The Great Innovation Revolution

Robiin Jeffrey’s seminal work – India’s Newspaper Revolution, tracing the journey of Indian newspapers over the decades - is a fascinating read.

American newspapers had from the very beginning seen advertisements as the life-blood of their publications. Doyens like Otis Chandler (owner of the LA Times) had declared, “The economics of American Newspaper publishing is based on…advertising…not circulation”. (Though it’s another story - how his newspaper was run nearly to the ground by the professional managers he had hired from Consumer Product giants like General Mills – forcing him to come-back from retirement and reassume the reins of the company to undo the damage wrought by the “break fast cereal” marketers – (Read the Blogkeeper’s Note at the bottom of the post)

Indian publishers, on the other hand, for a very long time had shunned advertisers with almost a sense of contempt. Advertisements were considered an encroachment not just into editorial space but also – by some – as a compromise of editorial independence and integrity. This was, of course, partly a carry over of the pre-independence nationalist and the post-independence socialist ethos of the country.

But, all this makes me wonder – if we are displaying the same prudishness in our resistance to accepting today’s trends of so-called “Innovations” in advertising.

So I asked a veteran of the industry for his views. Having worked for 3 media majors over 3 decades – he is one of those who has seen it all and done it all. On strict conditions of anonymity he agreed to write this “no ‘edit space’ barred” piece for ‘Deceptively Simple’, which could well be an addendum to the chapter on Indian Newspaper Advertising in Jeffrey's book - which stops at the end of the 90s.

While – being oath bound - I can’t provide any clues, there aren’t any prizes either for guessing his identity. Read on:


The Innovation "Bloomers" !!

Well, this mysterious article was to be on Innovation in Print Media. Is there a true innovation? Or are there other factors that are masquerading as Innovation? We shall examine it.

Applying the definition/meaning of innovation as an idea that is perceived by advertisers as new, I looked around for such examples. There were plenty available – from bubbles in the center of pages, beautifully ‘decorated’ by content to oil pipelines zigzagging through each page of the newspaper to colouring the content in yellow ( click here to read) – in ‘rich’ homage to a telecom service provider. Later generations will, no doubt, debate on whether the choice of the colour was an accurate description of the prevalent state of print journalism. But that’s another story.

But does a creative rendition of an idea necessarily mean the commercial message must intrude on the content? Can’t there be excellent renditions of creative ideas within the boundaries of advertisement space - as we had in the past?

Bubbles and Phallic Symbols

To understand this development we need to rewind. The availability of higher disposable income, rise in consumer base, opening up of lucrative markets tiers beyond the metros, as well as - fragmentation of media and multiplicity of media options has created an increase in demands for consumer brands. This lead a tendency to spend more on FMCG brands and a profusion of brands are clamouring to be seen and heard. As in a crowded marketplace, what does the marketer do - Shout as much as possible (read big budgets) ? But with multiple full-page ads in a single day’s paper, the full-page no longer created the desired impact. There were pressures on the media buyers who devised (or thought they had devised) a clever route. Just pirate into the content. Steamroll it but ensure its noticeable. So that’s how you see a car swirling within the page or mobile phones protruding like phallic symbols. Sure it’s noticed. Whether it will carry a positive connotation in the reader/consumers mind is really not the point, as the objective is to ensure the message is noticed.

And why don’t the newspaper refuse such blatant intrusions on the content? Obviously, it’s the revenue that comes with such demands. In a scenario where the sale price don’t even cover the delivery cost from the printing press to the readers’ home; such additional revenue is highly coveted. The irony being, the ad sales executives themselves keep coming up with devious strategies of destroying the editorial columns and presenting them to the advertisers. After all, they too have high targets to accomplish.

However, like all good things, which are overdone, such innovative tactics too soon lost its novelty value. Now, everyone could be innovative – protrude the end of your product into content and if that wasn’t satisfying enough, why not ‘buy’ your own cover page – create a full four cover pages or just restrict it to half its size. It was getting monotonous and the fear of a negative impression in the consumers mind was feared. So it was time to innovate once again – after all, isn’t ‘NEW’ the perennial favourite slogan of advertisers?


The Space Pirates

They did not have to look around much. A market savvy multi-media group came up with a perfect solution – why just ‘pirate’ into content – why not ‘create’ the content? And thus another innovation was created. The ‘promise’ was to get a cynical reader or consumer to see your message and intrusion was not a great way, it was being increasingly felt. Great, so what’s the delivery mechanism of this promise? Simple. Do away with those old-fashioned ‘advertorials’ (the problem with them being the addendum ‘advertisement’ being scribbled in one corner to separate it from news content), intrusions etc. Instead, present the ad message as content, without creating any visible distinction of separation from news. It was presented as news itself. After all, this innovation touted to ‘provide editorial coverage for your products, services and events, with true news value’. In case the advertiser was still dumb enough to comprehend what he’s reading, it goes on to state ‘ we mean real newspaper articles….., not advertisements’ (emphasis not mine). Wow, here was the real thing and like American journalists covering the Iraq war, the message read ‘ an editorially conceptualized brand message embedded in news/feature articles……’ (emphasis mine). The perfect solution was found.

15 minutes of fame

While both the advertiser and media owner were happy with the unexpected revenue source welling up, the casualty was the consumer. After all, if there were glowing references to a product by a leading newspaper, perhaps it merited purchase. It was a different matter that the product was not tested , before endorsement. Since the ‘purchased coverage’extended to individuals too, there remains a clamour to feature ‘my party’ – simply because I can buy its coverage. So readers were soon deluged by P3 personalities ‘born’ daily – 15 minutes of fame as Warhol put it.

So where do we go from here? As a logical next step allow the brand managers of a large spender to edit (or would take-over be a appropriate term?) the newspaper for a day. For a fat consideration, of course.

News as a Commodity

Perhaps it’s not so bad as it appears. With a highly cynical populace living in a world where information and entertainment are indistinguishable , maybe it’s difficult to believe anything. After all, who defines the meaning of news ? If news is a commodity, why can’t it be purchased like any other commodity?

At the end of the day, what matters is profits. If the news columns too can be made profitable as the ad columns, it’s a double whammy. After all, innovation is expected to add value, and if this is not value creation, what is?

Let a thousand innovations bloom !


Blog-keeper’s Note:

After the LA Times scandal ( where the newspaper had entered into a reveue sharing arrangement with one of its advertisers – Staples – for a ‘co-produced’ Sunday Magazine of the paper ) a commentator wrote –

“Newspapers are always dying, and someone is always killing them . radio was supposed to bury them. So was Television……..So was the Internet.

“But the latest murderer is the corporate bean-counter. He breaches the Chinese Wall between business and editorial….cares more about stock-prices than about the front-page lead…..”

So who will be the Otis Chandler of India ? Anyone willing to take a bet on that ?