 to the E4M webinar presented by Hindustan Times. Now we are all aware of how newspapers in major cities like Mumbai had to stop printing for some time going to the pandemic. Of course the newspapers are back now but what happened in the last few months did raise questions like whether the loyal reader will lose the long cultivated habit of turning the pages of the good old newspaper and switch to other mediums instead. You know have digital and TV benefited due to the lockdown. Are they getting more millennial attention today? And lastly whether print will fight back. And that brings us to the topic of discussion today. The changing phase of news and content consumption for millennials. The webinar is presented by Hindustan Times and joining me are Anuja Mishra, VP and head marketing, personal care and hygiene at God's reach consumer products limited. Hi Anuja. Hi Neeta. We have Anil Vishwanathan, director marketing chocolates at Mondelez India. Hi Neeta. Hi Anil. We also have Rana Baroova, group CEO of Havas Group India. Hi Rana, how are you? Good, good to see you Neeta. And we have Vikram Sakuja, a group CEO and OH Madison world. Hi Vikram. Good to see you. And lastly we have Rajan Bhalla, group CMO, HD Media Limited and Rajeev Biotra, executive director, revenue, HD Media Limited. Hi Rajeev. Hi Rajan. Hi everybody. Hi Neeta. Good to see all of you. So a big welcome to all of you and also to everyone who's watching. Do send us any questions that you may have and our panel shall be very happy to address it through the course of the discussion maybe towards the point. So let me start with you Rajan. You know I remember seeing this ad by HD during lockdown. You know it literally said the paper itself is safe. All plans are fumigated and sanitized. Now this was the time when people were either not getting newspapers or were afraid to touch it. Now so for all those physical hardcore newspaper readers out there like you has not changed in the lockdown? Well you know I think lockdown can also be broken into phases just as unlocking is kind of broken into phases. I think the first phase of lockdown which is really around April May thereabouts. A lot of people just didn't know what was happening and they were not very sure. I mean obviously the whole piece of pandemic which we are now kind of getting used to and living along with was not the case at that time and there was a lot of uncertainty on various counts. Very clearly the newspaper distribution got impacted. Very clearly that there were myths about newspaper being a carrier of virus which it definitely isn't and you know I think both us and TOI and the industry per se tried their best to educate consumers that you know this is not a surface that can actually transmit any virus and therefore you don't need to be worried about it at all and we have also taken a lot of steps of fumigation plans our supply chain etc etc but obviously some consumers were and RWAs were okay with newspapers coming in some were not and for those who were not obviously digital was the next medium they would resort to because not having to read news in the morning at least for some of us is a big challenge so you know you have to reach out and get your news. So the PDFs started floating around which was illegal and there were different sources which kind of gave PDFs of all the various brands that you could think of including international brands that people started getting but I think in due course a lot of them started switching to e-papers but I'm very happy to say that you know now where we are today I think in the in the in the heartland of vernaculars we are back to almost about 90% distribution which is absolutely phenomenal and we are also seeing very very strong pickup coming back in the metros of which deli is really leading the back and doing doing doing the best at the moment. Yeah let me come to you Mr. Sakuja now you know how exactly are the millennials consuming news and content today after the pandemic struck you know literally news TV news review worship is at an all-time high especially I think you know it's it's pretty much gone down from 7 to 21% at least in the initial months it did. So tell me how has it been? Okay it's like this the before the pandemic if you have to look at overall news and content consumption I would say that look I'm relying my base on on all India basis and then we can cut down to metros and and stuff like that. It's pretty much clear that whether it is news or whether it is content TV is actually the ruling medium where most numbers actually come in to consume in terms of reach and even the time spent is coming most on TV. Now when it comes to news I would still say in terms of pure numbers print would come in second followed by digital and I hear the slight qualifier data sources in digital are unfortunately very well the murky and they're not very precise so if I looked at two data sources one told me that during June-July it had actually crossed digital had crossed what print is readership is all about online for news and I was taking key titles and viewing their readership on IRS as well as the print through whatever I was looking at com school and similar web. Now one data source told me it was equal to print another data source told me it was 25 percent of print so there is a big so even in the kind of reporting of readership online I think there is a little bit left to be desired to make it truly authentic but I would say number one TV news at the moment print is number two digital is number three in catching up and on the content side right now OTT is and whatever else you have is a distant number two to TV at this point in time also catching up. Mr. Baruba would you like to tell us you know to what extent have the brakes in the physical delivery of print media propelled the shift to digital? I think you know if I just take you know what Vikram is saying and if I to just take this point forward I think you know it is a habit that was emerging even pre-COVID so while I'm not getting into the figures and what's coming out you know pre-COVID or what's happened now I think there was a bit of a shift that was happening to the news as a pattern and I'm talking about a bit of a link with the millennial behavior and how they were interacting but there's been a shift towards you know consumption and the way we were consuming a lot of news because you know news is dynamic and the only big glaring example I think we are all discussing and which is becoming a very critical issue is the reason why print I think sometimes this causes because naturally is the genuity and the entire genuine news that you get versus a so much so much of fake and scam that is happening in the online media which we've all been exposed to in the last four months especially during lockdown. So I think you know if I take it as a habit consumption pattern I think you know we are naturally going to see a shift in terms of online consumption the way we are going to consume news whether it's in terms of quick news whether it's in going to consume news which is you know there are you know the generations which are awake through the night they're picking up news you know when you know recently when one of the very big celebrities of Hollywood died there were people who actually saw the news at 6 a.m. in the morning because that's how fresh it was it came out at that hour and that's how the world got to know by 7 a.m. everybody in India knew that you know you know there was this celebrity who had passed away but the point is that you know up with that you also start questioning is it true news is it fake because I remember many many many questions were going down the round is this true is this honest has it has he passed away I think we need to be very clear that there is a difference between behavior consumption and there's a difference between what we are reading is as two different habits. That's good news for you Mr. Bhalla I mean of course the credibility part of it is supreme people you know pick up that newspaper because they are sure that this news is true and valid but you know in the past few months you know hard copies of newspapers have you know had seen lesser pages of course the lack of advertisements were also evident in April May and June period but recently we saw some regional newspapers you know released 50 page editions with a lot of advertisements. Can one can once say newspapers are slowly inching back towards pre-leavoured Covid business or is it too soon to say that Mr. Biotrake would you like to take that the revenue expert. No I'm far from being an expert so I'll only talk data so yeah yes it has been a sequential improvement and I would say that languages have possibly seen a better resilience overall than compared to English and in languages I would say the industry is actually now already August month already operating at almost 80% of last year volumes. Now I don't have exact data, Biotrake will possibly be a better expert but I'm suspecting that most mediums including television and even digital mediums are operating possibly in the same of volumes compared to last year I'm assuming so I would say print is also possibly keeping pace in terms of having arrived at a certain level compared to last year in terms of volumes so we are pleased with what we have seen so far and I think festive and you're right some of the publications did have actually most of us on different days have had some good days in the last month. So Balki editions hopefully will be back soon. Yeah already looking at 70-80% of last year volumes are already there so we are hoping that things will come back to some semblance of last year levels. I'd like to bring in our brand marketers in here. Mr. Vishwanathan would you say advertising monies are shifting at a very quick pace towards digital or print is still out there strong? I think Neeta what's happening as Vikram has clarified already I think you know at a broad level the assumption has gone up across media including the people at home and consuming all kinds of content I think what you observed is that the assumption has gone up across predominantly television and digital for the very reasons that we've been speaking about at least in the early parts and that is kind of sustained across different time day parts etc etc I think at a broad level overall consumption has gone up across media so in that context you know for most brand marketers we go where the consumers are and get guided by at a very broad level from a reach standpoint by you know the kind of number that we are tracking and all the industry benchmarks that's coming through so I don't think you make significant changes in that context per se in terms of the priority of media. Nothing at a fundamental level at least for some consumer cohorts Neeta the other element that I want to bring in is one is consumption content and the other is engagement with the content and when I look at engagement and in the context especially of millennials we do find that there are some media where the where engagement is far more enabled and possible and that's resulting in them spending more time them having a better quality of engagement and that's also you know validated through the responses we get to our activations so it's kind of a hybrid situation where there might be consuming content somewhere and then coming something somewhere else to engage with it and that I think that element of engagement is important what we are seeing specifically for the millennials kind of digital first I mean the two things that dramatically changes an ability for a brand or anybody to speak to me on a one-on-one basis and the ability for me to engage back or give my feedback I think these two changes which is not you know kind of existed in the classical situation is you know one to many kind of a broadcast kind of a method in the past I think this this is resulting a significant change in the millennials are engaging with content and I think that's the other bit that's you know comes into consideration as you think about putting in our media monies so I think as we're building up our plans beyond reach I think engagement then becomes a big driver and there definitely are seeing shifts specifically the kind of time spent among the younger consumer cohorts on digital is definitely influencing spending especially those brands which are catering to those urban mediums. Did it also happen to you Ms. Mishra you know wherein you know you had advertising money which would otherwise go to print but now you're pumping it into digital you know as per like Mrs. Apuja can back me I think the print pitch medicine report said that in Q1 print pretty print ad volumes degrew by about 71 79 percent so is that something that your brand is also you know looked at and yeah so if I think it's been a it's been a function of first many variables in many factors you know to sort of answer your question very sharply I think the first quarter which is also really sort of you know the setting up of the pandemic are definitely the print advertising they go down in Rajeev versus talk about you know that you know that immediate sort of cutting down of newspapers across our communities and so on that was pretty much very uncertain period I think you know as much for marketers that's also peak season for many categories you know setting into summers particularly for the soaps categories and so on so I think definitely you know TV which has always been a larger chunk of where the money has been you know sort of certainly reserved that chunk but it was digital big benefit in that quarter I'd say you know specifically where I think you know the need of the brand was to talk to the consumer with a far higher-lengthed empathy and connecting you know to the let's say means of the consumer during COVID so case in point let's say being you know particularly in hygiene categories right where there is this sudden flux of advertising or monies you know way higher than let's say what we were seeing over the last couple of years what was really important we don't kind of completely agree with Anil on that point you know it's very important to be then not just looking at each but you know as much building authenticity you know as much giving you know the consumer the chance of interaction hearing them out you know why you talk to them I think in that perspective I think digital has clearly seen an acceleration right here over the last three to four months I'm sure the joy is still out right in terms of which is going to be the remaining mediums and news or content and so on I think digital has definitely seen a you know plurio of acceleration over the last now couple of quarters um and and I think that that was very evident though you know though I'd sort of again put a few disclaimers around Italy it's really sort of you know upon the brand in the road of the brand and so on but but keeping very particularly to that quarter I think the prince pens definitely I was to compare it to last year same time did sort of see a little bit of a pinch there so we spoke about the you know the advertisement part of it I'd like to talk about readership Mr. Sakuja you kind of touched upon it I'd like to come back to you you know India has for years defied the global trend of print media losing readership do you think the pandemic is going to change that for us um not profoundly so starting point again backing up a bit what we are going to see what what you're going to see is multimedia consumption and more of it India is a very heterogeneous market so I would wager that about on average an average Indian who's exposed to any of the mediums is consuming maybe about for up to five hours perhaps on average in a day okay with the higher end of the entire average into the range the metro n ccsa kind of young millennials at that they may go as high as even nine or 10 hours but if you have to if I have to look at us when I was doing a global job I was looking at it and then at that time we saw that it went up or even markets like the US which had 12 hours of media consumption went up upwards of 13 and obviously we are talking about people are using mediums concomitantly together so there's multiple watching tv with your mobile and all that so I think what we're going to be seeing is more consumption of various mediums before you start seeing actually some completely dropping off that said print what we've seen is there has been a gradual decline in leadership over the years if I say gradual total readership that is reading at a one month level has not really gone down that much we have about 400 million of the one point will 110 crores that is actually measured is actually reading right now the 40 crores are reading a paper once in a month but if you have to look at the law read in the last one day that's what we call average issue readership that has slipped a little bit from about 17 percent of all is gone down to maybe about 14 15 percent of all the important point out here is did the millennials which is really early 20s to late 30s they are against an average issue readership of maybe 15 average then about 13 so they are not that much lower where you're actually seeing the decline is in Gen Z the people who are right now teenagers okay so I'm not I'm expecting in print it is going to be a gradual decline and then it may be a precipice when a new generation which was not sort of weaned on to newspapers weaned off newspapers are all or having them right now if they suddenly stop you'll suddenly see a sharp drop but nothing for the next I think next five to eight years you'll see a gradual decline if I I'd like to come to Gen Z but before that quickly like to ask Mr. Barua you know we've seen several newspapers shut down in this period but on the positive side like Mr. Biotra said you know we're trying to they're trying to bounce back bulky editions are expected to be back soon but in this brief time you know during the pandemic when there were there was a problem with newspaper availability you know there was a habit that was formed people had switched to e-papers now of course newspapers are back coming back to its former glory slowly but do you think you know e-paper is going to work just fine for them I mean it's all about creating that habit right yeah so like I said you know I think you know like you know even in my initial answer I said that you know this is a clear habit and you know it's not about whether print is going to go down of course the numbers will come down but print through digital is here to stay and it's a given that you know the you know I will still read and you know the kind of medium that we are talking about is the millennial and I completely agree with Vikram it's the Gen Z where the problem will be that's a separate conversation but if I look at the current generation and the way they're adopting to the medium it will be you know so today when print is back there is enough and more numbers which is showing and we've got enough and more clients to back that entire thing to say that the first thing they wanted to know is that can we go back into the print medium can I get that particular piece that I used to take can I get back my weekend thing so the interest is back and there are certain categories and certain segments and certain clients who will stick to print you know come what may now when I get back to the content that you're talking about and how I consume the content there will be the entire population there will be clear divide between the people you know who would wait for the print to come in like people like me and there are many I know who you know at 6 30 if the print is not at home and I congratulate both Rajiv and Rajin for the fabulous HD which has come out you know in the beginning of this week which looks so so dynamic you want to read it but then when you start consuming the content into the the new habit if you call it or the way we are reading the e-paper there's the mint which you consume through your newspapers you're consuming a lot of these through the entire habit so it's now getting into a habit of reading the print which is in the heart version and you're also reading because there's a lot of news which is happening late at night you know so there is stuff that's coming up in the photos which you can see okay what's the count of corona virus what happened you know is what happened post the budgeting thing what happened post the GDP going down you look at 10 30 p.m you'll have something up updated on mint in the last two minutes now that's something you pick it up then when you want to read it properly maybe you see it in the morning so you know it's going to be a mix of both uh with you know but like I said the content has to be different for both the formats. Mr Bhalla let me now ask you you know how a legacy print players reinventing themselves to fit in the current scheme of things like Mr Baruavanshan you just re-launched your flagship publication in the stand times tell us more about how you're going about it. Well you know as I as I said Neeta I have a very short presentation also that I can share with the group and and the people around but but really you know a lot of what I'm going to say in the presentation a synopsis of that is that fundamentally it's really about getting into the skin of the millennial consumer and and that's what we have been doing very very vigorously not that it only started a year back but this specific project we started working on about a year back and and I think I so resonate with what Rana just said uh the you know print is not a medium for breaking news okay that is not what this is and it can't be right because the word is now one single place things happen at night and you know it's whenever it happens and you put your newspaper to bed every day around 11 o'clock what happens after that is all stuff that people don't and I think that aspect very clearly said and what Vikram said earlier that multimedia consumption by millennials is is the order got us to think how we integrate the print and the digital platforms in a manner that the consumption habit of even the print changes very drastically over a period of time and I'll explain that of how we did and the other thing that it led us to is our new positioning which actually puts a lot a lot of pressure back on us which is first voice last word first voice eludes to the digital news eludes to breaking stories eludes to bringing the relevant news to consumers first and the last voice actually is about the credibility of the platforms be it digital or be it print where you know the journalistic values and journalistic credibility comes into play so those are really the tenets of how we how we went about it but would be happy to share it with the group now that's actually quite interesting first voice and last word nice uh mr biotra i'd like to ask you uh on one side you have millennials who are perhaps uh perhaps hooked to the new age news news platforms like the quaint the wire who are literally built on that millennial mind mindset on the other hand uh you have the middle age or the elderly population who are post converts to digital because of the situation now who are you targeting through your new position and which it will be easier to get on board um okay uh actually this is more um uh rajas but look uh the unique thing about our product is that we have designed that's the dilemma that most editors are always uh confronted with their they have to design and create uh this product which appeals to uh all kinds of cohort so while we have certain uh done a lot of research certainly done as rajan mentioned a lot of research to uh and vikram mentioned earlier wrong with the readership percentages of the millennials as well as well as news papers are concerned so we have taken extra effort to make sure that we are a little more appealing to them but at the same time we have to uh we we have to pander the needs of our loyal readers as well so i would say we are we are for all rajan do you want to add to this i leave it to you no i think i i i would rather say something uh on your behalf i think what is also happening this is one side which is the consumer there is another side which is the customer even customers i would reckon uh you know whether it is anil here anuja all of those are also looking at integrated platforms and integrated solutions now it's not about just going to one medium and trying to do something it's about how you can actually play out your message in a manner that you maximize your reach you maximize your engagement because today's consumer is a you know consumer who wants to get into a dialogue with the brand and therefore create the right impact so i think uh uh you know what what we are really very excited about and i think rajiv now leads the organization on print with digital all of those solutions which are integrated solutions for the customers and not just about print and you know all of that i think that's also a big change uh that we want to drive uh in in in the industry as we go forward i'd like to uh ask uh mr vishwanathan and uh miss mishra no what does uh an integration like this mean for a brand like yours i think uh integration in many ways uh allows us to create the kind of desired impact as rajin said and i think uh you know i best served explaining through an example and i think more recently we had this uh interesting initiative that we put out uh through the covid times which was the thank you uh initiative with keby dermin so uh you know as part of the entire campaign the heart of it was the thank you bar that we had created we need different languages that we sold on retail kind of a telegraphic uh method to land an idea about expressing gratitude and acknowledging and creating a sense of connection uh with others uh and then we amplified that through uh television comms uh we amplified that through a partnership with the times we amplified that through a partnership with geo and digital uh and then what we did was then what was right for the medium to ensure that that message lands so while we created we crafted with the help of our agency partners a very nice set of uh pieces of content on television their print came handy was to say that you know it is not an idea to sell more chocolate but also to kind of drive a broader thought about acknowledging than acknowledged and how do we uh create awareness of this initiative in a more credible fashion is that print came in where you know we picked up stories a real life stories of people who are going about uh doing their bit uh at times like this at times of crisis like this and going beyond their call of duty to do something not for any recognition or not for want of anything in return but purely because they felt that they needed to do it and uh you know what the brand did in partnership was to you know acknowledge these people so i think again print then allows us to drive credibility on a thought that we think you know that brand has a point of view uh not just about communicating through interesting storytelling but also bring it to life in a credible fashion which was which we were able to do through print and then to you know close the loop with uh with a generation zed who possibly doesn't have so much of patience to read through an emotional story get him engaged on geo so that he's there on geo and he takes a geo pledge where he says thank you to somebody else and that other person get something as an acknowledgement so the that's what an integration allows you to do kind of elevate and create the impact for an idea otherwise it tends to get restricted to building awareness of the idea but then doesn't allow the consumer to experience it in a full list of fashion and of course for a brand like at bidaire milk you're also talking about a university target and it's important that we're able to get people at different parts of the consumer journey at different points and that's what an integration again allows us to so it actually does make sense for a brand like yours a mass brand like yours you know you can get the elderly population on one medium and you know you can get the million years of the other and that's a win-win yeah or the same across multiple ones very difficult to drive behavior i mean right down through down the funnel is also very difficult right i mean that's the kind of the holy grail that we're all chasing if you're able to achieve that it's great and i think that's where it's also getting phenomenally complex right you don't know where to catch whom so i think that's where the integration helps what about you miss misha what kind of boxes should it take for you so honestly uh nita it's it always has been and we continue to be your brand task or any marketer wakes up in the morning saying let me do some digital today or let me do some print i think it you know pretty much starts with what is the objective of my brand i can just again illustrate it with you know a very recent example with the entire pandemic waking out at gcpl we launched you know a master hygiene trademark under protect maybe on almost about 12 to 14 hygiene categories uh you know and by doing that the task was not any one or two you know where i could sort of you know with my convenience just use one medium and say this medium picks the boxes on everything i think in that sense marketing always has that conventional wisdom right where you do need reach you do need engagement you do have now a role of the influencers but you also have the role of again you know building a good geminess or credibility behind your brand we also did a digital task for you know just announcing that here is this complete range that's here to protect your family and you know interestingly um as much as we talk about digital and as much as i think i would be talking about let's say you know digital totally catching up and so on it's very interesting when you actually put start to put your tasks down on paper you realize that the fundamental role of each medium still pretty much holds true what we have changed a little temporarily is that you know maybe the numbers are sort of moved up and down but like let me sort of accent the word temporarily uh you know for us what is really important is that we're talking to the consumers contextually at the point of usage let's say you know which happens to digital i have a certain story telling to know about my brand which is best done let's say from you know television but when it comes to print you know the kind of credibility it gives in the kind of i think stay i get you know beyond the 40 in a 60 second in a 15 second and just the ability to let's say you know absorb the consumers energy and and attention is i think still its biggest asset so i think in that sense the way we would look at any medium you know wouldn't really sort of change each medium needs sort of rise to the occasion um uh you know and and and sort of essentially you know present its credibility and its um you know marriage to be chosen eventually miss a barua you know there was always this sizable difference in ad spots in between the digital medium and the traditional media now right now do you see that gap getting bridged considering digital has come in the spotlight now it is not just the secondary medium post the lockdown so this again has just a lockdown uh you know it's been just for the lockdown time there has been a bit of sport at pc but like you know if you saw the initial part when we started the presentation with numbers and all i think it's very clear that tv is naturally you know way ahead of the curve and also because you know what we just discussed we have two very clear marketers who were talking about how to choose the medium so for example you know this is uh you know if i'm choosing my target audience and i know exactly what i'm going to do television will continue to play a role which will be about storytelling which will be a fire engagement which will be about a certain you know efficacy medium which because i'll be able to reach out to a much wider audience much much wider audience you've seen the excitement water even like i feel is generating which is beyond all the issues and other controversies that we hear at the moment we hear that it is back you know we've had just too much of interest from most of our clients to say can we get up can you know is there an opportunity what can we do we don't get that kind of excitement that you get from any other medium which is you know first and foremost television so i think what happened with the last quarter was more about uh you know the purse strings had to be held on a lot of marketers had to be absolutely sensible because naturally it was a complete lockdown and even when the lockdown started opening partially you know you didn't know what was going on you know whether i could actually you know why would i spend what would i do so i would continue to engage with the consumers through a medium which was cost effective which would allow me to talk which would allow me to keep communicating because going out of a consumer's mindset is also harakiri you know it's something which comes from our group which is called the meaningful brand study it is amazing that you know if you are not continuing to have a purpose or a meaning in the consumer's mindset the consumers tend to you know you know how we are we forget you know what that brand is so i think digital played that little bit of a makeshift or a pattern where it did and then now finally you know hopefully if things start improving and we start seeing a better opening up and you know a bit more sensibility about the lockdowns and a bit more clarity about how we behave i think you will find digital playing the role profile that it was doing earlier and like you know because we'll be consuming multi-mediums you'll have print playing a very strong role continuing to roll with a combination of print and online and digital will be playing a bit more of a you know different profile maybe to like we said a younger audience which is engaging in a different way and television will continue to drive the medium for the brands which need to have a conversation and story which needs to be told you know with legacy players like in the sun times you know entering antrespass lands and you know through this kind of a novel integration between print and digital what do you think it will be like will it be advantage new age media platforms who have always been digital or will it be legacy media news organizations you know who have the credibility and are fast adapting to digital you put an either or question to me so no i'd say that at this point in time if there are legacy organizations media organizations versus just standalone online new age kind of publishers i think the legacy ones have a they have an advantage at this point in time they have an opportunity i should put it that the opportunity right now is i think we've spoken enough to say that different mediums have different roles i think very nicely put by hd themselves they say this is the first voice last word there is a medium for the first voice there will be there is a medium for the last word now in this in the i've done a plug for you rajan one drink now after that uh no but jokes aside the fact remains that i think the legacy media organizations if they are agile and if they are able to actually straddle both spaces they can actually have a much better job than somebody who's only doing say an online publishing job uh the part which i mean i'm just take moving this conversation into they have an opportunity to actually from a monetizing standpoint sell both so you can sell online as well as they can sell uh the legacy mediums like anelos talking about different mediums have different roles from an integration standpoint something's about awareness something's about engagement something's about authenticity credibility all the rest of it you can actually put different options that you've got available to you to the advertiser and say i'm one stop that at least does most of them however requires a fair amount of uh rejigging of your ad sales teams i don't know whether they're trained enough to right now sell the two mediums i don't even think so you know those things come in i think this is an entire piece about media equivalence and have a cost for thousand has got to be seen on online versus print versus tv what should be the terms of those equivalents there is also that entire piece of should i buy the inventory programmatically much cheaper from a platform or should i be buying it at a premium from a publisher right so i think this opens up the entire maybe pandora's box but i think it's an exciting pandora's box about what a legacy player can actually do to tap both their assets you know and i guess maybe just butting in to say that uh in many ways it's quite similar to any industry we talk about uh large existing legacy brands and insurgent brands and i mean the conversation is quite common everywhere right and i think specifically at times like this and kudos to ht to have chosen the relaunch at this kind of a time because at this time consumers are looking for all data series they are looking for brands that they can trust they want to engage and want reassurances from large grants i think in that sense you know they're very well placed by leveraging the situation per se but fundamentally there is a whole infrastructure there is a there is the whole legacy over a period of time that they can leverage and agility is what is required and i think they're demonstrating fabulous you know i think this is a time where we should get a sneak peek into what ht is actually doing with their new positioning first voice and last word so raja over to you yeah usually you know brand and your own presentations tend to get very boring i'll i'll try to make it interesting and very very short and and i think look at it more from the point of view of consumer inciting and how how we leverage those insights versus a story on what this new product is all about so let me let me just put it in that context and share it with you very quickly and then probably we can play out the no just something which which is very close to my heart as well which is the whole aspect of genuineness and credibility that you need to build around the brand and i think our film actually is only focused on building that out for him this time so very happy to share that with everybody here okay yeah will you put it up so let me just start with you know saying that this this whole project actually took us about a year of very deep consumer work i think the first six months actually went into consumer inciting both qualitative and quantitative understanding the millennial consumers about what they wanted what were the gaps what were the need gaps in consumption of news and content in general and and equally going into the the older segment to to make sure that we understand their current needs as well and do not alienate them as we build out the new proposition i think the second thing was about this whole piece of bringing credibility and legacy because you know we are a legacy company we started in 1924 and the entire story from the quill to the cursor is what we wanted to bring out and put out our values of clarity and credibility all of that had to be translated into a brand refresh which actually brings the old which is the legacy aspect and yet looks very contemporary uh and and that's what this new logo uh was all about and then obviously came the positioning which was about saying that this is a brand which stands for a certain set of values and agnostic of the platform so you could be on digital you could be on print uh the core values remain the same but digital lends the first voice to it and the last word is where the printed word makes all the difference so that's really the little story of how we how we went about doing it go ahead or can i do that from here no i can't seem to be yeah keep moving go to the next one please keep it short as i promised go to the next one for many of you who do not know about this but we started the company or Hindustan Times was launched in 1924 September of 1924 and Mahatma Gandhi himself uh launched the brand at that time and i think the core values that we built and you know at the time of the launch are something that we cherish which are around clarity and credibility and that's what we carry through uh irrespective of how the generations have moved or how how the periods have moved or how the competition is moved you can't move away from your core keep keep going again uh you know um there is there is a very interesting book we have put together which really talks about the different decades and how Hindustan Times has been right in the center of the various events that have happened across the world and you know how Hindustan Times has actually been a hard bringer of change uh transition and progress uh during this period so i won't spend time on each decade but should you should you be interested in looking at the book just just let us know we will we'll figure out a way to get it to you okay go forward yeah so different decades different eras different events keep going keep going please i think we've talked enough about the millennials i'll i'll skip this slide but i'll go to the next one uh so i think when it comes to the millennials i think in today's world um one of the pieces which is very important is the fact that there is so much of clutter uh there is so much of uh of news that you're not sure of i think rana mentioned about the news that he got and he said you know i wasn't sure whether it is true um and and i think in this whole aspect of fake news uh lack of credibility of what you hear sensationalism uh you know you definitely need mediums which are valid or trustable mediums for breaking news equally the printed word for credibility and the knowledge aspect of it and i think those two have to come together and this is not me saying that this is actually what we picked up out of the millennials go forward a whole lot of different need states and i think somebody again in the in the in the webinar talked about positive news i think very important very much uh picked up uh as as our inciting process went through i think health and wellness we all know is a huge area how would the post lockdown lifestyle change uh technology auto my passion travel etc etc personal finance with all this happening how am i going to manage my life my future how is the future of education going to change so all of these are some of the aspects which kind of you know brought us to look at content which i would call news i can use keep going i've already spoken about this uh keep going you can keep moving forward so uh you know that brought us all finally to this positioning which is first voice last word and while i'll show you a film uh here is what our manifesto said the truth needs to be voiced unapologetically without any prejudices the truth needs to be voiced carefully without twisting the facts the truth needs to be voiced transparently like a mirror that portrays well a true image the truth needs to be voiced daily on every medium every time because only when you voice the truth can the voice cut through all the noise in the sometimes first voice last word that's really the manifesto that we put out uh to to be very clear about how the brand's core is going to operate uh in different ways keep going keep going please next so here is here is the new paper for many of you who haven't seen and you know i'm going to explain this whole print digital interface on this slide and i'm going to repeat that again but really the starting point for us was how are the how do we get people engaged with the newspaper as opposed to just reading it passively and also given the fact that there is there is the digital medium which is picking up on news consumption pretty fast how do we kind of bring the two together i must at this point in time acknowledge a person called mario garcia who is one of the leading newspaper web designers in the word this if i'm not mistaken is his 780 first project across the globe almost 800 projects he's done and we roped him in and fortunately before the pandemic he was able to join us in january and we started with actually you know challenging all orthodoxies trying to bring in discontinuities that are going to change the way print medium is seen so i've already spoken about the masthead and all of that what you see on the top left just below the masthead is what we call a social card now social card is nothing but a very simple way when it comes to a print form there are people love to click something and share but when they want to share then they have to crop they have to find a way how to tweet it what to do with it we created standard formats which went through the paper which are very easy for people to just click and tweet similarly in the e-paper you will find that these social cards in the next three days will become tweetable so you can actually when you are looking at an e-paper you want to tweet something right from the paper you can do that from there or you can share it on facebook or you can share it on instagram so it becomes a very very shareable kind of proposition what you see below that are a set of icons and what you see embedded in the stories are qr codes so every story which is got something else that people should know about is addressed with a qr code these qr codes actually take you either to another part of the story which is related or in-depth part of that story or would take you to a video or would take you to a podcast or would take you to a graphic but the whole idea is that there is more to it that you can kind of engage with and not just engage with actually we call it experiencing engaging and expressing so you can share it with people you can express yourself you can express your views also we have here what you see on the top right you see here you know formats which are instagrammable i mean so you can actually just click this and you can put it in insta because these are all being created at page one plus it actually captures all the stories that cannot come on page one but are important stories for you to kind of look at on page two and then you see a whole lot of infographics that have come into play we've also got hd in five minutes so all the stories that you should be reading and you don't want to get that feeling or for more keep going i will just finish it in two minutes keep going please some other aspects but i'll skip that let me just come to hd weekend this sunday by the way you must get hold of your copy of hindustan times if you really want to see what a weekend newspaper looks like and this again is is full of stuff which is going to be you know catering to the millennials on news they can use pieces on culture lifestyle gadgetry and much more so that's the new weekend and as you can see this button and the weekend branding is very today is very millennial in the way it has been crafted including the design and content keep going please obviously we also have the entire hd city totally revamped and check it out on friday saturday sunday you will get to see some new destinations and amazing new way of presentation which is digitally as i said completely digitally integrated go forward the brunch actually changes completely because you know because of the millennials the the the influencers and the role models suddenly change and they become far younger so what you see is a lot of social cards here in different colors and forms which means a lot of different influencers that you can just click and tweet you can also see your social cards here right in the middle and you know various content forms which are going to be changing completely go forward please uh needless to say the entire portfolio is revamped the only other highlight i would say is that while schools are closed we're going to bring a version which is a e-paper version for school kids which is going to be especially crafted for them and as you can see this front page looks very different from the front page of the main hindu sunrise go forward please i'm almost done already talked about the digital integrations keep going obviously all of this translates into our digital product which is being launched now and it is in two phases the final avatar of this actually finally comes up in january but uh you know this is the first of the block uh in terms of the repurposed and redesigned the digital platform please go you go forward i'm pretty much done i think the last message that i would leave is that for us at hindustan times a newspaper maybe a business but hindustan times has been a crusade as put by dr keke birla i just now request uh to play a short film which you guys can take a look at which is all about as i said what anu just said earlier genuineness and credibility of the brand go ahead please it's a human thing to want the truth it doesn't matter if you're older or part of the youth we certainly don't like being kept in the dark between all those lies and those question marks but lately it doesn't seem to bother us when they bend and break and twist and crush the truth that's supposed to matter so much in the race to be the first to break the news they seem to have broken the news and do you even remember the time when the news was supposed to make you wise and now you can spend hours consuming and listening them shouting and complaining and in the end just feeling worse off than you did in the beginning which begs the question does all of this not trouble our generation when they push opinions and call them facts as we watch the fourth pillar crumble and collapse it is a human thing to want the truth and to make every claim carry its burden of proof to expect that the first voice you hear is also the last word that's there meet the all new hindustan times now experience engage and express hindustan times first voice last word i wish technology allowed us to present it better but that's okay you would have got a feel for it can still applaud this is a nice video again thank you thank you and we can get a way to get hold of that weekend sunday ht like i mentioned okay time for some questions i'm just taking the liberty to club a couple of them so there's this one from kanishka to rajiv she says of course distribution lack of you know proper distribution could have would have impacted sales and thus revenue how did ht counter that and do you see the festival season changing that for you do you expect a huge turnaround due because of the ip l and the festive season yeah so look yes revenues have certainly been impacted as as they have been for most museums and publications alive so we have in this period therefore been working more on the fundamentals basics of rajin mentioned earlier about on educating on the safety of the newspapers which we did and then separately parallely in the last two to three months we've been doing lots of work on at the ground level on building back distribution and circulation across the country and it's an industry thing and thankfully the entire industry is working together on this you know flight of vendors to their hometowns labor so several industries have been impacted by this so that's what we've been working on and thankfully it has all stood us in good stead as well and we are hoping that as marketers start reinvesting in advertising and you know building their brands and promoting sales we will also be the beneficiaries of that so that's what by and large we've been doing interestingly in the last four five six months i must say we've also bought calls from several and actually more consumer goods consumer goods organizations to actually partner with them on distribution as well because i'm you know one of my very close friends who heads an FMCG organization they were also struggling with the distribution woes labor unloaders loaders and so actually in several cities we have actually helped partner some of these organizations with our vendor network to be able to do that so all of these are the various kinds of things that we've been doing last three four five months and as i said i'm pleased to see that some of those are bearing fruit and especially in the Hindi part we are as good as normal in our distribution English still there is some way to go so cities like Mumbai Pune and some of those cities are a little more impacted at this point in time although improving but pleased with what we have accomplished so far nitha while they while they say in this business world hope should not be a strategy but sometimes it is so in the covid times how the festive pens out absolutely we are very very keen that all our all all the industries everybody does very well sales go through the roof and therefore they all start reinvesting because at the end of the day we are you know in the first line that takes ahead in most organizations so we are pretty much at the receiving end of what most industries are going through automobiles real estate several industries in fact it's it's not good to see some of these industries struggling as well and we are fervently hoping that you know things things get back to normalcy soon i think we have time for one more i think this one is addressed to you anil do you think the shift to shift from print to digital in terms of content consumption is because periodicity is getting replaced by immediacy yeah i think something that we spoke about in the webinar as well at length i think it's not about periodicity getting replaced by immediacy but getting complimented by it and hence the coexistence of both i think the interesting point again i go back to the fact that you know all timers like us remember this whole notion of letters to the editor imagine the new age version of it that's the immediacy of response that the digital media can bring in right i think that's the complementarity of these medium that makes each of them so unique and definitely see the potential of them to coexist seamlessly may i i'm sorry i'm just interrupting just one line that i wanted to add was that also the other thing we have tried to do in this period is that we have integrated the market facing customer facing organization the digital organization and the print organization in order to be able to create and customize package solution for most advertisers which we thought is also important now more so now with all that is happening around us so that's the other thing we've been doing last three four months and that's also stood us in good stead okay i think we we take one more question because one is interesting this is addressed to wikram and rana you know it says oh it's by sneha and she wants to know while legacy brands like ht have caught on to the pulse of both their consumers and customers advertisers who are happy to explore their integrated offering when will we see agencies also buy that in a consolidated integrated fashion rather than looking at print digital and silos well we would we would like to believe that we have integrated offerings so well maybe we can't satisfy everybody but i think but that is definitely the endeavor so right now in fact most agencies have got their entire planning philosophy is a very integrated journey planning the entire marketing funnel integration of the marketing funnel however you want to describe it all of us talk that language and all of us have got some very very advanced tools and systems which actually allow us to even measure the impact of cross media so i would say that our definitely our attempt is there to actually do all of that and we in fact uh when we talk to media owners that's exactly the language we speak if you're a if you're a client i need to speak to you if you're a media owner i think we need to speak one more that's true actually absolutely it's a it's a you know self-refitting purpose if you try to do it the other way around so it's absolutely clear that its approach is totally integrated and it's very clear because we understand which mediums are working well so it's you don't keep it in silos anymore those days are gone okay fantastic any any last thoughts before we wind up no nitha you should have the first voice and the last word fantastic so i shall have the last word then so like rajan said hope is a very important thing here's looking forward to a great festive season for print and digital both and literally putting the very dismal queue to behind behind all of us in the true sense of the term so thank you so much to all the panelists for a very very enlightening discussion and we are all looking forward to reading more of hd thank you so much thank you everybody thank you thank you