Look and Feel

I’m told that, the head honcho of a newspaper house – which has re-launched their flagship paper with a brand-new design - has gone on record to say that, “it (the new design) is as best as it can get”. I have no intention of taking him on that point - not b'coz he is known to take serious umbrage at even mildly critical comments in inconsequential bolgs such as this one, but because I - for one - genuinely like the new design ( tho’ I have heard mischievous critics quip, “it is “DNA four years too late”). But for me what’s more interesting to debate – is that eternal question of form (design) vs. content.

Surely look matters. Especially on first appearance. And, beauty is certainly not necessarily only skin deep when it comes to a ‘thought product’ like a newspaper. Great content can be made to look even more attractive by intelligent packaging and ease of navigation is sure to please even an old school die-hard reader.

I believe research indicates that, in a digital age – a newspaper even in its printed form must have a digital look and feel – especially if it wishes to attract new (and obviously) younger readers. And, Garcia is a master of 'digital' design. So far, so good. But, how does an older paper go about re-inventing itself for a younger audience.

The challenge to my mind is not about ‘turning off’ older readers by replacing a layout which they had gotten used to over the years with a new snazzy layout that can appear to be too much of a discontinuous change. The fears on this score – I think – are grossly overstated. But, for a ‘digital design’ to really work – one has to also re-engineer and completely over-haul the content – almost to the point of changing its DNA (no pun intended). It is here many publications fall-flat – because the risks of alienating the traditional readers are too high. And without doing much to the content, changes in design remain largely ‘cosmetic’.

New publications have a clear advantage here. They have the luxury, as it were, to marry content with design – to have a total offering that also reflects the personality of the paper. And, if the 2 (content and design can match up to each other – you do have a winning proposition. In the near past, MINT did this masterfully and DNA too was very successful in its attempt to differentiate with existing products. The Telegraph and Asian Age had done it in their own times. More recently, Forbes India has worked hard at doing the same in the Business Magazines genre and, in it's own modest way, OPEN can be another good example (tho’ I am yet unsure about its chances of commercial success).

MINT went a step further. It was planned truly as a multi-media offering for the future and its design and content delivery seamlessly transitioned across platforms – print, web, phone and even video-steaming.

But, only too often – do we have a new offering in the market – which looks smart but fail to deliver on its content.

The job is decidedly tougher for an existing newspaper – especially the larger and more established ones. Here, I liked the ToI formula – which follows, I suspect, the more classical (and, perhaps, conservative) route. Both for ToI and ET – they first went about incrementally and imperceptibly changing the content (which – detractors popularly called “dumbing down”) and then tinkered with the design. So, when DNA and HT were launched in Mumbai – ToI’s response was not to the drawing board and a new designer – but, instead, they invested heavily on content to make it – arguably – the best newspaper in the country. The same was, I believe, the brief of The Hindu to Garcia when he came to work on it a few years ago. But, then there are also wagging tongues – who say that these are also the 2 terribly designed newspapers in the country.

Even the staid Deccan Herald and the New Indian Express (down South) have also tried a change of wardrobe – but I’m not sure what it has done to their circulation and readership numbers.

Change with continuity seems to be the name of the game. It is surprising how many publications tend to clone their print format even in the digital (web) rendition. There must be some logic to that as well.

Do readers even care about editors' dirty underwears hung out in public?

A celebrity editor’s newly created blog-site carries a post in his inimitable signature style – “When it comes to lingerie, do men even notice?” (Click here to read)

So far I have religiously stayed clear of discussing editorial questions, assiduously sticking to issues on the management of publications. But, the 2 perhaps are not so unrelated after all – especially when we say that media brands are ultimately made or unmade by their content.

Recently a salacious spat has come out into the open (click here to read) – following the enigma wrapped departure of a marquee editor and another journalistic icon’s guest column getting axed from the same paper (also read by clicking here).

In my mind, I have no doubt whatsoever that, the ordinary lay readers don’t give a fig for such dirty laundry hanging in public. For the few who do notice - usually people from the industry – it simply makes gossip around the coffee machine on editorial floors or at the Press Club. But, sometimes – without realizing – it can be the first symptoms of a deeper malaise – which, in the humble opinion of this blog-keeper should be a matter of concern for the ‘management’ – as, if left unattended, it can affect the ‘brand’ in the longer term.

Debates accha hai

Debates are healthy in any form. When a publication gives space for differing points of view – I believe it does raise the credibility of the paper as a whole, which readers come to appreciate over time and that builds loyalty.

Respected publications do this in the normal course – routinely publishing – columns by writers of differing ideological leanings or viewpoints. Television channels do it all the time in their news-hour and talk shows. Even The Times of India has made a virtue of this with its ‘Point and Counter-point’ (or is it the “Times View” and “Other View” – or something to that effect), which has become a regular feature. Its Sunday edit page often carries diametrically opposing opinions on the same issue.

(not-so) Cozy Bed-fellows

But – when the feud of egos (or “principles” – any which way you chose to look at it) spill over from the edit pages into the blogosphere or find their way into other publications and that too either making the management cozy bed-fellows or objects of pot-shots, it’s something else and calls for serious analysis.

It is here that the church begins to yield its sacred ground to the plebeian state – and once the territorial boundaries are blurred it is difficult to redraw the LoC even by a UN decree. And, when the borders change – so does the character of the “Brand”. This is something good marketers (which, the modern day newspaper honchos rightfully claim to be) can ignore only at their own peril – because just like the Consumer, a Reader too is not a fool at the end of the day.

Say cheese !!

I generally tread clear of the Capital’s lecture and talk-show circuit. But, yesterday I accidentally gate-crashed into one. The occasion was the launch of the Business Standard India 2009 – a collection of essays on contemporary economic issues facing the country.

In a gathering of very distinguished economists and policy makers, as a part of the panel chaired Montek Singh Ahluwalia and T N Ninan as moderator - Bimal Jalan, the former RBI Governor, was at his provocative best. He was reveling in baiting the media, who he accused of over-selling the India Inc Rising story. He argued that, it wasn’t that the Indian economy that was running too fast but the Indian Stock Market that was being driven recklessly. When the real economic growth was at 13% - fuelled by tax arbitrage, the stock market was giving returns of 80% - but no one questioned the disconnect. We can excuse a Sarah Palin – who had never seen India on the map – wanting to invest in India because she saw India all over the media but we should have known better, he joked. He also had a dig at the “entrepreneur” (no prizes for guessing) known to run a half-marathon every morning, who had raised Rs 20,000 crores from the market even before he finished his morning jog. When you run that fast there is always a risk of tripping and a correction was just waiting to happen. He chided the media for, having created euphoria earlier, now going to the other extreme predicting a dismal doomsday scenario.

Listening to Dr Jalan’s, I wondered if the media itself had fallen prey to the tales of its own creation. Over the last few days – everyone I have met from the print industry – be it from editorial or marketing - have been complaining how bad things are. And till the other day, media houses – new and old – were going about their business like there was no tomorrow.

This adventurism was not just restricted to starting new editions or jacking up circulation. There was actually serious money being put on the block in the form of investments in Fixed Assets (expensive high-speed printing presses) most of it funded by borrowings (except perhaps ToI who have always been known to sit on a mountain of cash reserves).

Add to that, the increase in pagination, internecine circulation wars (my ‘pet peeve’ of deep discounted - gift subscription offers), rampant under-cutting of ad-rates, over-the-top salaries of the new ‘whiz-kids’ on the block, across the board salary hikes and increased over-heads – you have the perfect story of cost-structure and business model going awry. And, if all this was being done with an eye on increasing company valuations for potential PE investors – someone got the math wrong – just as Dr Jalan said last evening.

The crash of the ad markets have really turned the screws on (even with softening of news-print prices), especially for the newbies and also some of the oldies who had taken a quick shot of viagra to feel young. By one account two of the new entrants in the Mumbai market were losing anything between Rs 50 to 100 crores per annum (depending on whose estimate you chose to believe). Despite drop in pagination and cutting down on print-order, thru’ non renewal of subscriptions etc they would find it difficult to sustain such high levels of “investments” (read ‘losses’) without big-time value-destruction, if the mother ship itself is under pressure. While those in it for the long-haul would definitely weather the storm – it’s those who were in the short term “valuation” game who would face the real heat.

So what’s the way forward? On the flight back from Delhi, I was reading in the TIME magazine how the Italian government has thrown a bail-out package for the cheese industry in the country. The government is buying 200,000 wheels of Parmigiano – Reggiano Grana Padano to be donated to charity. Possibly Mr Ahluwalia can take a leaf out of that book and devise a similar scheme for the Indian newspaper industry. It might make perfect economic sense – giving away free newspapers with free ads – to boost consumer demand. But, there’s just one glitch – thanks to the freebie offers very few people in India pay for newspapers anyway!!

Post-Script: Hopefully, after this crisis the Indian newspaper companies would find renewed merit in the age-old wisdom of having a more 'balanced' adverisement to circultion revenues ratio, which had historically helped them cushion the effects of cyclical downturns in advertisement. Till then, of course, the big consulting firms (Mckinsey, E & Y, PwC, Accenture etc) would make their pile doing 'cost-restructuring' exercises for the industry. Some I'm told are already on the job.

Flight of fancy !!

This morning on the flight from Calcutta – I was almost startled out of my seat, even before I had a chance to put my seat belt on, to see an announcement in The Telegraph. In a box item on the front page they informed readers that “to partially off-set” rising cost of news prints they were constrained to increase the cover-price by 50 paise (they went on to assure how TT is committed to delivering the best value to its readers etc, etc. On picking the ToI from the next seat – I found they had a similar notification ( but more simply worded – without any of TT’s almost apologetic note). One remembers that, such announcements were common in the 70s and 80s. But, in today’s day and age – when publishers have been tripping over each other in a game of “invitation pricing”, discounted subscription and freebies ( the latest I read was Nike shoe free with an annual subscription of a Delhi tabloid - read the Romantic Realist's piece by clicking here) – who could have imagined even a few months back that this was even possible.

Considering that a very high proportion of the circulation for most papers in metro towns are already locked up in one or two year subscriptions and ‘jodi’ offers, I am not sure how much this would yield in terms of additional revenues in the short-term. But, that such a move was undertaken (obviously, in unison by all the major players) considering that newsprint prices have actually come down from the peaks that it had reached a couple of quarters back, is indicative of the revenue pressures the industry must be experiencing at the moment. Paginations had already been cut-down over the last few weeks. In Calcutta I found The Telegraph had brought there Metro supplement inside the main-paper. The other day – someone traveling to Chandigarh told me that he was surprised to see the city edition of the paper down to only 12 pages. According to a totally unconfirmed (and, probably unreliable too ) source – the ‘old lady’ had posted a cash-loss for the first time in a zillion years last month. While this can well be malicious gossip – it is indicative of how ‘desperate’ the situation must be.

I am sure that the industry will tide out of this crisis – as the economy recovers (at least the industry ‘old timers’ – unlike the brave new ‘cow-boys’ –who invaded the industry lately – know newspapers were always a ‘cyclical’ business and they have seen many a down-turn in the past). But, for me there can be some silver lining in all this. First, it’ll put to test certain hypothesis on which many players have been punting in recent years: 1)Readers perceive greater value in higher pagination; 2)Selling it cheap means higher circulation and readership (put in simple marketing lingo – what’s the ‘price-elasticity’ of the product). And, most importantly – this should, hopefully, separate the men from the boys.

Well, I guess – like everything else – only time will tell. And, to know the outcome, you and I will have to keep reading newspapers!!

The Tribulations of a Regional Giant

While passing thru Chandigarh last week (the thumbnail on the side is the official logo of the city-state, for those of you who have been wondering), I saw the imposing landmark of The Tribune at the junction of Sector 29 on Purv Marg and wondered if it would meet the same fate as that of once the pride of Chowrighee square in Calcutta – The Statesman House. In essence, I was thinking – what’s the future of regional newspapers with the large national players spreading their tentacles across the country.

I asked this question of a senior functionary of the paper – over coffee in the lawns of his lovely red-bricked bungalow, taking in a bit of the delectable early November sun with the first hint of winter. At first, he scoffed mildly with a smile (without any arrogance, I must add ) – “HT and ToI have declared that they are going to kill us or wipe us out several times over in the last few years, but we have managed to survive”. He then went on to admit rather candidly, that - while circulation and readership have remained largely unaffected and so has local advertisement – ‘National Ad’ Revenues have suffered. Typically, HT & ToI offer Chandigarh as an “add-on” in their national “package” at almost next to nil rates. This make media planners and advertisers re-think on the need to spend additionally on a local paper given the relative size of the market and the incremental reach it would provide. But, still they haven’t managed to cut-off the life-blood of the paper. Besides – The Tribune’s circulation revenues (which is largely at full cover price – unlike HT & ToI which sell practically all their copies on deep-discounted schemes) are healthy – which is also generally true of other regional biggies like The Telegraph and The Hindu.

So what should be the strategy going forward ? The Tribune has chosen one of creeping regional expansion – pushing the circulation boundaries beyond their traditional strongholds of Chandigarh, Punjab and HP. Now they have started crawling into parts of Uttaranchal, neighbouring patches of Rajasthan and spreading across Haryana – short of the NCR (Gurgaon and its catchment areas). Coupled with region specific customization of content – this has boosted circulation and geographic reach – which, apart from providing greater value to national clients, make them a more attractive proposition for Regional Brand players from Punjab and Haryana.

While this may hold the decline in the short and medium term – would it work in the long run. The answer to my mind, would be in fierce or ferocious localization of content – increasing interactivity and deliver across media platforms (Web, Mobile etc..) This would improve and thereby increase reader loyalty and customer stickiness.

By trying to play the game by the rules set by the competition and cloning them – it would end up becoming poor second cousins of ToI and HT – diluting its original character and also – in the process – losing its traditional constituents. In trying to work counter national predators and incursions by the web - many regional newspapers in the US have ended up going even more local with good effect. I was quite encouraged to hear from an young journalist in Shimla – how a voluntary initiative by some of them in starting a very local news web-site called “My HP” is beginning to gather momentum.

For marketers seeking to increase penetration – the ‘carpet bombing’ strategy of big newspapers won’t work beyond a point. When it would come to targeting the last consumer standing – a strong regional player would do a far better job.

In some ways – the coming few months could actually prove to be an opportunity for the likes of The Tribune. With newsprint prices skyrocketing and advertising revenues slowing down, the biggies might be forced to cut-down cheap unproductive circulation in less profitable markets. That’s when a strong regional brand can strike back with vengeance.

But that would mean a serious re-engineering of content, which may not be easy given The Tribune’s old guard editorial and conservative Board of Trustees at the helm of affairs.

So, I can only wish my friend luck !!

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” ?

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 !!