This brings us to the much debated question – Should media houses lend their brand name to initiatives that they cannot positively influence?
A quick analysis of the leading English news organisations from the around the world indicates that many organizations lend their brand name to only those initiatives that are in some way aligned to their core business or where they have subject matter expertise.
Common initiatives include:
1. Events/ Conferences - Many news organizations lend their brand to events which they sponsor as a way to create greater awareness of the issues impacting their readers. Leading journalists from the organization are invited as speakers to facilitate and drive meaningful discussion and ensure that the lesser heard voices are heard. The topics discussed are often familiar to the journalist and could be widely reported by him/her.
A case in point is the Economist, which organizes conferences to bring policy makers, businesses and citizens together for a common cause. Another example is the American City Business Journals Group, which has around 40 newspapers focused on small and medium businesses, and holds breakfast events to help connect small businessmen with speakers they would like to hear from. The organization uses its relationships and/or influence to get those speakers who are otherwise inaccessible to its readers.
2. Blogs – This is a common section today in most news organization websites where journalists, eminent personalities as well as readers can post their views. At times, issues emerging from such blogs have found their way into news. Seattle based Post- Intelligencer, in fact stopped brining out its newspaper and changed it business model to blog-based aggregation of news where reporters in combination with bloggers provide extensive news coverage.
3. Job sites – The Economist recently started a job site that specially focuses on recruitment in sectors such as development, international public sector, NGO, Academia, Humanitarian and charity jobs. This reflects the jobs advertised in the print version of the magazine and gives an opportunity for many job providers to take their advertisements online to reach a larger audience. Most general news dailies either have an online section that lists the jobs which have appeared in the print editions or have a separate division that runs a job site.
In India, quiz contests are a popular activity for news organizations to promote. Quiz contests are aligned to a newspaper’s core competence – sharing knowledge. Many a time, most of the questions can come from reports / features in the newspaper.
The Hindu Group sponsors two Quizzes – The Young World Quiz and the Business Line Ad Club quiz. Business Today till recently used to run a Quiz (and a Debate) competition for B-school students and corporates called ‘The Acumen’. The entire quiz planning and execution is outsourced to specialist third parties to ensure independence. Only the event funding and part of the prize money is provided by these organizations. Incidentally, ET has been organizing the Brand Equity Quiz competition, hosted by Derek O’Brien for 20 years.
What comes closest to the ET Young Leader’s programme with respect to its objectives is The Hindu MetroPlus Theatre Festival. The festival has looked beyond the National School of Drama and its alumni and picked lesser known talents from amateur theatre and given them an opportunity to enter professional theatre. By doing so it has indicated that talent and leadership in theatre can be found outside of a professional institution.
Does the ET Young Leaders programme have similar potential to identify less known leaders? It does, provided it takes greater interest in broadening the scope of the programme to give confidence to a wider range of youngsters to compete and win. Merely outsourcing all elements of the process will not help.
For now, ET has in some way benefited from the Young Leaders Programme. It now has a database of young achievers and future business decision makers (those who registered for the programme) who it can target for selling other initiatives/ products. It also has strengthened contacts with potential big ticket advertisers, namely the companies that the winners and panel of leaders represent. Given the business savvy minds at work in the ET’s corporate office, one cannot rule out a televised version of the ET Young Leader’s Programme in the coming years.
(The authors are marketing and communications professionals and the article represents their views. They blog at www.straighttalkwitharch.blogspot.com and www.doctersoccer.blogspot.com respectively)
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