OREANDA-NEWS. July 21, 2011. Tata Steel, a company synonymous with values — trust, transparency and total community care — today, announced the launch of a corporate campaign 'Values stronger than steel' (VSTS). The campaign is aimed at reaching out to the Indian citizen to reinforce the image of the company as a cutting-edge, global steel major which is dedicated towards social and economic sustainability, green technology and community empowerment. The core of the campaign is to showcase the organisation’s involvement and commitment beyond steel making, while embodying its overarching 'value system'.

The campaign presents the company’s very own achievers who have paved their own way to success and recognition, such as Mark Denys, chief, R&D; Bachendri Pal, head, Tata Steel Adventure Foundation; Deepika Kumari, the young talent in archery; empowered members of the Tejaswini project like Asha Hansda, amongst others. Everyone has a story to tell and they are the brand ambassadors for the campaign.

Speaking about the campaign, HM Nerurkar, managing director, Tata Steel, said, "Tata Steel has always believed in the values laid down by our founding fathers and has to its credit an unmatched track record in achieving industrial and community sustainability. We are growing and as we grow, we touch more and more lives of the communities we serve — shareholders, employees, partners, vendors and customers — and through this campaign we wish to spread these values to all our stakeholders and to the citizens of India."

"VSTS is not a mere cliched slogan but a way of life in our company. We thought that this message needed to be reflected well through our corporate campaign. We have, thus, presented before the world, how we have lived up to the benchmark we have set for ourselves," he further added.

Tata Steel has undertaken a 360-degree approach to promote this campaign all over the country, which involves effective use of all the mediums of communication. This is first time ever in the history of the company that a campaign of this scale has been launched. A precursor to VSTS was the digital campaign — www.valueabled.com — launched mid-June which was targeted towards the youth to come forth and discuss and debate on the values and beliefs that shape their lives. VSTS is aimed at all stakeholders and at a greater macro level. At the end, both serve to reinforce values and the fact that Tata Steel is invariably and inextricably linked with values.

The first phase of the campaign will roll out print, radio, TVCs, digital commercials and outdoors. The campaign will kick start on July 21, 2011, to coincide with the India tour of England series for which Tata Steel is 'co-sponsor'. It will have prime properties like 'Most valuable player of the match', 'Valuable player of the series', 'Valuable performances', etc on air as well as in sports-centric programmes.

There are a total of 10 creatives for print ads which have been produced in ten different languages (English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi, Telugu, Oriya, Gujarati and Bengali). Four TV commercials of 30 seconds each have been painstakingly crafted by award-winning documentary filmmakers and these have been further subtitled in the various languages for better understanding of the diverse stakeholders that Tata Steel caters to. The campaign will also be promoted in cinema halls through a movie title led plan. Two creatives from among the 30 second ones will be played in cinema halls across India before the screening of the movie. These will also be mixed and matched to avoid duplication across locations.

As for digital, four videos of three minutes in length (the same subjects as the TVCs) have been created and will be promoted through social media and digital media platforms.

Phase II of VSTS will have advertiser funded programmes on certain select TV news channels, programmes, collaterals, etc on topics such as 'Business and values', etc. This will be backed by sponsored progammes and a coffee table book.