Is it fair to put it a 11-day old paper to the test? Our justification for conducting this evaluation comes from a statement by Bhaskar Das, Brand Director, ‘Mumbai Mirror’ (and the Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd., BCCL). In a conversation with ‘Impact’, Das spoke of the age of instant gratification — where the consumer wants 200 rupee value from a 2 rupee paper. We couldn’t agree more; and the readers of this 10 rupee magazine, all from the worlds of advertising, marketing and media, want more from us. They want to know how the ‘Mumbai Mirror’ is being perceived, how consumers react to it, whether it will find inclusion in the media plans of tomorrow.
Our justification also comes from the impending launches of two more newspapers, ‘The Hindustan Times’ (HT) and ‘Daily News and Analysis’ (DNA) — because how the ‘Mumbai Mirror’ fares will affect how these two will fare. Our justification comes, too, from the fact that ‘Mumbai Mirror’ is the first compact in the country, and its success could result in more papers being cut to this (currently) unique dimension. Or justification comes, finally, because the Mumbai market is the largest generator of revenue in the Indian newspaper industry; you succeed in Mumbai and you create a war chest, with which, you can launch editions across the country.
Das and ‘Mumbai Mirror’ editor Meenal Baghel are vehement about the fact that the newspaper is a continuously evolving product; almost implying that any evaluation is an exercise in futility and stupidity. And we cannot debate the issue — ‘Mumbai Mirror’ has changed in the 11 days that we have seen it. And doubtless, this will continue. What we could debate, however, is the when of it. Should we do it now, when the paper is less than two weeks old? Should we wait for a month? A year? Or should we just report the measurables (whenever they became available), circulation and readership? That’s a lot of shoulds, but, as we are reminded by Das, this is an age of instant gratification. So much is riding on the product’s performance that we decided on going ahead with this exercise.
Can I see a copy, please?
Yash Khanna, Senior Vice President, STAR TV, hasn’t seen the paper yet: 11 days, 11 issues, and the Mirror’s marketing and distribution haven’t found a way to get him to sample a copy. No complimentary copy reached him; the news vendor, who drops in the morning papers (including ‘The Times of India’ and ‘The Economic Times’) hasn’t urged him to buy it. He cannot even see a copy on his route from home to work, but he can pick up a copy of ‘Mid-Day’ (which he does). At work (and he looks after corporate communication for STAR), no one has seen fit to buy a copy thus far.
And that’s just to highlight one major problem that the Mirror faces. At a time when the city is overrun by zealous teenagers wearing branded DNA and HT T-shirts; when the newspaper delivery boy rings your doorbell thrice because he wants to sell a subscription, The Mirror is in passive mode. A number of professionals that ‘Impact’ spoke to had yet to see a single copy of the paper; and without sampling the product, how is he expected to buy?
Maybe Yash Khanna and the other professionals are not in the TG, and therefore not missed by the sampling, but not targeted at all? No, not according to Das, who sees Mirror’s TG as the young at heart. Almost 30 per cent of the respondents that ‘Impact’ spoke to have been untouched by the Mirror’s circulation and sampling strategy. By the time they sample the Mirror, it will be closer to the HT and DNA launches — and Mirror will be caught in a three-way evaluation in readers’ minds.
Compact is accepted
Unlike Yash Khanna, Nabankur Gupta of Raymond’s has read the paper, and, having read it, agreed to speak out when requested by us. Gupta has reservations on the editorial content, clearly feeling that it has a long way to go. But what he likes, a sentiment echoed by the majority of respondents, is the format and size of the paper. The compact has clearly proved to be a popular size with readers and vendors alike, to the extent that there are no negative comments about this parameter.
The quality of paper takes a serious amount of stick, with responses to an open ended question (name a particular feature in ‘Mumbai Mirror’ that you dislike) provoking over 15 per cent of respondents to mention poor quality.
But it is (and it should be) the content that is proving to be the part that will need most attention — and probably more time to win over the reader than first anticipated. Uniformly, respondents (even those who are unhappy with the content) expect the Mirror to be a player in the long run, and expect content issues to eventually get ironed out.
To read the entire story, grab your copy of Impact Advertising and Weekly magazine issue dated June 13-19, 2005
