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Tuesday, May 24, 2005
And are you a prosumer?
The Times of India says:
Basically, they claim to have undertaken "a massive direct contact programme in which thousands of households were visited and asked to offer their opinion on a host of subjects," and, having done this, designed a newspaper that will be "the first paper designed for—and by—the young Mumbai reader." This is, of course, the upcoming Mumbai Mirror.
The article, the TOI's front-page anchor (at least in the Mumbai edition), has no byline, and has clearly been written by a marketing man, mixing cliched marketing jargon with supposed youth lingo. Interestingly, Mumbai Mirror seems to be positioning itself in the same way as DNA has in their advertising: as a newspaper shaped by the reader. It will be interesting to see how the product actually is, after all this frenetic brand-building.
Update: For more jargon, click here.
Newspapers have conventionally been made by publishers and editors. However the reader is steadily metamorphosing into a prosumer (producer-consumer)—as evident from the huge phenomenon of 'blogs' that have invaded cyber space over the past few years.
Bennett, Coleman & Co, the publishers of The Times of India—and a group that has been known to break with convention—has decided to harness the ever-increasing assertiveness of the reader to launch the first co-created newspaper in the country. [Sics here and there.]
Basically, they claim to have undertaken "a massive direct contact programme in which thousands of households were visited and asked to offer their opinion on a host of subjects," and, having done this, designed a newspaper that will be "the first paper designed for—and by—the young Mumbai reader." This is, of course, the upcoming Mumbai Mirror.
The article, the TOI's front-page anchor (at least in the Mumbai edition), has no byline, and has clearly been written by a marketing man, mixing cliched marketing jargon with supposed youth lingo. Interestingly, Mumbai Mirror seems to be positioning itself in the same way as DNA has in their advertising: as a newspaper shaped by the reader. It will be interesting to see how the product actually is, after all this frenetic brand-building.
Update: For more jargon, click here.
