55000 Punekars got a mild surprise on Thursday early morning, when on opening the door they found, instead of the Black New Roman font of the Times Of India, the red and blue serif font of DNA greeting them from their doorstep.
In my undergradute days as a business administration student, I remember hearing the case of how Coke uprooted Campa Cola in India in the late 80s. I tried confirming the anecdote, but couldn’t. Nevertheless, with the disclaimer that this is a completely unconfirmed story, I am narrating it, because what happened this last Thursday is directly related, even parallel to this story.
Campa Cola, a drink owned by the Pure Drinks group, owned almost complete market and mind share in India in the 80s. In the late 80s and early 90s, with the onset of liberalisation, it was possible for the first time, for giants like coke to tap the huge Indian markets.
Campa Cola's absolute mindshare and brand equity, combined with its strong retail network, made it impossible for Coke to make any possible dent in the market. Add to this situation the low penetration of TV back then, and the battle for India seemed already lost for Coke.
Nevertheless, Coke decided to setup its bottling plants, acquire its own distribution network and start its own marketing campaign. Then when all was ready, and the first bottle of coke was ready to come across the counter, in a one night blitzkrieg, Coke had all of Campa Cola's bottles collected and crushed from the retailers, by bribing them.
Overnight, Campa Cola lost the majority of its distribution capacity and by the time it could get its act together and have several million bottles made, Coke had already made its way to the Indian lips and minds. Campa cola was wiped out from the Indian soft drink market completely.
This is rather dramatic to be completely true, I agree. But, its veracity anyways doesn’t matter. That was a good 20 years back and that was cold drinks. What we saw on January 17th, was a rather brazen attempt by a newspaper company to bribe newspaper distributors into not distributing a certain paper, in the hope of capturing eyeballs and mindshare owned by a large competitor.
This worries me quite a bit. If I disliked coke, or if I hated their marketing warfare, or I loved Campa Cola, I would simply stop drinking coca cola.
But I can’t stop reading the news. And I can’t stop others from reading it either. I liked what I read of the DNA, but its ethics worry me. And a newspaper with dubious ethics is like a wolf in sheepskin. If today it can make compromises to obtain readership, tomorrow it might make compromises to retain or manipulate its readers opinions.
This also makes me think, why an evidently well-compiled newspaper might have to struggle so hard to capture our readerships. The Times of India, that has held sway over the subcontinent for almost a century now, has definite rooms for improvement. Surely we readers should be keen on considering alternatives which might be better or at least different.
Or is it possible that we as a society are so apathetic to our news, or so difficult to accept change, that we won’t exercise a choice until it is thrust down our throats? Is it possible that a new or different voice amidst us, goes unheard and unconsidered, merit notwithstanding, until it’s loud enough to drown all others?
This is the question we must ask and answer ourselves - and then deal with those answers.
