The Hindu, The Times of India try hard to lose

The ongoing communication war between The Times of India and The Hindu began with the release of a commercial by The Times of India titled ‘Wake up, Chennai’, with the TVC urging Chennaiites to ‘wake up’, suggesting, by innuendo, that their current reading was putting them to sleep. [caption id=“attachment_210704” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Screengrab/toi chennai campaign/youtube.com”]  [/caption] The Hindu reacted directly, with a campaign that suggests that The Times of India (TOI) reader is ill-informed about issues that matter. It is not by innuendo that one learns it is a TOI reader; the ill-informed protagonists are ‘interviewed’ and asked which paper they read. Their response, The Times of India is bleeped out. You can read more about this phase of the war here . Immediately after the Hindu campaign was released, the campaign was criticised by – hold your breath – N Murali and Malini Parathasarathy, who, between them, own almost 9 percent of Kasturi & Sons, the company that owns The Hindu. You can read more about their criticism here . Yesterday, The Times of India upped the ante, with the release of this ad:  Before we get to The Times of India-Hindu battle angle of the story, The Times of India begins their ad with a goof. They refer to the ‘Comptroller Auditor General ‘, when the post is ‘Comptroller and Auditor General’. Maybe they should have stuck to plain ol’ CAG. And a few lines later, they refer to Shahrukh Khan, not Shah Rukh Khan as the paper routinely refers to the actor. Maybe they should have stuck to plain ol’ SRK! Getting back to the battle, and seeing the ad in the context of the war. In simple advertising terms, this ad is what is called ‘producer-speak’, where the producer talks about the virtues of the product being hawked. Advertising becomes immensely more powerful with ‘consumer-speak’, where the consumer extols the virtues of a product or service. So, for good measure, yesterday we saw a consumer lending great credibility to The Times of India ad within hours of the release of the ad – and the consumer is Malini Parthasarathy, the fourth largest shareholder of Kasturi & Sons, once again. “Barack Obama names Amartya Sen for US Humanities medal (via @i_Dilip) #fb”, she says on twitter. The news is not trivia, it’s just the kind of news that The Hindu should be carrying. So why not link to an article in The Hindu carrying the news? Because, er, they don’t have it. The news is big, so why should Ms Parathasarathy tweet about it? She should, indeed, as long as life was normal, and she was living in peace time. But this is not peacetime, it is war between The Hindu and The Times of India, and her update immediately makes The Times of India’s campaign stronger and more credible and The Hindu’s campaign weaker and less credible. The greater her credibility, the more the damage done to The Hindu. From The Times of India perspective, with enemies like this, who needs friends?