Please press Play to listen to Partha Sinha, President of Times of India Group, on MVP – The Master’s Voice Podcast
Delighted to share that in this, the 91st episode of the award-winning MVP – The Master’s Voice Podcast, my distinguished guest is Partha Sinha, President of the Times of India Group. To my mind, the super-energetic, ideas-and-adrenalin-driven Partha is like the Pied Piper of Print, Passion, Knowledge, Empowerment and Impact for the entire A&M industry.
Partha is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad, and in his career spanning more than 30 years, has been a nuclear design engineer, a banker, a strategy and marketing head of media and internet companies, and an advertising strategist, who entered advertising after the late great Ranjan Kapoor, impressed by the young man, suggested he should get into advertising. Partha did, of course, but not before asking Kapoor, “What do you (people) do in advertising?”
Partha has worked with companies like Citibank NA, Ogilvy & Mather, Zee, Publicis, BBH, and McCann World Group. Now, of course, he is President of the Times of India Group and is a great proponent of the power of print and of the empowerment of young professionals in the A&M space, and much more.
Industry professionals and his friends who know Partha respect his booming straight-speak, which I too revelled in in this episode – it hits you in the solar with its strong logic and absence of pretense. His logical arguments, devoid of pretense, make a lasting impact. Apologetic about – but unbothered by – the absence of PR-consciousness, Partha’s words emanate from the depths of his heart. As he states in the episode, “I say whatever I do because I mean it; it comes straight from the heart.”
Here are some interesting things Partha Sinha said in this episode of MVP – The Master’s Voice Podcast:
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It may sound a little cynical or not so emotionally gratifying, but Covid was a bit like McKinsey or BCG.
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We (at Times Response) felt that Covid, and our absence (during the lockdowns) actually increased our power when we came back.
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‘Digital-first brand’ is something I don’t understand!
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There are two points to purchase — one I loosely call ‘desire’; the other is distribution.
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Digital as a medium for desire-building is very, very poor.
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Digital’s attribution modeling is still pathetic.
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It doesn’t make sense for brands to spread themselves thin when the priority is to bounce back.
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Remember that saying: A gap in the market is fine; is there a market in the gap?
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The rising cost of newsprint is not the biggest challenge to the growth of print. It is the biggest cost, but the biggest challenge is the death of attention, especially with younger people.
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ADD is the biggest challenge not only for the Print industry but for all legacy media where the size of the content is a little longer for which people need to pay attention.
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Language newspapers are used for reach; English papers are used for impact and opinion.
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What can be measured is what gets done. But people don’t do new things; they don’t experiment on things. And that is the bane of marketing. Marketing is so cookie-cutter today.
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Impressions are the Opportunity to see. What about engagement? Every mobile has a camera. So, do digital platforms publish how many people actually watched the ad they served? They won’t have the guts to publish that data because it would be so pathetic.
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Print Ads are non-intrusive, informative content that doesn’t put off the reader. But thanks to the nature of transactional ads being created on digital, the quality of ads being created for Print too has deteriorated and needs a quality boost.
Partha truly is like the Pied Piper of Knowledge and empowerment for young people in the industry. So disturbed is the man by the poor quality and lack of depth in the ‘conversations’ he has been hearing among professionals in India, he has been obsessed with helping younger professionals receive knowledge and insights from proven formal programs of professional education. Here are some more nuggets from Partha, from this episode:
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We should invest in standards, and not in building relationships with twenty people.
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Miffed at the déjà vu from the kind of ‘five industry professionals sitting on a stage and spewing banalities’ at events.
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Industry body events must be purpose-driven to empower the youngsters, instead of being used for personal PR.
Partha also speaks fondly of his love for music, especially Hindustani Classical music, and even Karnatak music which he started listenting to and knowing in depth about during COVID. And his deep and abiding friendship with musical soulmate (our words) Prasoon Joshi.
Some more quotes from Partha Sinha, from this episode:
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There is a purity in Hindustani Classical music which stays with you!
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At IIT, I became familiar with new genres of music and great books and literature. We missed classes for reading books! IIT is a fantastic place – it has not just given me an education, it has shaped me as a person.
Delightfully insightful, those, so I invite you to go seek them out in this episode of MVP – The Master’s Voice Podcast. Without a doubt, from the 91 episodes published so far, this one is easily among my top three favorites.
I hope you find this, the 91st episode of MVP – The Master’s Voice Podcast with Partha Sinha, President of Times of India Group, as delightfully — even provocatively — insightful as I certainly did. Thanks for your time!
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