The Man at The Helm of Affairs at The Economist’s office in India, Supriyo Guha Thakurta, reveals to 4PS B&M what makes The Economist, well, The Economist.
Having worked as a leader with brands like Lintas Personal and Adfactors Advertising, this marketing graduate from XLRI Jamshedpur is at the helm of making decisions at The Economist’s office in India, pertaining to strategic leadership, and enhancing business revenue & profits. His task is far from easy considering the battle he fights everyday to increase the awareness of an already strong brand and ensure it gets a consistently better circulation year on year. In an exclusive conversation with Suprio Guha Thakurta, MD, The Economist India, 4Ps B&M finds out how challenging it has been for him to market the magazine in India and what unfolds next in those marketing plans.
There has been a 13% y-o-y increase in the magazine’s readership in India. What factors drove these numbers home?
We had established an office in India towards the end of 2007. The vision was that all factors were driving the Indian economy, and as such it did make a good place for our brand to be in. Our focus is to build a strong business driven by print, reason being our brand is recognised mostly by our magazine; and as such, we want to keep it alive till other forms of media take the front stage. The increasing readership only proves that the demand was always there for our product... it just needed to be marketed well, and we are pretty much in line with what we thought we will get to when we started off in India.
Globally, the magazine has marketed itself through billboards and outdoor advertising. Why is it different in India?
In India, we had the choice of taking that step, but we decided to look at each market in the country separately because this market didn’t know our brand. Brand awareness was there, but nothing beyond that. And based only on the perception of its name, our targeted audience thought it was a magazine focussing on politics and business, which is not the core of our magazine. Initially, we focused on Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, and we had a pure measure of effectiveness for our communication strategy. We needed people to be aware of the brand and then read the magazine. We measured the number of unique visitors on our website and found that it grew gradually. Eventually, there were visitors subscribing to the print version of the magazine through the website. When we started off, the numbers were approximately 2-3 subscribers per day, but in the last few years that number has grown to an average of 10 subscribers per day. So, the unique readership has grown more than three times over the last three years. After targeting these three cities, we realised that there’s more for our market beyond them. We were spending all the money in three metros, whereas 15% of our subscribers were not even from the first 20 metros. We thought perhaps it’s time to spread the message out there. That’s when TVCs were made. So, it was not some ad hoc thing, it was a well thought strategy. Now to ensure the increased awareness span, we have consistently kept commercials alive across India.
Having worked as a leader with brands like Lintas Personal and Adfactors Advertising, this marketing graduate from XLRI Jamshedpur is at the helm of making decisions at The Economist’s office in India, pertaining to strategic leadership, and enhancing business revenue & profits. His task is far from easy considering the battle he fights everyday to increase the awareness of an already strong brand and ensure it gets a consistently better circulation year on year. In an exclusive conversation with Suprio Guha Thakurta, MD, The Economist India, 4Ps B&M finds out how challenging it has been for him to market the magazine in India and what unfolds next in those marketing plans.
There has been a 13% y-o-y increase in the magazine’s readership in India. What factors drove these numbers home?
We had established an office in India towards the end of 2007. The vision was that all factors were driving the Indian economy, and as such it did make a good place for our brand to be in. Our focus is to build a strong business driven by print, reason being our brand is recognised mostly by our magazine; and as such, we want to keep it alive till other forms of media take the front stage. The increasing readership only proves that the demand was always there for our product... it just needed to be marketed well, and we are pretty much in line with what we thought we will get to when we started off in India.
Globally, the magazine has marketed itself through billboards and outdoor advertising. Why is it different in India?
In India, we had the choice of taking that step, but we decided to look at each market in the country separately because this market didn’t know our brand. Brand awareness was there, but nothing beyond that. And based only on the perception of its name, our targeted audience thought it was a magazine focussing on politics and business, which is not the core of our magazine. Initially, we focused on Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, and we had a pure measure of effectiveness for our communication strategy. We needed people to be aware of the brand and then read the magazine. We measured the number of unique visitors on our website and found that it grew gradually. Eventually, there were visitors subscribing to the print version of the magazine through the website. When we started off, the numbers were approximately 2-3 subscribers per day, but in the last few years that number has grown to an average of 10 subscribers per day. So, the unique readership has grown more than three times over the last three years. After targeting these three cities, we realised that there’s more for our market beyond them. We were spending all the money in three metros, whereas 15% of our subscribers were not even from the first 20 metros. We thought perhaps it’s time to spread the message out there. That’s when TVCs were made. So, it was not some ad hoc thing, it was a well thought strategy. Now to ensure the increased awareness span, we have consistently kept commercials alive across India.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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