R Sukumar, Mint's editor decided to carry a small note to readers every time Mint carried what the paper’s marketing department calls a Media Marketing Initiative (or, in short, MMI). Sukumar writes that a Media Marketing Initiative is essentially an advertorial, but both advertisers and publishing firms prefer more ambiguous terms. MMI is one such. Then there are others including special feature, special report, and the like. (Link to the post: The Inviolable Line)

Here’s what that note says:

.....From time to time, you will see a page or a feature in Mint that is clearly labelled as Media Marketing Initiative. Such sponsored content is entirely generated by an advertiser or the marketing department of Mint on behalf of an advertiser, and does not involve any Mint editorial staff. Such pages/features also have a different font and style to help let you identify that they are not part of Mint’s editorial content. As clearly stated in Mint’s Journalistic Code of Conduct, which is available on our website www.livemint.com, there is an inviolable line between news and advertising at Mint.

Sukumar goes on to explain the three types of advertorials 

The first are those where a company wants a gushing article about itself, its products or services, or its CEO. Many of these companies are unlikely to be covered by publications simply because they aren’t newsworthy enough.

The second are those where the marketing department of a publication decides to put together a contextual MMI in the hope of attracting enough advertisers—and meeting targets. For instance, a publication could choose to create content on cars (some ask their editorial staff to do this; in Mint’s case, the marketing department either does this itself or outsources it to someone) and then seek ads from carmakers. This is different from industry reports carried by publications such as The Economist and Mint (although I wouldn’t presume to compare ourselves to that newspaper).

The third are those where an advertiser works with the marketing department of a publication to create content on an event, person, or anything else, to express respect and gratitude to or simply curry favour with a third person or entity. The spate of reports commemorating the royal wedding in Bhutan falls squarely in this category.

There’s also a fourth, where an advertiser pushes a certain point of view, but there haven’t been too many of these in the Indian context (maybe because a company that is in a position where it needs to shape opinion is probably large and powerful enough to have pliant editorial writers do its bidding)

The first type of advertorials is sometimes the most insidious. While advertisers sometimes decide to go the advertorial route because it is less expensive (advertisements usually cost more), there are times when they do this hoping that readers will be fooled into believing that a laudatory article on the CEO of a company is an objective piece of journalism and not what it is—a paid-for ad masquerading as content.

In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be such advertorials. Then, in an ideal world, readers will pay Rs. 10 for each copy of Mint.

In the real world, all a publication can do is have rules, and practice full disclosure to readers.

(Link to the full post: The Inviolable Line)

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