Is lack of creativity affecting the print medium?

Is the quality of print advertising affecting the efficacy of the medium? This was a question the IAA-India chapter posed to four advertising and marketing leaders. Speaking for the motion were Mitrajit Bhattacharya, president and publisher of the Chitralekha Group, and Sandip Tarkas, CEO (Sports, Media & Special Projects) at Future Group. Those who disagreed that there was a lack of creativity in print were Rana Barua, CEO, Contract India, and Kamal Basu, Marketing & PR Head, Volkswagen. Edited excerpts from the discussion:

Name the ads that won laurels for the creative leaders of the advertising industry. Chances are that you will come up with names like Fevicol ka majboot jod , Cadbury Dairy Milk kuch khaas hai hum sabhi mein , Happydent tera dil roshan , Tata Tea Jaago re and so on. All these ads are invariably television commercials. When some leading creative directors were interviewed for a television show they said that they spent less than 5 per cent of their time creating print advertisements. That’s when print contributes to nearly half of the advertising pie.

In regional media, which makes a significant contribution in the print space, the apathy is even more evident. A major cosmetic brand during a Ganpati festival some years ago ran an ad in a regional magazine. The ad said “Vighnakarta” (the one who creates obstacles) instead of Vighnaharta (the god who removes obstacles). All hell broke loose after that ad was released and the creators of the ad had to apologise. Another brand that was advertising for rice bran oil advertised it as Rice ‘Brand’ Oil. Talk about getting lost in translation. This happens regularly in regional advertising and these are all big brands. So what exactly are you doing for your brands? The idea is not to run down specific ads. This is about highlighting the systemic failure in creating effective print ads.

To end on a lighter note, let me take you through a different side of print advertising that is the classified section. A gentleman from Jamshedpur went all the way to Kolkata to release a matrimonial ad with a large media house in the East. He gave the ad in Bengali and asked them to translate it into English. Finally when the newspaper came out on Sunday, he was the butt of jokes in his whole town. The name of the gentleman, Ravi Som, had also been translated by the newspaper to Sunday-Monday. The person who was translating thought it was an abbreviation of Raviwar and Somwar (as Sunday and Monday are called in large parts of India). The rot is not just restricted to display, but goes all the way down to classifieds.

When the topic came to me I was purely wondering what’s the debate all about? How many of you remember a talking newspaper? Then there was another ad with a metallic jacket, one with a French window and so on. As marketers today, the big issue is clutter. It’s not just the clutter within the segment but also clutter to catch the consumer’s attention. This clutter is in every advertising medium including print. The only way to fight this clutter is through creativity and innovation. We do that all the time. Any innovation can earn the print media owner anywhere up to 200 per cent of the regular advertising rate. It could even be more. So there will be no print media owner who will say no to innovation as it is a revenue generator. There have been cases of five pages of jackets before you came to the front page of news. For the launch of a new brand we invited the top five print media brands. These brands would account for 35 per cent of print media spends. We asked them to come back to us with an innovation that had never been done before. And that would not be a advertising jacket, because that has been done before. All the five groups came back to us with multiple choices.

The newspapers know that their power exists because of the strength of their readership. Hence they will not do anything that goes against their reader’s interest. To me this debate is a non-starter. Innovation can only be limited by your own imagination. For me, print was always innovative and will continue to be so. I remember during the early days of television there was this big hue and cry about whether print would be able to withstand the onslaught of the audio visual medium. Time has a very different story to tell. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Our print innovation has got fantastic results. Even with the onslaught of digital media there is still room for everyone to co-exist as long as every medium reinvents and innovates at its own end.

Creativity has been declining over a period of time. One article from the US spoke about declining standards of creativity and showed a direct co-relation between creativity and competitiveness. Another benchmark article highlights that even as IQ has been rising the creative quotient has been declining. Then there was an Indian article about two years ago which asked about 50 people from the advertising and marketing fraternity if creativity was dead in print. The answer was yes.

So what do you do when you have nothing to say? You shout. That’s visible in our television debates. It’s also true with our jacket advertising. They try to occupy as much share of voice as they can.

The point that Kamal was making earlier about jackets, I beg to differ. Jackets are not creativity. They are only shouting to be heard. One must not confuse innovation with creativity.

In the early days of audio-visual advertising, brands would merely replicate their print ads as a slide. Internet advertising also suffered from the same issues in its infancy. But the real issue is that all these media suffered from this issue in their early days. But when you suffer from this problem in middle age it’s a very different issue as in the case of print. In a mature medium the standards of creativity are declining when you need them the most. Particularly in print media, it has been hit the hardest.

It’s always an advantage to come in last. We are debating two completely different statements. One is the decline of creativity and the other is the efficacy of the medium. I will tackle one part. Efficacy is the impact on society and as a result the ability to drive influence. A friend of mine described print advertising as an idea, a carefully composed picture, a bunch of carefully chosen words using the medium of print. You cannot hide behind gimmicks and keep on tweaking it as you go along. After it leaves your hand, it thrives or dies. That’s the power of the print medium. If we keep looking around us at the kind of work that’s been happening, all categories that advertise in print are trying to get the message across in the most effective way where agencies and clients are working together.

Coming to the efficacy part, if the medium was suffering, I do not think so many clients would have been looking at this medium. It could be a case of consumer habits changing. The medium is being used for what the medium has to offer.

It is impossible to romance a static medium. But if you look at the kind of advertising that’s going on and the ways in which the messaging is coming across, both clients and agencies are going about it in a meticulous way. This is why you have not one but four jackets in newspapers, multiple covers in a magazine. I want to re-emphasise the point that it is the medium that is influencing the creative and not vice-versa.