Is it only about Eye-balls ?

Taking off from where Sen and Robin started….


I think it was R Sundar who once told me, chatting over tea at the BCCL office in Government Place East in Calcutta, “circulation has to be built copy by copy - there are no short cuts”. Then there was AD who would never tire of recounting how it took The Telegraph a good 10 years to touch the circulation of the original 'Englishman' of Chowringhee Square, despite the self-destructive tendency of the latter. And, till date the ToI hasn't been able to win the 'catch up' game with TT, as indeed it hasn’t been able to dislodge the Deccan Chronicle in Hyderabad.

But in today's age of SMSs and with PE Investors breathing down one’s neck very few have the luxury of waiting for a decade to build a critical-mass circulation to be regarded as a serious “challenger”. So we have to pump hormones and steroids into a new born to make an Obelix out of it in no time.

The ToI, as always, were the original innovators with their 'invitation price'. The apocryphal story of how the idea struck SJ while passing the Alipore Zoo in a car with PG will go down in the annals of the history of newspapers in India. Then came the 'Jodi' offer which knocked the day-
lights of the competition, who were left with little option but to follow suit in great haste. In the process, as everyone knows, the vendors and the raddi-wallahs made hay while the publishers ( at least one of them) bled to near comatose.

This was also the time when the school newspapers ( the NIE and PACE ) came into play as, by some strange logic, they counted for ABC numbers. A school principal in Delhi once told me about the trouble they had in disposing the old papers – which the students inevitably never carried back home, tho’ it made handsome gratuity for the lower level staff.

Next was the era of deep discounted annual subscriptions and consumer promotions. Taking a leaf out of the magazines, which had long perfected the art of selling subscriptions on the back of gifts, newspapers – by then already infiltrated by the FMCG wiz-kids – began to entice their customers with offers of bed-sheets and tupper-ware. There was one major difference between the magazines and the newspapers – which everyone forgot or rather chose to ignore. In the case of magazines, it was far easier to chose your target audience by using DM (Direct Marketing) techniques. And, since the delivery was through courier or post – and not through the trade – it largely eliminated ‘loss-in-transit’.

The joke doing rounds in the newspaper circles then was – “we also sell newspapers”. I still remember walking into the Calcutta Book Fair in the winter of 2003 and saw a huge pavilion from which people were walking out with watches. Initially, I thought it was a Titan stall only to discover later it was actually of a newly launched national paper and the watches were being given as a free-bee for anyone who signed on for a year’s subscription.

Companies went freely in and out of the ABC as per their convenience. Finally ABC was forced to re-write its rules to come up with a new formula for calculating NPS (Net Paid Sales) to accommodate the big boys of the industry. Bhaskar Das was quoted in an interview saying, India would have moved to free news-papers long ago had it not been for the "raddi economics". Infact, today - if you take the "raddi-value" into account thereader is actually being paid to buy a paper.

I received a telling testimony from my newspaper vendor only the other day. He hadn't come to collect his bill for over 6 months. On asking him why - he frankly admitted, the amount he receives from the company by way of commission and trade schemes ( he didn't mention "raddi") is far more than what he gets from the "grahak" (customer). So it was small change and it no longer mattered to him, if he didn't collect his bills for a few months.


Apparently the model was telecom, where company valuations are based on the number of connections. But, no one seemed to be unduly bothered about the quality of their circulation – like a friend who had joined a telecom major, that was in a tearing hurry to ramp up its number of connections soon after launch, had joked - “we have a clear ABCD classification of our customers – Ayahas, Bai-s, Chauffeurs and Drivers”. No prizes for guessing which company we are talking about here.


In all this – people seemed to totally forget, what now seems like almost a defunct concept, Readership. Initially – people fought over NRS and IRS, choosing what was advantageous for them on that round of the survey. There were front page anchor pieces and lead articles on the edit page written to praise or debunk one over the other . Once, if you recall, NRS was taken to court and its results had to be withheld for months before a settlement was reached. Finally, NRS was put to sleep last year – no one’s certain if it will be resurrected ever again - and IRS, by default, became the limited currency of the industry, which you greet with enthusiasm if the numbers look good for or you trash if they look sick.

Old timers compared ABC & Readership to “clinical (physical) examination” and “blood-test”. A Doctor needed both to tell the health of patient.

Wonder how Media Planners, Buyers and Advertisers decide between publications these days ? Is it only on intuition or gut-feel ? It can’t be simply on how much commission or discount the publication is willing to part with as some cynics would have me believe. I am sure they have developed their own metrics for it.

Perhaps, a friend from the Media Buying Agencies will enlighten us.

But, finally I am left wondering – if Media is supposed to be a “mind-product” (as Goldie defined it) – then can it be only ‘eye-balls’ that matter ? One would assume – that to stimulate the mind you have to read it too. Did I hear someone say – “Reader Connect” ?

Sen & Robin on the Circulation Game

Sen speak:

This is more for Robin, than anybody else!You have really managed to nail down the "circulation" guy Sir & rightfully so.

After spending half my life with very successful FMCG giants, it was a huge shock when I took over circulation for a leading print media house! At times I really felt like I was losing it.However, in spite of the corinthian conservative pillars who managed to bludgeon everyone looking outside the beaten path, things changed.Albeit for a limited period.Fortunately non-lifers like us (who had little to gain from getting "personally" close to the leviathans) managed to pave fresh new roads & fly-overs on record time, to make the elephant zoom ahead on.

The mammoth has, however, settled down again.Alas, the systems & approaches (to circulation) is not very different with other publishers either!The "institutional" sales manager (circulation) remains the blue-eyed resource, thanks to the "significant" contributions to copy growth.As to who "reads" them is beyond me. May be that's the reason I decided to step out of the vicious "circulating" circle.

Incidentally, last weekend, about "4- FOUR" copies of a prominent tabloid were thrown in, deftly through my car's rear window. As it was already dusk, I naturally asked why this exercise was still being done! The answer is given below, verbatim:"We have a target of throwing IN (thankfully not OUT) 3 thousand copies per head. Now the copies reach us at this mall only at 3PM. Most cars drive in with AC on till 6:30. So we start to throw around 6:30 & manage to cram in as many copies as possible, into each vehicle".Have you caught some, lately?

Robin speak:

Hi,There are issues on both sides of the LOC, let me start with the editorial side, the other side, as they always behave like mujahideens ready to blow themselves up for reasons we will never know.

Editorial:(1) Their greatest joy comes from peer feedback, which ( as quoted to me) is always like this..WOW that was a great story. You brought out some really interesting insights. BOY you've hit BULLS EYE. I thought that the design team should have done a better job with the layout. If other articles in the same issue were of this calibre, then this would have been a collector's issue. Which they normally agree to( though it is likely that they have not read any article in the magazine other than their own).

Note: Incidentally their peers never include their colleagues in that publication

Consumer (Reader) to them does not exist, it's only role in their mind is to ensure that when the NRS/IRS surveyors come. then they should report that I read the magazines/ newspaper religiously. And that is why there are a lot of so called great products out in the market, which are doing poor business.

Circulation Sales (2):Sales: Ask a sales guy, when did he last read an issue of the magazine he sells, and chances are that he will not know. As far as he is concerned the centre spread in the magazine every week/fortnight should be from PLAYBOY so that he gets very few unsolds from his agent. Hopefully this will help the ABC circulation figure to improve every 6 months.

Circulation sales is about three things (a) Supply Chain (b) Visibility at the retail counter (c) Availability in more places then your competition. But a typical circulation person has very little idea on how to manage these three issues.

Let me start with the first point (a) Supply Chain: All they are keen on is to make sure that the issue reaches their agents in time on Friday/ Saturday. After that it is on god's mercy ( most of the times).

(b) Visibility - Some magazines do a better job at this purely through spending loads of money in this area, but a typical circulation sales person, will not do much about it. Contrast this with an FMCG sales scenario, where there are strict norms on visibility and are measured pretty regularly

(c) New Outlets: Increasing distribution and reach, though talked about furiously is usually never done with even a basic level of commitmentTherefore one will always find circulation people hoping for more speacial issues and freebies in the magazine(booklets et al).

My friends in circulation will call me a turn coat, but I strongly feel that if they did a better job at this, then most magazines will be able to charge more for their product and not give it away for pennies like in most cases in India, and thereby making the circulation sales a department as important as Ad Sales and not treated like a 'step child'.

Red, Yellow and Green - the ToI is seen

I meant to keep this for later. But Goldie ( Amitava Guha - who has been a 'guru' to me and many a green-horn crossing over to the delightfully mad world of media ) wrote in to admonish me and advised that I move on to more serious issues ( not that he implied the 'LoI' was a non-serious issue).

So this morning when I saw the ToI in its jaundiced skin - a question, which has bothered me from the time I came into media marketing, hit me straight on the face : Do"Innovations" really work ?

The money that IDEA must have shelled out to make ToI change its colour (literally ) - must have been music to the collective ears of the ToI Response team. But, was it an 'idea' that would change the life of the brand or my mind to switch over to their service at the next opportunity or buy a second connection from them ?

Personally, I have always held that "innovations" are FRPs (financially ruinous proposition) for the advertiser and sheer rape of editorial. I have no doubt my friends and ex-colleagues in ad-Marketing would be willing to murder me for saying this and call me a "saala turn-coat". But, what to do, I have had the wrong upbringing under a publisher who proudly called himself the 'last of the Mohicans'.

But honestly - as a lay reader this morning's paper left me cold. And, now looking back at the end of a long day at work - I feel that neither the news of Sushil Kumar's Bronze nor the launch of IDEA in Mumbai made a strong impression on me. Personally, I think a clean half-page ad would have done a far better job both for the ad - and greater justice to the news. The yellow worked actually as an irritating distraction rather than an attention grabber that, I presume, it was intended to be. But then, we could be told that, there are good innovations and bad innovations that can ruin a great idea. In anycase, a half page on the cover wouldn't have made the cash register ring half as loud.

Was discussing this with a friend during the day. He said, why don't you look at it this way? They could have done much worse. Don't you remember they had relegated the news of Benazir (Bhutto)'s assaisination to page 3 for accommodating a full page ad on the front-cover? And, as a reader you should be thankful that, at least - this one had the words "ADVT" written in small print. "Shukr hai - they didn't run it as media-net or can you imagine what they would have done if they taken had an equity stake in the telco ?" Point taken, Boss !!

As you can see - coming from the other side of the great divide as I do, I haven't yet mastered the art of holding the tongue firmly in my cheek. But, I am trying very hard to be as provocative as I can get - hoping that, someone, somewhere will read this and be stirred to post an angry response.

However, what I might have done inadvertently, is to have touched upon two other sensitive issue - Media Net and Private Treatise, which even Goldie, I think, would approve as being worthy of serious considertaion. Let's keep that for august evening tho'.

Cheers !!

"Babu Boro Najja Korey" - says Print

Fellow Bongs will probably be able to relate to this better. In a culture that was dominated for years by endless rehashing of Tagore and Brecht, Banchram-er Bagan by Monoj Mitra came like a breath of fresh-air and caught the fancy of the Bengali theatre-goers in the ‘80s. Tapan Sinha later made it into an award winning film. The main protagonist was – Bancharam (played by Mitra himself in both the stage production and the film ) , a loyal farm retainer, who had been gifted a small patch of land for his subsistence by the old Zamindar in a momentary lapse of generosity. After the death of the patriarch, his son - the new Zamindar wanted to evict Bancharam from his gratuitous tenancy but was shy of using brute force in deference to the will of his late father. But, Bancharam – ever so genially assured him that it was just a matter of months before he died, when the land would automatically revert to the landlord since he had only living rights and no ownership over it.

So each year, the zamindar would return hoping to see Bancharam dead and gone – only to find him alive and thriving. And, Bancharam would tell him in all humility and a great deal of embarrassment - “Babu, boro najja korey “ ( My lord I feel deeply ashamed ) – I had given you my word that I would die within this year but I’m so thoroughly useless that I couldn’t keep even this simple promise. As years passed by, Bancha far from showing any signs of imminent departure found new reasons to keep him going for just a wee bit longer. First, it was to wait till his son grew up, then to get him married and after that a desire to see a grand-child…..

In many ways, I think this could well be the story of Print in India. How many times have soothsayers predicted the demise of print and experts have rushed to write its obituary. Each time Print has surprised its detractors not just by staying alive but actually scoring a come-back. The most recent was, perhaps, when Media experts had all but written off the growth in print-advertising following the heavy in-roads of Satellite TV, Print turned the table by garnering a higher share of the ad-pie and growing faster than TV over the last couple of years.

In an Annual Survey of Editors commissioned by the WORLD EDITORS FORUM and REUTERS - fifty six percent of editors surveyed believed the future would be free newspapers, And only 45 per cent thought journalism’s quality would improve. An annual survey of editors commissioned by the WORLD EDITORS FORUM and REUTERS ( Click here to read artcle in The Hoot )


But another article published not too long ago in Indian Knowledge at Wharton talks of why Print Still Makes Sense in India citing the example of a boom in Business Publications ( Read full article and comments at : Busines Publications are Booming in India )

So where' print really headed in India? Let's re-open the debate. It'd be great if we can get some friends from the Electronic Media to also join in....

Alain Ducasse or Aveek Sarkar

The “LoC” imagery seems to have struck a chord with many readers of this newborn blog. Not surprisingly – perhaps, closer observation would reveal that most of the responses are from the “Azad” side of the LoC raising obvious questions about Human Rights and Freedom of Speech on the “occupier” territory. (You’ll get the “occupier” vs. “occupied” drift if you read my other blog on Kashmir: “Politically Incorrect”). But honestly, I am just being provocative here in the hope of eliciting some response from the “second floor” (or is it Gurgaon now?) types ?

Be that as it may, the issue raised was whether the LoC is going to remain a permanent reality. Are the differences really so irreconcilable? My friend Indrani – who has worked on both sides of the fence, as it were, feels the ‘twain shall never meet’ – whereas Rajeev (Dubey) a former young editorial colleague from BW has asked if we need the LoC at all? Kalyan (Kar) thinks, the LoC may not be such a bad thing after all – as it lends some dynamics that keeps the adrenaline flowing. Saurjyesh, our man from Reuters, talks of arrogance and lack of communication on both sides.

While teaching I use another analogy – which I am not sure will go down well with members on either side of the LoC. But, what the heck – we are not here to please anyone, are we? I like to compare Media with the Restaurant business. There was a time when the best restaurants were owned by the top chefs. They would hire a “Manager”, a steward or captain and a few waiters to run the place. You would not see a single advertisement of the restaurant anywhere in town, in any newspaper or magazine. Reputation was built simply by the word of mouth (quite literally so).

In the age of competition (where success is measured in “footfalls” or “eye-balls”) things are bound to change. Enter the promoters and professional marketers. They identify a “niche”, develop a “concept”, “create” a brand and then engage a Chef to run the kitchen. So far so good, an Imtiaz Quereshi needed a Nakul Anand to market the Dum Pukht and a Hemant Oberoi is happy to be a celebrity Chef and work for the Taj at a salary that would make many CEOs salivate (more than they do while eating the food he dishes out - tho' I am told that the remuneration top editors are commanding these days, with Stock Options et al, would make many a corporate honcho's eyes pop-out in disbelief). But, the problem arises only when the Marketing Manager starts dabbling with the recipes and tells the Chef how to cook or how much ‘dum’ the Biriyani should have.

Surely there are the Alain Ducasse’s of the world (or our own Rahul Akerkar of Indigo, Mumbai fame) – Michelline starred Chefs who run their own signature restaurants. But, how many 'owner-editor(s)' like Aveek Sarkar do we have in business? For the better part – you need an A D Singh to start an Olive ( btw – A D, I believe, is the son of Nippy Singh – ex ToI, India Today and now Express – one of the original “sabun-wallahs” who crossed over to Media ). But, I doubt if A D would ever take “punga” with his Executive Chef.

That brings me to the point made so articulately by my old schoolmate Eskay (journo turned Corporate Communicator): “The rules for success are surprisingly the same - a good product, well-targeted with the right marketing mix. Sure, there will always be aberrations and so the not-so-best product will, for a while, be the leader. But that happens in every marketplace as you'll know only so well”. My question is what makes a “good product” ? Is it what the Chef turns out of the kitchen or the packaging, presentation and ambience of a restaurant ? You’ll say, of course, both. I disagree slightly. The two together don’t make a product but a “total experience”. And, there rests my case – Media too ( Print included ) is not just a “product” it’s an “experience”. It’s another matter though, some try to convert it into a “product of expedience”.

Shall wait to hear your views...….

Deceptively Simple

In 2002, after spending most of my life in the Consumer Goods industry, I moved to Media as senior executive in a leading newspaper group. Coming in from the cold, as it were, it was quite shocking to discover that there was 'next to nil' reference material available and all the knowledge came thru' 'jungle-lore' - the basis or authenticity of which - and more importantly their currency was often questionable.

And, as I spent more time in the industry the gap of information seemed to be most limiting when I witnessed innumerable new entrants joining the organizations I worked in with absolutely no idea of Media being thrown into the deep end of the pool.

This feeling was further reinforced when I was invited to take a course on the Business of Print Media at MICA ( which I have been doing for the past 3 years ) and I found there was no published study or reference material on the subject.

Probably the most appalling impact of this lack of media experience, I observed at very senior levels. Professionals drawn from other industries and a non-media background often approach media with a degree of arrogance and a rather simplistic notion that what work for Soaps, Soft-drinks, Washing Machines or Telecom can be blindly applied to media, often treating with a degree of contempt both the old wisdom and people within the organization in their eagerness for radical change. Before long they discover that - media is far more complex and has many more layers, variables and finer nuances that are not visible on the surface.

Therefore my favourite quip is: "Media is deceptively simple".

I do not suffer from any delusions of being an authority or expert on media by any stretch of imagination. But, I can admit to having been bitten by the media-bug – due to which even after quitting the scene almost a year back, I remain deeply interested in Media and a compulsive Media-watcher. And at the risk of sounding presumptuous - I might say that, my personal experience and now being away from Media (at least for the moment) probably gives me a better perspective and also the independence to take a more neutral and objective viewpoint.

And, why print ? because a) that's an area I can pretend to know something about; b) print still remains the largest constituency of Indian Media and c) despite, dooms-day phrophets ( more on that in my next post ), print is here to stay;

I know that a number of popular media blogs are already in circulation (and, I am a regular reader of some of them). But, most of those are on the content and journalistic side of media. I am not aware of any that focuses exclusively on the management and business issues. While the blog is not intended to be a primer on Print Media Management, I hope it would provide an interactive platform for media professionals from either side of the LoC ( "Editorial" and "Marketing" - to use an old industry parlance; at my first employers' it used to be referred to as the "North Block" and "South Block" and at the last it was "1st Floor" and "2nd Floor" ) to debate and discuss topics of mutual interest and relevance.

So do write in - not just with your comments but your views, raising issues, kicking off debates, stirring controversies, starting cross-fires and, above all providing answers, ideas and solutions to make this truly a forum for meaningful professional interaction.