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Ramanujam Sridhar

The 125-year-old Hindu must look to its hoary heritage and formidable pedigree to keep up with the times.

I HAVE been reading The Hindu since 1959. Not unique. Nor am I its most distinguished reader. I belong to a generation that started reading newspapers when it was young. Not surprisingly, many of that generation, like me, took to wearing spectacles early in life. And not surprisingly, many of us still continue to be fiercely loyal and as passionate about the daily morning newspaper decades later, spectacles et al. In retrospect, I wish I had grown up as a reader. I started reading the paper with the sports page then and still do. So I confuse and confound my clever friends in advertising who start with teaser ads on pages 7, 9 and 11 and end with a big, all encompassing ad on page 13 because of my propensity to move up in life from page 15. Thankfully, my breed which starts backwards is only a small minority. But the readers of this 125-year-old `brand', for that is certainly what it is, are no small minority. Today, the paper (which never) boasts a circulation of 9,33,000 copies. And whilst all brands strive for loyalty, that is what the brand has easily acquired over the years from its readers.

Every brand has different facets and every newspaper different sections. To me sports, to my uncle Carnatic music, to my cousin politics and to my children, entertainment, perhaps. But that aspect of that newspaper delivered the best within the category. If you read Fingleton you would find others wanting. I remember going to Bombay for my summer holidays in the midst of the English cricket season and agitatedly checking the hawkers and newspapers in Matunga for a copy of The Hindu. My life was incomplete, as I am sure is that of my son who studies in Mumbai today. I missed Fingleton and he misses Ted Corbett, but we both and several others miss The Hindu if we don't read it. In a sense, the statement of one of the readers during the "strike days" might be turned around to say that The Hindu is a pretty good newspaper which has somehow become a very bad habit (a weakness, if you will) for several thousand people like me.

Today, Bangalore has 10 English newspapers, several of which come home, and I read The Hindu first. One of the indicators of a brand's strength is how incomplete the consumer's life is without the brand.

I daresay The Hindu has to be a very strong brand, for many of our lives would have been incomplete without it. `The Triplicane Six', as the founding fathers were called, created a legacy that reached further, much further than the original 80 readers who read it in its cyclostyled form.

One of the strong pillars of The Hindu brand has been its technology. I am one of those people who don't really care as much for the technology as to what technology can do for me. In the early days of desktops, my tentative and furtive attempts to guide the mouse into hitherto unexplored pastures provided great amusement to my family members who seemed like `technowizards' in comparison to the technophobe that I was and steadfastly continue to be. And to me `printing technology' or its advancement simply meant a better-printed newspaper, pleasant and easy on the eyes.

The Hindu has several technological innovations to its name, whether the facsimile edition or having its own private aircraft to reach its readers early. And this has ensured that the brand has stayed ahead technologically, forcing its competition to continually play technological catch-up with the paper of my choice, very often with limited, if any, success.

Another feature of successful brands is their ability to last and last even as others bite the dust. Three years, or so the sage said, was the trial by fire for a newspaper brand in pre-Independence India. The Hindu, as it completes 125 years, has faced several challenges successfully.

How do brands continue to sustain their leadership even as generations change? Coke, arguably the most valuable brand in the world (notwithstanding the pesticide cloud), has demonstrated this globally. The Hindu has demonstrated this, albeit on a smaller, more local scale. But no brand can afford to sit back on its laurels in the continually shifting sands of consumer preferences. Old consumers die, new are born. Newer, younger, more exciting options appear everyday. The back pages of the competition are hardly what a family should see. And yet, as lifestyles, preferences and consumers change, a brand too must change.

A print ad for The Mail.

How does a brand contemporarise without compromising on its basic value is the newspapers' ongoing challenge? And in all fairness, `the prim old lady of Mount Road' might just have to unwind a little, if not actually let her hair down. Although one must concede that it is easier said than done. In a quest to get new customers, no brand can afford to alienate its current loyal customers. Yes, 59 per cent of the population of India is below the age of 24. In my desire to reach out to them, I should not alienate someone who has been my reader for 59 years.

This leads me to the last (and definitely not least) important question. Who exactly is The Hindu reader? Is he a retired executive sitting in a grandfather's chair, savouring his filter coffee in a dubarah even as he reads The Hindu? Or an active, attractive, middle-aged socialite living on Boat Club Road? A brilliant engineer in NASA originally from Srirangam who reads its online edition or an MCA seeking a job? Probably all of these. For different reasons and sections. And yet the perception (I hope I am wrong on this) is the first. The Hindu reader is a `Mylapore Mama'. Sadly enough, one of the few things that we know is that perception is reality. The Rolling Stones magazine addressed this wonderfully with its `perception reality' campaign. So did The Mail. Or David Abbott's much celebrated "I never read The Economist" headline and below that in small print, was the clincher "Management trainee, age 42"), or this one: "Is your copy of The Economist always AWOL (Abducted while on lunch break)?"

I am a great believer in the power of advertising, to build brands, even media brands perhaps. There exists a significant opportunity for The Hindu which has been described as "a national voice with a Southern accent" to communicate. The Hindu could tell the truth freely, be humane, contribute to the social good and tell the world about it.

Howard Schultz, the Managing Director of Starbucks, said, "A brand has to feel like a friend." And The Hindu has a million friends in its readers. And yet any brand has multiple targets and customers. There is the user, the advertiser and the influencer, recommender, the advertising agency. What do these people feel about The Hindu? There is no denying the `halo effect' that some clients and brands feel about their ad's presence in The Hindu.

The era has witnessed tumultuous changes — bartering of editorial for advertising revenue, creeping corruption in journalism and negotiators with whom interaction is depressingly frustrating, avoidable even (given a choice), but inevitable.

In media, more than anywhere else, change is a process, not an event. And maybe the greatest challenge for The Hindu is to make its newspaper a `habitual choice' to advertisers and agency as well. In its long, illustrious 125-year history, the `Oracle of Mount Road' has faced several challenges, each one more daunting than the other. It just has to dig into the past to conquer the future. That would be the ultimate interplay of continuity and change.

(The writer is CEO, brand-comm.)

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