A preposterous but - as I realized later - outrageous incident took place 2 days back. I stumbled upon a fresh copy of TOI's - Times of India as it is popularly called - Jaipur edition and was greeted with a full front-page Volkswagen advert. Shrugging it off as almost a regular feature these days (yes, most newspapers - with the exception of The Hindu - carry them, much to the inconvenience of their readers), I rolled up to the last page. A Volkswagen ad again! This is weird, I thought. Continuing to skip over to the business section, I was shocked. There was no business section for the day, only some pieces of news spluttered arbitrarily. A quick scan of the whole paper revealed everything - a total of 10 pages of Volkswagen adverts in a 16-page newspaper. I had just one complain then, just that, the editors forgot to change the paper's name to 'The Times of Volkswagen'!
Now I won't go into details, but to make things clear, let's admit that TOI is NOT a newspaper. It could qualify as a 'tabloid', at best, judging from the telltale it has become of late. I'd say that anyone expecting anything other than the sight of Lindsay Lohan in a skimpy bikini or some unsolicited sexual advice is going to be very disappointed with TOI.
The Volkswagen incident has firmly reinforced that belief. Not only the bull-shit content, but the fact that TOI could sell itself into printing a - for lack of a better word - 'news(use)less' paper shows the state of apathy at the desk of the nation's largest-selling newspaper.
Amongst all this, there are two clear winners; TOI, of course, for making tons of money in the virtual one-day sell-off; and Volkswagen (VW). Where else could you take over a brand to promote your own, reaching millions of english-speaking, wannabe VW owners, wannabe VW employees, wannabe VW shareholders and other wannabe VW somethings!
And there's just one loser: the ubiquitous (unfortunately!) TOI reader.
P.S. I subscribe to The Indian Express. *Big Grin*
- Sumeet Seth (sumeets29@gmail.com)
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