communicate its role as an integral part of people's daily lives amid the new multimedia competition. Since merely communicating on content was not enough, the new campaign also focused on the important role of the paper's attachment to people's lives. The commercial was ranked the third most popular campaign in April, according the monthly index conducted by CM magazine.

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