Owing to the recent TVC and print campaigns by The Hindu, it would have been fair to assume that TOI would lower the amounts of their so called sensational news in their newspapers. And so, just when you thought there would be a less of the typical bollywood masala in the TOI, its front-page headline news read ‘ Ranbir Rocks, Vidya Sizzles’( at the filmfare awards) just a couple of days back. Maybe TOI did not get The Hindu’s message loud and clear.  Looks like The Hindu needs to try even harder to get TOI’s attention.

Well, the whole war-of-ads started back in October of last year when TOI came up with this commercial– “Wake up to The Times of India”. The implied message: Urging the newspaper readers (non-TOI) to ‘wake up’, from the sleep that they were put into by the reading of their current newspapers. The commercial was brilliant with a soporific music being played in the background until the end.

After nearly two months of silence, The Hindu came back and went ballistic with its campaign spreading across television, radio, print & outdoor mediums. The campaign was aggressive with the tagline ‘Stay Ahead of The Times. (Print ads below)

The TVCs feature responses from general people for questions which cover politics sports and music. While everyone gets these answers wrong, all of them give the right answers for questions related to Bollywood The implied meaning of the campaign: The Times of India reader is unaware about issues that matter. (The viewer can easily figure it out when the interviewer asks the respondents the last question- which paper they read & their response, The Times of India is bleeped out.) Furthermore, the executives of Ogilvy-the ad agency for the commercial claim that answers, shown as part of the TVC, were not staged and were the actual ones that the people had given when posed with the questions. The campaign has been successful in creating a buzz and its TVC’s plus print ads have gone viral over the social networking websites. But there are some flaws in the campaign which need to be addressed.

First, the target consumers are the TOI readers. Rather than conveying to the consumers what The Hindu, as a newspaper stands for, the campaign conveys to the readers what their current newspaper is lacking.  So, it turns out that The Hindu provides the readers with the news which they ‘should’ know rather than what they ‘want’ to know. Then again, what difference does it make to a reader whose interest has been bollywood or cricket news even if he does not know the current ‘state of affairs’? It’s a fact that bollywood and cricket are two of the major interests of people in India. Adding on, youngsters consider bollywood celebs or cricketers as their idols and not politicians. So, they might consider themselves better-off reading only the news of their interest rather than reading about current political scenario in the country.  Amidst all this, the current Hindu readers might feel a bit complacent while watching the TVC’s or print ads, but it would have had been better if the campaigns conveyed the attributes of the newspaper that made these current readers commit to reading the Hindu over the years.

Second, only a clever /creative/viral advertising would not serve the purpose of switching the TOI readers to The Hindu. It’s just one of those ads to chuckle and laugh upon, which the people like to but in no way this ad can make people leave TOI and grab The Hindu. Additionally, focus should be on a ‘general’ consumer and not only on TOI consumer, which will require effort on all fronts -content, advertising, marketing, sales and circulation. Of all these, content would be the most crucial one.  It would be wise to focus on the content that entices the younger readers, especially the teenagers. Isn’t it obvious that a teenager would consider news such as presence/absence of elephants in UP or the location of Tahrir square to be less important as compared to the stories related to their favourite celebs or youth icons. The typical questions posed would be: Why do I need to know the things that I don’t need to do? If you want me to read your boring newspaper, what is it that you will give me?

Last, but not the least, The Hindu’s campaign was a reaction to the TOI’s commercial. It’s said that The Hindu is the newspaper for the ‘intellectual’ ones and its current campaign is to counter the ‘dumbing’ effect of sensational journalism. Well, certainly, the ‘intellectual-ones’ won’t find it ‘intellectual’ to come down to the level of competitor  and launch a reactive campaign even if it’s for the overall good of the journalism.

After The Hindu’s ballistic campaigns, TOI recently came up with the above print-ads. The ad war has escalated to a level where the Hindu’s new editor & CEO have been dragged into the picture.  Looking at the response, it seems that TOI would continue with their ‘page-3’ oriented approach. After all, their content has played a significant role in making TOI, the most sold over english newspaper in the world? Their ad. ‘Information is not knowledge’ further evinces TOI’s brazen marketing approach which is in a sort an indirect dig at the Hindu’s. Since TOI has been known for the brazen approach, it was a surprise to see the Hindu’s aggressive stance in their reply back to competition. The change in leadership at the Hindu might be a probable reason for such a stance. If that’s the case, we can expect another aggressive ‘reaction’ for the above TOI’s print-ad. What do you think?