In a world that is splattered with a spectrum of colour and surrounded by a cacophony of sound from the juke box to the idiot box, establishing the presence of the written word over the spoken word is a Herculean task that two-dimensional media creators struggle with constantly. Com-pounded by technology supported and ingeniously crafted three-dimensional magic, the impact of electronic advertising truly becomes a force to reckon with. This supremacy is further sustained by a laid-back consumer/viewer who wishes to sit back and be entertained as marketeers vie for eyeball space. In a world dominated by Jobs’ iTablet the original Caesar’s tablet of print has been losing face for a while.
However, in the recent past we have seen some interesting experiments and innovations in print that are truly heartening as they augment the written gospel. If we review the past couple of years there has been a slow but sure evolution in both content and presentation. So at times we have talking newspapers and at times we have a huge herd of elephants who tell you “your moment is waiting,” courtesy Kerala Tourism. Let us examine some popular examples…
The Canvas: Presenta-tion in print has seen a new revolution. Most of us remember the talking Volkswagen advertisem-ent in a popular Delhi daily edition as well as a Chennai edition. The photodiode technology used in musical greeting cards was used by the car company to announce the arrival of the Perfectly Engineered Vento.
Volkswagen has been making innovative use of the print media. They made the hole in the newspaper advertisement where the entire newspaper had a polo-shaped hole on every page, inside which one could read about every aspect of the anticipated car. Recently, there was DHL who had colour washed the entire black and white fascia of a newspaper yellow — reinstating the Speed of yellow of the courier company. A newspaper, took out its Jaipur edition with the fragrance of gulal for its Holi edition and on December 3, the Bhopal edition had the entire paper in black and white in memory of the gas victims. Cover on cover, where the main newspaper is covered by a cover or a half jacket with a spectacular advertisement are innovations that are becoming eye catching.
Tactics that are the static media creator’s attempts at ensuring mind space. The active use of regular sized commercials to capture eyeballs is passé now; the creator uses the entire page to sell the exotic, so it could be an arresting full pink page selling you Cocoberry or a full blue page with a temptingly presented new McFlurry Oreos. The more high end the brand, the bigger the splurge thus the entire double-sided centre spread could be about the much awaited Honda Brio or about luxury condommiums. The visuals and the use of colours is so dramatic and yet at other times so garish that one wonders what happened to the theme — Bold with the beautiful.
Thus the mantra cannot be simply to catch the eye with a ‘me too’, but to effectively make use of the medium to engage the viewer. And hence what is important is the portrait (creative content) splash-ed on the canvas.
The Muse: Here again there have been interesting compositions. Amul of course, has a legacy of always being contemporarily tongue in cheek, Harvest Gold also picks up a current thread and weaves a Hinglish rhyme with its First class bread and bakwas advertising. Tata Motors, to create brand recognition, used Nanovations by having R.K. Laxman create the Nano cartoon and the news in brief that was called Nano news.
The series of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Atithi devo bhava of the India venture — whether talking landscapes or the amazing World Cup 2011 finals — strike the right chord with their It happens only in Incredible India campaign.
Thus, though a challenge for the written word to survive in a tech surround world of the electronic and Internet medium, the pen can still establish its place as the mightiest unlike a 30-60 second slot in a clutter of similar voices selling fairness creams and decadent deodorants. The 24-hour advantage of the newspaper and the magazine just needs to be encashed.
It just depends on how you can strike at the heartstrings with a series of Values stronger than steel like Tata Steel campaign saluting exceptional bravery or how you can amuse by the bakwas advertising verse or surprise by singing about perfect German engineering in the all new Vento.
The cycle of reading, registering and storing in the memory is possible, all one needs is a pen that can create the magic.

The writer is professor marketing, IMI, Delhi