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 !!