FOR as long as I can remember, there has been a rather surreptitious relationship between advertising and the media: a relationship that throws up conflicts in ethics as much as the manner in which people consume newspapers and television. Not much has changed across the world and there is very little that will as long as revenues and not reportage takes prime position. But then to blame advertising for all the ills of the media is a tad unfair. The press anywhere in the world, is as free as it chooses to be but in some markets, India being one of them, there has, of late, been an exertion of clout from the advertising world that is apparent and at times very distasteful. Quite obviously the subtle influence that advertising used to exert has been replaced by an in-your-face arrogance that the media finds hard to stave off with the result that today, there are several instances where the media can and is held to ransom by advertisers.

But then again, it is a fault that must rest equally at both doorsteps. Advertisers must remember that as long as they can preserve the sanctity of the editorial pages, they will also preserve the sanctity of the messages they place there on behalf of their clients. This is an aspect that the advertising business is losing sight of and pretty quickly at that. One cannot denigrate and weaken the medium of ones message and still hope that the message will be either effective or evocative. It is a trade-off but one with dangerous consequences and clearly the media needs to introspect far more than the advertising agency or for that matter the advertiser.

 

The advertising agency will always seek better rates. The advertiser will always seek positive reportage. Earlier, they remained in their respective silos. Today, there is a seamlessness that is sad. The linkages between what you spend and the quality of coverage you receive is only too apparent but then the mistake we all make is by believing that we have hoodwinked the reader. That is no longer the case. Impact features have lost impact because everyone realises that the editorial environment has been polluted with money. It is this intellectual corruption that needs to be stemmed and there needs to be a transparency that will allow the editorial environment to be unfettered.

The question is: can it be? Not under the present circumstances. The truth is that the media stakes have been upped and upped very significantly. It is a battle for readership and eyeballs, and one which demands a lot of capital investment. And once the scale of capital investment becomes apparent, it is no surprise that serious compromises become commonplace. The tragedy is that everyone is making them: some are honest enough to admit it while the others are pretentious.

The compromises begin with the pricing of the product itself. How on earth can we, in a market such as India, ever imagine that a newspaper reader can actually earn more by buying a copy of his or her newspaper and selling it to the rag-picker: but we do. Today, you can make more money selling your copy of the newspaper only because the pricing is so flawed: and this is where the problem begins. When you price-subsidise a product to the extent that is happening today, somewhere down the line you also sacrifice a bit of soul and then begins the long march of compromises and this is exactly what we are seeing. What makes matters worse is that newspaper owners are allowing this trend to continue, what with additional disasters such as the dumping of copies and bundling them as freebies: much like a candy with a bar of soap. The commercialization of media is today as comprehensive as would be in the case of any fast moving consumer good and when that begins to happen, you lose the morality itself which is what has happened to Indian media.

 

Look around and you will see editors who have become marketing agents: from the edit rooms they have transformed into space-sellers. There are business magazines that make more money through sponsored ground-events than they do through the magazine itself: now if that is not sad, then what is? The quality of people that the world of media is attracting is equally wanting. We do not have people with impeccable credibility as we did in the past. Integrity and ethics have been replaced by targets and TRPs. Now in this kind of a world, how would you expect media to remain as uncompromising as it used to be?

Add to this the costs of paid advertising and therefore the need for getting an additional pound of flesh (read, positive coverage) and you have a lethal concoction. I have always told my clients that there is merit in respecting the editorial freedom of the media: not because I am more moralistic than others but only because if you compromise that space, then no matter how much you advertise or what you say in your messaging, there will always be a lack of believability. For no other reason than for selfishness alone, the advertising world needs to leave the media alone. But this is something that the media must also comprehend.

 

The other significant trend that we have witnessed in the past few years is the belief that newspapers need managers and not editors. Or better still they need manager-editors and so some of India’s most respected newspapers today have editors who are CEOs and vice-versa. This is, to my mind, a most dangerous trend and I cannot fathom why it is being encouraged. The moment you allow role-definitions to be as blurred as this you are inviting trouble, for the advertisers can easily play you around with the role that is most convenient to them at the time and spin things around. The integrity of institutions has undergone a basic structural change and this is causing all the problems. Editors are no longer editors and advertising agencies are no longer brand custodians: somewhere both feel they are in effect larger than life.

The pressure tactics have changed as well: in the good old days we would plead with the newspaper manager to position our advertisements on the right hand side of the page because we felt that since the reader reads left to right his eyes would stop on our advertisement. We then became even more demanding and said that we would prefer a top right-hand position. Finally came the ghastly slew of media innovations when an advertisement for soap would be positioned right in the middle of an inspiring obituary.

But that was still in what I call the ‘appeal’ domain. Today, we have moved from the appeal domain to the ‘demand’ domain: which means we demand better placement, we seek control of the editorial environment and we want positive coverage: read undue flattery rather than fair reportage. There are also instances where advertisers have held back advertising only so that they can pressurize the media to toe a line they want taken. If this is not blackmail, then what is?

 

The story with the electronic medium is much worse. There are more and more programmes on news channels which are in the lifestyle domain and this pandering is not because viewers would prefer it thus: it is only because there is a belief that this will help in profiling large advertisers and ensnaring their advertising. There is no rationale for news channels to indulge in the kind of sleaze exposes they do but they did not do that with the intent of cleansing society, they did so with a view to titillate and get greater TRPs. It is this race for being number one that is destroying every credible edifice in its wake. The tabloidisation of the electronic media has never been more comprehensive than it is today. And no one is complaining.

The coexistence of the sublime with the ridiculous is something that worries only because the media has so easily sacrificed its enduring position of strength just for a few more gold coins. As I have argued earlier, when media sacrifices its soul and position of strength (as the Indian media has done), there are enough market vultures such as advertising agencies and advertisers to jump in and make merry and this is exactly what we are seeing. The despicable cozying up between media and advertiser will destroy the soul of both businesses.

But why have both these businesses become so incestuous and are there reasons extraneous to both that are pushing them in this strange paradoxical situation? If one examines the world of brands today, the interplay between the brand and the consumer is far more severe than it ever was. There are intermediaries such as retailers on the one hand and consumer courts on the other who are constantly in the space of creating or thwarting public opinion. The demise of analytical media too has fanned fires in an unusual manner: what we are seeing today is the arrival of the instant headline and the instant sound byte. In a world which, in business terms, is dominated by equity analysts and public perception since almost everything is indexed to the stock market, there is a sense of desperation that pervades most business steps taken by businesses, small or big.

 

And this is where the problem begins – the stakes are high and their manifestations even more broad-based. The media understands the power it yields, but only as far as the credible editorial space is concerned and it is this space that is under threat today. I am aghast as to how easily the media in our country has sacrificed the only piece of enduring ammunition at the altar of petty commerce and in the process destroyed the one competitive advantage it had. Witness the blatant trade-off that advertisers seek from all the arms of media. Will this trend cease? I do not believe so and we may be spiralling downwards at a pace that will eventually be the death-knell of independent media. It is worrying that the young brand manager of today is not aware of the power of independent media and instead wishes to use media to establish his or her own power – a self-defeating proposition as any. It is in this context that we need to examine the future of the world of advertising and its inextricable linkages with the media.

 

We have travelled a long way: from asking for preferred positions to seeking a preferred editorial positioning for either the company or the brand. I have seen this being extended to individual brands as well. Very recently, one much acclaimed industrialist told me there was no award from the media that he could not buy. It does not matter whether what he said is true or not: the fact that he could even postulate it shows the complete perversion of the media which to a large extent has been caused by a demonic world of advertising and this is the real worry.

There is yet another disturbing trend: the rise and rise of the individual brand, be it in business or for that matter in advertising. There are more and more advertising honchos who want to be seen in the pages of specialized marketing supplements and award ceremonies: the brands they promote or represent have become secondary to their existence. A desire to compete with their clients’ brands for airtime and column space makes the relationship with the media even more transactional than it ever was. I remember a time when we shunned media events and parties. I still do. I cannot remember when I last ever attended a media bash: either to celebrate success or rising graphs. The reason why one did not do it was to preserve an arms-length relationship with the very media that we may end up recommending to our clients. That practice is fast disappearing today and that will cause even more issues as we go along.

In a strange way, the influences of advertising on media are also being evidenced in the very product that the media has become. You have, just like in the world of brands, news that is aspirational and, what is worse, packaged. I cannot understand why India’s leading financial daily needs to dress up our venerable finance minister in Superman clothing while discussing something as serious as the Union budget. But speak to the owners of the group and they will tell you this is what the reader wants. Sadly, the world of media has appropriated that key brand kernel of giving the reader what he or she wants rather than defining what is it they really need. Hence, I am not surprised that our newspapers look more like advertisements: what with large photographs and captions beneath them: just like at one time advertising used to mirror the newspaper with big headlines and then a visual. Even the packaging of both advertising and media, be it print or electronic, has a similar look and feel.

 

Which brings us to the heart of the matter: the consumer (or the reader/viewer) and what we are doing to his or her sensibilities. I believe that we use the consumer or the viewer far too often as the excuse to vitiate the ethics of both businesses: the business of advertising and the business of the media. And this is not just unfair but is equally a potent threat to both businesses as well. I worry about the hapless reader in Meerut who perhaps may not be savvy enough to realize what is paid editorial and what is not! I worry about the viewer who does not realize the dangerous nexus between those who report on companies on the stock market and then carry advertising talking about corporate performance: the manner in which we trick the reader/consumer is something that needs to concern us all and it seems everyone presently is happy that things like this are not seen to be unethical.

And this is exactly my point.

Both these businesses, be it advertising and media, for years, displayed a certain ethical norm in all that they did. One trusted ones newspaper as much as ones brand of soap; created relationships with various consumer segments on the strength of the benefits provided, not on the basis of the deceit or the hype you spread. Then arrived competitive times and we all genuinely believed we could short-circuit processes but what we have truly done is destroyed the edifice of trust on which both these businesses were built. And trust takes aeons to revive.

 

I do believe all is not lost: there are still many islands of excellence in both worlds, islands committed to the same levels of trust and transparency. Where commerce is secondary to belief and where money is still a currency of exchange and not the leitmotif of thought. There are many of us in the profession who still believe in old-world values and would be scared to death calling an editor to either plant a story or kill one. And then there are editors who are still more read and less seen. I guess there is no better time than this for introspection and immediate course correction. But if this course correction is to be meaningful and productive, then it must address the concerns of incest between these two worlds that seems be hurtling them towards a chasm which will be eternally dangerous. It is this that we need to beware of.

At the risk of flattery, journals like Seminar are still the conscientious voice of reason and sanity since so many around us are losing theirs. We need more Seminars. We need greater engagement of the mind and less of the wallet. That alone will enhance the value of both the advertising and editorial product.