Not another word about this whole The Times of India (TOI) versus Deepika Padukone thing. Certainly, not another point of view. Frankly, I have not followed the fiasco closely enough to have an opinion on this one.

I had conveniently avoided the whole episode till Tuesday morning when my Facebook newsfeed started overflowing with people from India posting, re-posting, sharing, tweeting and re-tweeting reactions of various media houses to TOI’s shocking reply to Deepika’s outrage at the original cleavage headline. It was after this deluge of reactions and before writing this piece that I read Bombay Times managing editor Priya Gupta’s “Dear Deepika, our point of view…”

Everyone is talking about it. Reacting to it. The Times of India has been trending online. Online searches for articles lambasting the newspaper, the original story and Gupta’s letter to Deepika show an almost vertical graph.

To be clear, Gupta’s reply is utterly stupid, her argument self-defeating and the piece very poorly written.

However, what the brains at Bennett-Coleman, which publishes TOI, have managed to do is pull off one of the best marketing stunts in the history of the media industry.

Consider this:

The Times of India got a dedicated story in the pages of The Hindu—its rival newspaper in Chennai, Kerala and Bangalore.

Deccan Chronicle, its primary competition in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, ran a story with TOI in the headline:“From cleavage to pixelated vagina, the Deepika-TOI row continues.”

DNA, which hopes to challenge TOI in Mumbai and Bangalore, also reacted to Gupta’s point of view. One article wasn’t enough, so they ran two.

Almost every leading Indian news and opinion website, Newslaundry included, reacted: some more than once, to Gupta’s letter within hours of its publication.

Most TV channels in India have discussed this issue at hand more than once in the course of the day, not to mention the talk in production rooms.

The Times of India has also made headlines in international media; including The Independent and The Guardian of the United Kingdom.

In the newspaper industry, the circulation and marketing guys pester editorial hands about creating a buzz. Gupta did just that with her rebuttal. She threw in the right amount of simplicity and stupidity. Stupidity was the bait. The quick-reacting Twitterati and social media activists felt intelligent enough while they were freely attacking TOI on the issue: thereby getting it to trend online. #DearDeepika was a top trend till yesterday, apart from #IStandWithDeepikaPadukone, #GetWellSoonTOI, #TOI, and #Deepika. One man even created a new group on Facebook named Stop your Times Of India subscription. 124 had joined till early Wednesday and 1,800 had been invited.  Apart from TOI’s gullible competitors also bit the same bait. The result has been that Bennett-Coleman has managed to pull off widespread coverage for its flagship brand, TOI, and created a great buzz among its target audience – readers and advertiser – without spending anything on marketing or PR.

If TOI really wanted to put an end to the Deepika episode, it could have simply not reacted. Most newspapers receive negative reactions from those featured in their pages on a daily basis – especially Bollywood stars and starlets. Newspapers and their editors dismiss to the trash can, virtual or real, almost all of these.

Conversely, if TOI wanted to silence Deepika with a strong reply, they could have asked one of their better and wittier writers (they don’t have a dearth of those) to write a fitting reply. But no, they used “stupidity” to bait its competition and the click-happy online population to unleash one of the finest and most successful marketing campaigns without spending a dime.

Bennett-Coleman has brilliantly exploited its audience and competitors to further its popularity shortly after the Indian Readership Survey gave encouraging numbers to its biggest rival Hindustan Times in the last audit.

No publicity is bad publicity, after all.