Convergence, ROI and research are hot topics on day 2 of IMC

BY IMPACT Staff

The Indian Magazine Congress (IMC), the annual conference of the Association of Indian Magazines (AIM), was held in Mumbai on February 14 and 15

A video message from Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Manish Tewari flagged off the second day of the Indian Magazine Congress (IMC). Coming out in full support of the print media, Tewari said that his Ministry was willing to walk the extra mile for Indian magazines and that he was optimistic about the printed format in the country. He also spoke about regional language magazines and their potential. The I&B Minister was followed by Nicholas Brett, Managing Director, Magazines, BBC Worldwide, UK who spoke about the journey of GoodFood in UK and India. Brett’s first line was “Magazines are damn sexy”. Brett said that GoodFood India had made its mark and ended his  presentation with the 5Cs of magazine publishing: cannibalization, commoditization, commercialization, coordination and change.

Licensing, a key issue in the industry, was the hot topic for debate later. Giving an insight into how the India Today Group manages its magazine bouquet, Mala Sekhri, COO, Lifestyle Magazines and Music Today, India Today Group said that her group cherry-picks brands. She added that initially magazines were called publications, but now they are called and perceived as brands. According to Sandra Gotelli, international publisher and Head of Licensing, Mondadori, the flexibility parameter in today’s magazine business is very important. She added that being one of the last players in the licensing arena, she has a different approach towards granting of license, and if it works one way, life will not be easier for both the partners (that is, licensee and licensor). Indranil Roy, President, the Outlook Group remarked that marketing investment continues to be a challenge and stressed that flexibility should exist from the licensee to the extent of publicity only. For Joanna Alexandre, Head of Licensing and Syndication at Immediate Media, partnerships are important. She also said that the publisher now needs to act maturely as initially the license used to be granted only for the main magazine, but now it is also for the supplements, digital, tablets, and so on.

Rather than cutting costs, magazines should focus on bringing in cost discipline, was the advice given to Indian magazines by Bernd Klaus Buchholz, CEO, Gruner+Jahr International, part of the Bertelsmann International group. He stressed mentioned that cost discipline is necessary in order to have a sustained profitable model and warned that decrease in print advertisement will hit the print business. He further said that the identification of key assets for digital in terms of content, brands and the target group is inevitable.

Another session focused on the state of Digital Publishing – challenges and opportunities. According to Kirthiga Reddy, Director, Online Operations and Head, Office India, Facebook, publishing brands can highly benefit from social media platforms at various levels. “Content strategy needs to be sharpened for different media platforms. It is too early to adapt this model in India, but publishing brands should soon jump in and explore the opportunity to benefit,” she added. Umang Bedi, Managing Director, South Asia, Adobe, said that by using technology and data intelligently, publishing brands can leverage the benefits of convergence of media at its best. The challenge is how brands can be relevant online without changing the context of their offline content strategy. Punitha Arumugam, Director - Agency Business, Google India, pointed out that digital platforms can help in providing publishing brands information via various tools and data and help them to host rich media content. This will help rope in digital advertisers.

The last session saw heads of media agencies discuss RoI from magazine media in a session moderated by Tarun Rai, CEO, World Wide Media. Magazine revenues have been flat even though it is proved that magazines provide consumers with highest engagement quotient and score high on the trust quotient. So what must magazines do to change this? According to CVL Srinivas, CEO, South Asia, GroupM  magazines should stop selling ads and start selling engagement. The second thing that needs to be focussed on is the increase in more relevant or category specific research, which would give an idea as to how to capture audiences. “Thirdly, what we also need to do is to leverage magazines through social media platforms and create a buzz. The growth area is to move from passive to active communities,”

Srinivas added. Ambika Srivastava, Chairperson, ZenithOptimedia and Vivaki Exchange said that developing the right set of touchpoints is necessary to generate RoI. She added, “Readers buy magazines because they clearly value content. It is this metrics that we can convert into currency and help drive revenues. If we can develop a metric with content being the key, we can sell much better.” Ashish Bhasin, Chairman India and CEO South East Asia, Aegis Group plc stated, “Magazine medium needs to work in partnership with different distribution patterns. Hence, a whole new ecosysytem of partnerships can change the entire scenario.” Sam Balsara, Chairman and Managing Director, Madison World said media should be bought keeping in mind the output that it can generate for brands. Magazines need to get experimental in order to gain more in future.

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