News wasn’t its Forte anyway and Now, Advertising isn’t either

At the crack of dawn till a few years ago, media-men like me, lunged for the newspapers that slipped below the doors with amazing regularity…

All one did was take stock of the days compliment of advertising and news ( yes, in this order! ) and arrive at startling numbers. The maths came easy and the volume often needed a calculator to help.

Every day of the week was a party for print media; The only task that these media monoliths had, was to decide how many pages were required to give the readers a reasonable sprinkling of news!

Today, just a few years later, I have stopped doing the divine dive for the morning paper. My weekdays are meant to be happy, or so I decided; I shall thus have nothing to do with the apology of the morning paper beyond the customary 100 second glance.

News wasn’t its forte anyway and now, advertising isn’t either.

Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, Welcome back to yet another ‘In the Face’ edition of Beyond Campus.

Interestingly, Pune is now witnessing what I term “The weekend phenomenon’ with all ( whatever little exists ) advertising packed into the weekend pages of the paper. The weekdays see practically no advertising or decent content for that matter.

Much chaos is being witnessed in several media owners sacred chambers…Unlike Shaolin, these rooms are seeing raised eyebrows, higher blood pressure levels and knee jerk reactions. Just a few days ago, we heard of the HT staff cut. I now hear that ABP has issued whips across their senior management to cut team sizes by as much as 50%.

Business travel and entertainment has been curtailed in most companies and the mood is sombre.. Pune media leaders are faced with a dearth of star performers and whiz kids who can pull them out of impending advertising penury. There exists none unfortunately. The whiz kids have moved on to a better tomorrow.

To top this all, inflated egos and unadulterated megalomania is eroding core brand positioning and this is clearly visible in some companies. Unfortunately, this time around, getting back on road isn’t going to be easy…

It will be a lonely battle for many in print, unless they get smart, bury their ego and bring back the most basic fundamentals of media marketing.

We called it ‘Hard-sell’ at one point of time. Media has changed, audiences have morphed and yet, nothing will dilute the power of sheer effort and innovative thinking.

Who better than Galileo Galillee to encapsulate the current state of affairs…

“ I do not believe that the same God who endowed us with Sense, Reason and Intellect, intended us to forego their use ”

Pune365 : The views expressed in this column are the Author’s

Jaisurya Das