There have been enough case studies done on products which failed inspite of great marketing effort. Mostly the chief reason for failure was the product itself. It either did not deliver what it promised or it was ahead of its time or sometimes it just was an unwanted need. No amount of good marketing can deliver a bad product. Globally many such case studies exist and India too had its share. In the eighties there was a portable fire extinguisher called Cease Fire which was backed up by award winning creative. Unfortunately the product quality was a question mark as the gas in the extinguisher would dry up within months. Then there was the low calorie cola called Thril, launched again in the eighties. In a country struggling with malnutrition, with an abysmal penetration of soft drinks, the drink was way ahead of its time. Indeed, even today the situation hasn't changed much.
Or the spate of soya drinks that were launched in the nineties that just did not tickle the Indian palate.

But that has not stopped products being launched with much fanfare but without much substance. Lots of the dot com brands followed this trend. There was not much of either a target group clarity, or a business model but enough money being thrown around on promotion. We know what happened during the dot com bust up.

In today's digital age, print is supposed to be struggling. Except maybe in India where it is still showing decent growth. So newspapers and TV channels still abound and many new ones keep popping up. The one difference being that new TV channels are being launched by existing players with deep pockets who have cash cow channels that can sustain the bleeding of the new channels. Similarly newspapers are growing by not launching new brands but expanding their reach with new editions.

And that's the area I want to focus on today. For decades, cities like Dehradun or Lucknow or Kanpur or Nagpur had to depend on the nearby metro like Delhi or Mumbai to get a top of the line English newspaper. That's why Times Of India in west, HT in North and Hindu in South ruled the roost. Slowly these newspapers started expanding into other regions too. More editions started coming out and these grew healthily.

But I suspect somewhere down the line, marketing took over. Rather than build a brand assiduously in the new smaller cities that the editions came up they just relied on their heritage and past. I take the example of Dehradun.

Everytime I would come to Doon, my daily fix of the newspaper would not arrive with the morning tea but well after breakfast. Because it would be the Delhi edition which would reach late by road. Most of the news was stale. I am told since these papers had to be despatched by road the cut off time for any news was 7 PM. Any news post 7 PM, would be in the day after edition. So the funny thing was that if I reach Doon on Tuesday and look at the newspaper, 70% of the news in Tuesday's newspaper I would have already read in the same newspaper's Monday edition in Delhi.

And of course not much local news would be in the papers. There would be one page covering this region, sometimes two but that was it. For local news the language newspapers were doing a commendable job. Actually, the language newspapers had jump started the edition game much before the English newspapers caught on to it. I guess they had economies of scale too. So a Dainik Jagran or an Amar Ujala had started Doon editions a few years back and are doing a great job.

So when I shifted to Doon, I subscribed to both Times Of India and Dainik Jagran. TOI gave me a more national and international perspective and DJ was great in terms of local news. And DJ was great in terms of late news too. It had results of the World Cup Football matches (not the last one, but the earlier ones which got over around 1:30 or 2 AM), it covered the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight over Ukraine the next day, whereas TOI got it a day later.

Imagine my excitement therefore when I discovered that TOI was now launching a Dehradun edition. It was launched with much fanfare with front page editorial promising local news, local issues and local insights. The CM of the state launched the new edition. The city of Doon was plastered with hoardings announcing the arrival. The campaign paid rich tribute to the educational and institutional legacy of Dehradun. Plus with the newspaper came Doon Times (a la Delhi Times) with the usual local food, fashion and Bollywood tales. It was a slick PR and promotion campaign which set the city buzzing.

As a reader the product has been a dud. It has had hardly any change. So there is Doon Times thrice a week, there is 2-3 pages of Doon news. Some lame investigation into lame local issues. But otherwise the product is the same. The front page has hardly any local news it is almost a replica of the Delhi edition. All late news is still carried only the next day. The India England cricket scores would be covered till lunch time which means that the Dehradun edition carried reports and scores till 5:30 pm of previous day!

Where was the change? Where was the local coverage? Where was the upto date news? And then the mystery was solved. If you look at the mast head, it doesn't say Dehradun edition. It has very cleverly incorporated both Delhi and Dehradun at different places. The newspaper is still printed in New Delhi, it still comes to Doon by road in the morning, it still has Delhi based store ads (this morning's Big Bazar ad has all Delhi addresses, and no Dehradun address!!!), it is still a more national and international newspaper and of course if you check out the epaper of TOI it does not offer a Dehradun edition. Yet. Almost two weeks after the launch.

If I compare today's Doon TOI with DJ there is a world of difference. DJ has three important local news on front page, two of which have not even by covered by the TOI. One is about the State Cabinet policy decisions which were taken yesterday and the second is about the supreme court allowing hydel power plants in the state. In the sports page TOI carries the news of Gavaskar's accident which DJ carried yesterday and the Zimbabwe South Africa Test match full scores appear in DJ as against the tea time scores in TOI. And the difference in local news and state news in the inside pages cannot even be compared. Let me also mention that the national and global coverage of DJ is pretty good too. And this is the most important statistic; DJ has 22 pages with one full page ad. TOI has 24 pages with 5 full page ads and one double spread. You do the maths!

So what gives. This edition seems to be more of a marketing coup than a real edition. It seems to be on a shoe string budget with printing cost being shared with the Delhi edition. I have over the past 2-3 days counted through their stories that TOI has around 4 journalists based in Doon. And the sales team have been getting a fair amount of local ad in the Doon Times. To be fair the Doon Times is covering local food joints and places of interest, so that surprisingly has been the saving grace till now.

I know its too early to pass judgement and TOI has deep pockets. They have launched with a disappointing product and at the moment I still depend on the DJ for my local dose of news, late news and also local ads. HT has done almost the same thing here and is going nowhere. Is this another addition to the long list of good marketing but dud product?