Laugh a Minute
Posted by gargi on 25 May 2005 | Tagged as: India, Media, Print
One of the things that I have always admired about the Bennet and Coleman Group is their unabashed chutzpah! Kuch bhi bol dete hai.
I remember when they launched Indiatimes, the ToI ran a piece on “you can search the web with India Times search” - implying, of course, that there was no search available before that.
When they launched mail the same story got repeated. The same is with Zoom. Never mind that it isn’t being watched or talked about - except in media circles - from ToI’s publicity you would think that it is slightly behind Star in the ratings chart.
Today it is the turn of their yet to be launched tabloid (why would any group want two tabloids) the Mumbai Mirror. Carrying the publicity note as news is the Economic Times. The headline blares - Now, Mumbai to get a no-nonsense paper. Arre mere bhai, itne din hamme nonsense kisne diya!
Excerpt from the news item, that had me laughing. I love the ToI group for its unmistakable ability to cheer me up:)
Bennett, Coleman & Co, the publishers of The Times of India — and a group that has been known to break with convention — has decided to harness the ever-increasing assertiveness of the reader to launch the first co-created newspaper in the country.
Given the scale and kaleidoscopic nature of Mumbai, Bennett decided to undertake a massive direct contact programme in which thousands of households were visited and asked to offer their opinion on a host of subjects, ranging from their general attitudes towards life, to their needs and expectations from newspapers.
The exercise involved the use of a vast sales force especially contracted for this assignment as well as an internal fleet. In addition, the company put all its media vehicles — radio, television and internet — into play to arrive at an accurate understanding of the younger reader. As a result, Bennett now has a good insight of exactly what readers in Mumbai want, even as others are still speaking to them and trying to arrive at this understanding.
“Bennett now has a good insight of exactly what readers in Mumbai want” - does this mean that so far they didn’t know what the readers of Mumbai wanted. Also, nice to see the writer of the column on first name terms with the company!
ROTFL:))
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12 Comments »
on 25 May 2005 at 11:20 am 1.Charu said …
This reminds me of the Philips ad - Let’s make things better - implying that things were really bad so far?!!
on 25 May 2005 at 6:58 pm 2.Gautam said …
The media market is going crazy…!
Actually advertizing without branding and branding without strategy and strategy without execution is no good and eventually shows you to be a liar….as Seth Godin says…”All marketers are liars” !
on 25 May 2005 at 7:11 pm 3.gargi said …
Charu, :)) so true. hyperbole is the name of the game. h
LoL gautam. it is so incredible, the amount of money wasted every year on this kind of stuff. which planet do they live on!
on 26 May 2005 at 11:17 am 4.Gautam said …
You know gargi, they stay on the same planet and they
us !!
on 26 May 2005 at 11:27 am 5.gargi said …
>ouch!
on 29 May 2005 at 9:49 pm 6.Amit said …
Reminds me of two instances when Bennet and Coleman Co went overboard:
1. How the indiatimes.com search engine was better than Google.
2. When Ashok Jain was raided by the Enforcement Directorate and TOI ran a mud slinging campaign who EDI had always targeted the average Readers and Citizen of this country !!!
on 30 May 2005 at 10:21 am 7.gargi said …
Amit,
hi - i also think that they made it out that the raid on ashok jain was a violation of human rights!
and of course there is what has been happening over the last week or so. lots of cc’s given over to promoting the concept of a tabloid. in anticipation of the mumbai mirror:)
h
on 01 Jun 2005 at 2:31 pm 8.Jayesh E said …
I think this phenomenon of the leader cannibalizing themselves has spread to media, as the audience continues to fragment. For instance, Star One has a spoof on the K-soaps on one of its comedy shows clearly showing the ability to laugh at one-self. But TOI has gone far ahead. Cutting the faff screams one of the ads for the Mirror, accepting that they do dish out crap sometimes as the leader. Bullshit is a critical marketing differentiator nowadays.
Gautam, you might find a new book on ” On BullShit”, quite interesting. One can read more about that on my blog , .
on 24 Jul 2005 at 5:03 pm 9.Sriram Venkitachalam said …
If you had to live all your dreams you would have to contradict yourself.
I was working with a leading jewellery retailer and in an initial briefing meeting with a our latest ad agency the business consultant said, “We want to be everything, thats what. We want to sell to the high class and the middle class and everyone. Yes, thats what is our objective.”
on 24 Jul 2005 at 9:51 pm 10.gargi said …
yeah everything for everyone sounds like the normal brief. the other constant factor is that “it isn’t exciting”. arre baba, then tell me what is?
on 12 Jan 2006 at 4:36 am 11.A Time To Reflect » Blog Archive » Deliver us from the darkness… said …
on 12 Jan 2006 at 5:08 pm 12.Mall Road: BBM: A week is a long time in blogosphere said …