The Times of India Bets on India Progress Stories in 2022
The Times of India launched 'The Times of a Better India' in July 2022, a 360-degree campaign created by Wunderman Thompson India that celebrates India's achievements since Independence and frames the present moment as the country's most aspirational yet.
The Times of India is the country's largest circulated English daily. That position gives the brand a singular vantage point from which to chronicle national progress, and 'The Times of a Better India' deploys it deliberately. Rather than advertising the newspaper itself, the campaign turns the masthead into a curator of India success stories — from the country's first underwater tunnel for the Kolkata Metro to the ambitions of India's Space Programme for missions to Mars. These are not headline events alone; the campaign surfaces lesser-known data points and regional achievements that cut across sectors, vocations, and age groups, building a mosaic of positive change that extends well beyond the front page.
In India, the campaign ran across print, digital, and social media touchpoints, anchored by the hashtag #TheTimesOfABetterIndia and activated through audience participation mechanics including interactive contests and social conversations. The dual audience strategy is deliberate: Wunderman Thompson India designed the campaign to speak simultaneously to the newspaper's established print readership and to The Times of India's growing digital following, acknowledging that the brand's influence in 2022 operates across formats. The campaign tagline — 'Today is the best time to be an Indian' — distils the creative premise into a single, mobilising sentiment, inviting every Indian to locate themselves within a larger national narrative of achievement and opportunity. Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100.
Kaustuv Chatterjee, director of The Times of India and Languages Brand, led the strategic vision behind 'The Times of a Better India'. The core insight is that Indians in 2022 existed at a cultural inflection point — aware of their country's global ambitions yet often underexposed to the granular, ground-level evidence of progress already delivered. The campaign responds to that gap, positioning The Times of India not merely as a news source but as the definitive record of India achievement.
The strategic context in India's media market makes this positioning timely. EY estimated total Indian print-segment revenue at ₹170.3 billion in 2022, with print advertising revenue growing 13 percent year over year, according to EY. Despite that recovery, EY also noted that print advertising revenue in 2022 remained approximately 17 percent below pre-COVID benchmark levels, underscoring the competitive pressure on legacy print titles to demonstrate relevance beyond the printed page. English publications accounted for approximately 45 percent of total Indian print advertising expenditure in 2021, according to WAN-IFRA, a concentration that places The Times of India at the heart of a fiercely contested segment.
Competitors including Hindustan Times and The Hindu operate in the same English-language readership space, each investing in digital transformation and branded content to defend audience share. Against that backdrop, 'The Times of a Better India' functions as a brand equity play rather than a pure circulation driver — differentiating The Times of India through editorial authority and emotional resonance rather than through price or distribution. Joy Chauhan, managing partner at Wunderman Thompson Delhi, partnered with the client to platform stories about advancing India, ensuring the campaign's strategic logic extended from media planning through to creative briefing. The 2022 campaign also marked a new thematic direction within TOI's long-running brand strategy, distinct from earlier executions such as the civic-minded 'Lead India' in 2007 and the urban-focused 'Flirt with your City' in 2018, as reported by Brand Equity and The Drum respectively.
Siddharth Prasad, VP and executive creative director at Wunderman Thompson Delhi, served as creative lead on 'The Times of a Better India'. The creative approach rests on a deliberate editorial gesture: selecting specific, verifiable achievements that carry emotional weight precisely because they are unexpected. The Kolkata Metro's first underwater tunnel and India's Space Programme ambitions for Mars are not generic symbols of national pride — they are concrete, dateable milestones that reward the reader's curiosity and reinforce the newspaper's authority as a discoverer of stories.
Thematically, the campaign spans space research, sporting glory, infrastructural change, and environmental sustainability, ensuring that the vision of a Better India does not resolve into a single demographic or region. This breadth is a creative risk managed through consistent narrative framing: every story is told through the lens of opportunity created for citizens, not government achievement delivered to them. The distinction shifts the emotional register from patriotic spectacle to personal relevance, making the campaign accessible to Indians across ages, genders, and vocations.
As a 360-degree campaign, the execution required coherence across print, digital, and social formats — a challenge Wunderman Thompson India met by anchoring all touchpoints to the hashtag #TheTimesOfABetterIndia and to social participation mechanics that invited audiences to contribute their own interpretations of India progress. The Drum journalist Taruka Srivastava reported generally positive sentiment around the campaign, noting that it spotlights India's social, technological, and infrastructural change in a tone that feels earned rather than promotional, according to The Drum. That tonal control — optimistic without being naive — is the campaign's most demanding and most successful creative achievement.
No independently verified performance data for 'The Times of a Better India' in terms of reach, engagement rate, or circulation uplift is publicly available at the time of writing. The campaign's archive listing recorded 1,608 views, and coverage appeared across The Drum, Campaign India, exchange4media, Passionate in Marketing, and afaqs, indicating meaningful trade press pickup in India's media industry.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several markers of durable effectiveness. Its 360-degree format — spanning print, digital, and social in India — maximises message frequency across the audience journey, while the participation mechanic transforms passive readers into active contributors to the brand narrative, extending earned reach without additional media spend. The choice to anchor the campaign to specific, verifiable milestones such as the Kolkata Metro underwater tunnel and the India Space Programme gives audiences shareable proof points, increasing the organic distribution potential of content in social environments.
The campaign's brand-building logic is also commercially sound in context. As EY reported, India's print advertising market was recovering but remained below pre-COVID levels in 2022, making audience loyalty and brand salience — rather than pure volume — the most defensible competitive assets for a title of The Times of India's standing. 'The Times of a Better India' invests directly in those assets, reinforcing the masthead's identity as the authoritative chronicler of India achievement at a moment when that identity requires active, not passive, maintenance. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its strategic intent with clarity and craft, while leaving room for deeper measurable audience integration.
'The Times of a Better India' is a 360-degree campaign launched in July 2022 by The Times of India, created by Wunderman Thompson India. It celebrates India's progress since Independence through lesser-known success stories, data points, and achievements spanning infrastructure, science, sport, and sustainability, reaching both print readers and digital audiences.
Wunderman Thompson India created the campaign for The Times of India. Siddharth Prasad, VP and executive creative director at Wunderman Thompson Delhi, served as creative lead. Kaustuv Chatterjee, director of The Times of India and Languages Brand, led the campaign on the client side, with Joy Chauhan as managing partner at Wunderman Thompson Delhi.
The campaign highlights India's first underwater tunnel for the Kolkata Metro and India's Space Programme ambitions for Mars. It also covers sporting milestones, environmental sustainability, regional development, and young Indians in unconventional careers, cutting across sectors and regions to present a broad picture of national progress since Independence.
The campaign tagline is 'Today is the best time to be an Indian.' The primary hashtag is #TheTimesOfABetterIndia. Both were deployed across print, digital, and social touchpoints in India, anchoring audience participation mechanics including interactive contests and social conversations that invited Indians to engage with stories of national achievement.
The 2022 campaign represents a new thematic direction within The Times of India's long-running brand strategy. It follows earlier campaigns including 'Lead India' in 2007 and 'Flirt with your City' in 2018, as reported by Brand Equity and The Drum, shifting from civic mobilisation and urban lifestyle to a broader celebration of India's measurable national progress.
The Times of a Better India receives a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign that executes its strategic intent with clarity and genuine craft — particularly in its use of specific, verifiable milestones to build brand authority — while indicating room for deeper, measurable audience integration and documented performance outcomes.
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