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The two groups have entered into a strategic alliance wherein Chitralekha Group will take care of the space selling for Eclectic Publications, pan India. As Mitrajit Bhattacharya, Publisher and President, Chitralekha Group visited the head office of Eclectic Publications in Guwahati to complete all formalities of this association, he mentioned, “North East is a very prominent market for lot of brands and we feel that this region has tremendous potential. In the next few years, the region is only going to get bigger in terms of business and we’re very happy and excited at the same time to be joined with EP which is a premium media house from the North East with a great eye for the future.”

As Chitralekha Group is a well-established publication house with a vast array of widely read magazines like Chitralekha Gujarati, Chitralekha Marathi, Watch World and BTW to name a few, they are understood to be aware of the market, have enough experience and the necessary expertise in the publishing world. Commenting on this new joint venture, Tanushree Hazarika, Publisher and Managing Editor, Eclectic Publications quoted, “Tying up with Chitralekha Group, which is one of the oldest publication houses of the country will help us in expanding our networks and resources all over the country. Being from the North East, we understand the requirements, demands and trends of this region and with this alliance we aim to add a vast array of resources which the brands and clients can make full use of!”

Eclectic Times and Eclectic Vibes are the two premium monthly magazines published by Eclectic Publications and the magazines are circulated in all the eight states of the North East and Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata. At present, the circulation figure of Eclectic Times is over 64000 and that of Eclectic Vibes is over 35000. In the near future, the group also plans to increase its presence across India. Both the magazines are also available online and across all Android and Apple platforms so the readers have access to the magazines anytime, anywhere!

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Rishi Darda, Editorial Director & Joint MD, Lokmat Media Ltd, says, “Lokmat Connect had just assembled over a lakh of people in the stadium, and another 40 to 50 thousand outside, on a mid-week working morning, to set a world record for singing the National Anthem. It seemed as if all of Aurangabad had surged to respond to our call to set the world record. It was a truly never-before gathering of people.

“So when we had our post-event editorial meeting to plan the next day’s issue,” says Darda, “One of our main priorities, apart from excellent editorial content, was: How do we give the readers a sense of the scale of the mammoth turnout? While a picture normally speaks a thousand words, our lead picture bespoke a lakh people, so we decided to be innovative, and you can see the result.

“To the best of my knowledge and belief,” says Darda, “It was a world-first: a 16-column colour picture with the lead story of the day, with both, the front and back pages working seamlessly together as a unified ‘front’ page.”

Getting a lakh-and –a-half people, which is around 8% of the entire population of Aurangabad, to congregate mid-week on a working day morning, is no mean feat. “Lokmat’s media innovation is not just a celebration of that success,” says Darda, “but, more importantly, our way of thanking everyone who turned up, putting their lives on hold for the hours they spent with us.”
Scale plus surprise:

Lokmat’s innovation not just communicated the scale, but also had a clever little element of surprise for the reader. When one picked up the newspaper – which obviously arrived with the front page folded vertically into half – and saw the front page only, it had a beautifully aligned 8-column banner picture. The layout of the other elements on the front page too looked like a normal, well designed front page.

Says Darda, “Only when the reader opened the front page and glanced at the back page did the front page picture of 8 columns revealed itself to be a full panoramic 16-column spread, and the editorial content beneath it on the back page too belonged, seamlessly, with the front page layout.”
Why the world record attempt

On why Lokmat Media organized the event, Darda says, “Media brands do several things to connect with their readers, users, viewers, constituents. Ours was an activation exercise driven by patriotism, and a solemn sense of our duty to the Nation. We wanted to help people gift to the Nation, a World Record around our National Anthem, on the eve of Republic Day. We were not only commemorating 100 years of Jana Gana Mana, but also celebrating 30 years of our solid presence in, and bond with, Aurangabad. That’s why we chose the National Anthem world record for this.”
Fittingly, even the massive backdrop had only Jana Gana Mana on it, with a tiny strip of ‘Lokmat’ far below it — more like its salute to the National Anthem.
Solid connect:

The media innovation was made possible by the width and depth of Lokmat’s strong, emotional and enduring connect with the people it has been partnering and serving in their day to day lives, day after day and year after year for the past 30 years.

“It was a never-before connect managed brilliantly by Lokmat Connect, our Events specialist team, which has organized many mega events,” says Darda. “As a strong brand that is loved and respected by the millions of our constituents, we are in a strong position to connect any outside brand with the lives of the people in our markets.”

“This connect with the people of the city, across barriers of caste, community, gender and age groups,” says Darda, “Is what empowers us to contribute to and make an impact on the life of every Maharashtrian in general and Aurangabadkars in particular.”

For a combined experience of Lokmat’s media innovation and connect, check out the pictures of their newspaper layouts from 26th January 2012, which show close to a lakh of people standing jam-packed in the city’s largest stadium, early in the morning on a working day in the middle of the week, having put their lives on hold for a few hours in response to Lokmat’s call.

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A quarterly fashion magazine for women, it will bring out the latest trends in fashion, style, beauty, travel, food, cinema, etc, everything that gives women aged 18 to 45 years a reason to indulge in retail therapy. It will be distributed to the mall’s extensive database of shoppers and will be available at the kiosks in the mall. The magazine will have a circulation number of 20,000. It arms DLF Promenade with an additional marketing tool to reach out to their discerning shoppers by blending content with commerce; indeed a sophisticated means of acquiring new clients.

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Community newspapers can address an issue better than any other medium.

Statistics reveal, readers connect easily with hyper-local newspapers as the news is related to them and is tailor made to their taste. These papers create an intimate relationship with the readers making it easy for the advertisers to reach them.

Community newspapers believe the ideal advertising strategy is to move away from thinking national or even regional but to go local.

The findings of a study done by ‘National Newspaper Readership of America’ reveal that 81 per cent population are prone to reading hyper-local newspapers. The local community newspaper is the primary source of information about the local community for 60 percent of respondents, that’s four times greater than the second and third most popular sources of local news.

Hyper-local newspapers are very popular abroad. Canada has 1,100 community newspapers that reach millions of readers each week.

In India, Jagran Cityplus is the first community newspaper to explore this concept. The English weekly began with one edition in Noida in the year 2006 and went on to expand in Gurgaon, Faridabad and other areas in Delhi NCR. Today it has 13 editions in the National Capital region. Bangalore was the first non-Jagran belt city where Cityplus was launched in 2007 from Indiranagar. Riding on its popularity wave, it expanded to six more areas, today Bangalore has seven editions of Cityplus. Cityplus launched in Pune in 2009 and today has seven editions in culturally rich areas like Aundh, Deccan, Koregaon Park, Kondhwa, Kothrud, Wakad and Camp. In 2010, the tabloid was launched in the twin cities of Hyderabad/Secundrabad and Mumbai, the financial capital of India.

As Cityplus enters the fifth year, it humbly flaunts 35 editions. Speaking on the community papers space and why Jagran entered this genre Shailesh Gupta, Director Jagran Prakashan Limited said, “Community papers are a great success across the globe and provide hyper- local content and are an apt medium to advertise for both organised and unorganised retailers. Looking at India’s growth story in the last five years, it seemed appropriate to tap this space and create a community connect. Cityplus also gave us an opportunity to venture into the non-Jagran belt, thus increasing our footprint.”

Cityplus aims to reach the entire tier I and II towns in India, by expanding to cities like Ahmedabad, Baroda, Indore, Chennai and various other cities. Cityplus caters to premium residential localities in each city.

Speaking about the future path, Salil Tandon, CEO Cityplus said, “With the advent of satellite cities and off shooting of new townships, a community centric product like Cityplus is the need of the hour. It helps the migrated people to know and become a part of their locality. The local advertisers get an effective and low cost medium to reach their target audience.”

The emotional connect with its readers has elevated Jagran Cityplus as the number One community newspaper. Puja Sethi, Executive editor says, “Cityplus is a link that binds different communities in various cities. We chronicle the everyday lives of our readers. They may be civic issues, triumphs or tribulations of life. We publish news that has an instant connect with the readers. Each edition has a different frame of reference. We explore the neighbourhood issues of five cities which national dailies usually ignore. Cityplus also publishes the triumphs of life, profiles of courage, accomplishment or simple good heartedness.”

The distribution Channel of Cityplus is unique and first of its kind in India. The areas and households are carefully selected and the newspaper is delivered door to door through a dedicated in house team, thus making sure it reaches the right audience and giving maximum ROI to the clients. Also this channel has become a great sampling tool for clients, it helps them to identify and reach their areas of interest.

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“Indonesia’s news media is in exciting phase given the country’s resilience, economic development and plurality of expression,” said Agung Adiprasetyo, the Chief Executive Officer of Indonesia’s leading national newspaper group, Kompas Gramedia. “We feel very proud of this achievement and it is therefore an honour and a great pleasure for us to welcome this prestigious newspaper convention in Indonesia for the first time.”

For its 12th edition, Publish Asia will take the theme, “Shaping the Future of News Publishing” and focus on case studies showing how media companies across the globe are defining and implementing innovative strategies to secure their future. Over 600 newspaper executives from Asia Pacific and the Middle East are expected to attend the three-day event.

First confirmed speakers include: Jack Matthews, the CEO of Fairfax Metro, Australia; Dipankar Das Purkayastha, Managing Director & CEO at ABP Pte Ltd, India; Paul Jansen, Chairman & Founder, aSpecialMedia, Singapore; Mike Savage, VP Content and Editor of the Asia Media Journal at Media Partners Asia, Hong Kong; Soren Sorensen, Senior Consultant and Owner, Soroso Strategy & Advice, Denmark; Grig Davidovitz, CEO, RGD Media, Israel; Muk Kwong Meng, Senior Production Manager (Engineering), Newspaper Services, SPH, Singapore; Ross Dunkley, CEO, Myanmar Times and Phonm Penh Post; Sanjoy Narayan, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindustan Times, India; and Juan Señor, Partner, Innovation Media Consulting, UK.

“Indonesia is a very young country,” said Azrul Ananda, the President and Director of Jawa Pos, Indonesia’s largest newspaper group with over 180 dailies spread over the country. “Half of the population is actually below 29 years old. This means that there is a lot of enthusiasm and energy flowing in our society and in our newspapers. I have no doubt that Publish Asia’s delegates will feel and get inspired by this positive energy.”

WAN-IFRA’s Asia Pacific Committee chose Bali for its easy accessibility and the excellent flight connections with all major Asian cities. Additionally, Bali also boasts of world-class conference facilities at the newly opened Convention Centre, where the APEC and ASEAN summits were held. “Bali is well known for its beautiful beaches and natural beauty,” said Satria Naradha, the President and Director of Bali Post. “We are eagerly looking forward to welcome our peers from across the region and extend our Balinese hospitality!”

Publish Asia 2012 will cover the management, advertising, newsroom and production aspects of the newspapers and news publishing business. It will include the following:

The CEO Conference will look at how the media landscape is changing and how publishers can adapt and define their strategies to ensure a successful future.

The Newsroom Summit will tackle the problems and challenges facing Editors, Managing Editors, News Editors, Chief Reporters and all those who are involved in leading and managing newsrooms in a multiple media environment.

The Printing Summit, aimed especially at technical and production directors, prepress and plant managers as well as IT heads who are tasked with managing the publishing and printing operations, will concentrate on new technologies and trends with a special emphasis on cost-saving tools and techniques in production.

The Advertising Summit aims to cover the latest trends that are currently transforming the relationship between media companies, advertisers and agencies.

The Expo will showcase the latest technology and service offerings for optimizing newspaper production on print as well as on new media platforms, while one-day learning seminars will offer in-depth insights on specific topics.

Winners of the much awaited Asia Media Awards 2012 will be presented during the Asia Media Awards Gala Dinner on 11 April. Two new award categories will honour this year the best publications in newspaper marketing and in community service. There is still a few days to enter: the deadline for entries submission is on 10th February 2012. (http://www.wan-ifra.org/ama).

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Recognized for its creative and imaginative thought process & expertise, Noshe has been influential in building up various brands by developing coherent campaigns that have time and again proved to have a positive impact on the success of its clients. This triumph for Noshe Group is a result of sheer brand management expertise and creative execution, drawing in accounts from every vertical. Noshe will focus on aiding dainikbhaskar.com to extend the brand by promoting its one of a kind features and garner the much deserved acclaim.

According to sources, Noshe Group’s brilliant creative ideas and swift turnaround time are the main reasons that abetted dainikbhaskar.com in the agency selection process. Catering to a plethora of clients over the years has not only helped the Noshe team in prompt servicing but also in meeting goals on the set deadlines.

“We identify with dainikbhaskar.com’s advertising fundamentals and at Noshe, our consistent effort is to offer and put in action achievable, effectual and imaginative solutions in the least turnaround time. We will be giving dainibhaskar.com the right kind of positioning.” said Asheesh Sethi, President, Noshe Group

Sethi further added “ We go all out & build a loyal, enduring and honest affiliation with our patrons. We believe in high business ethics and ‘less frills & more substance’. We are confident of being an integral part of the brand’s growth story and help the brand scale new heights in gaining more hits,”

Along with advertising, Noshe will also take care of the PR activities of dainikbhaskar.com, under Noshe PeeAR. Noshe Group is a 360 degree integrated communications agency providing advertising, media and activation services. Having 20 years of experience, Noshe’s existing clients are primarily from the field of education, real estate and retail.

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Recently, Vogue India presented its first-ever LUXE list in its December issue which was all about extravagance and luxury. Vogue picked up the 100 most decadent products, exclusive experiences and extravagant fashion for their readers to enable them indulge in this party season.

Adgully caught up with Anaita Shroff Adajania, to know more about the ‘Luxe List’ and about her association with Vogue India.

Sharing some of the key highlights of the ‘Luxe list’, she said, “In our December issue we talked about extravagance and luxury. December was a perfect time to indulge with our audience so as to involve them with exclusive party items and styles. So we picked up best 100 products like Bespoke wedding gown, Chanel, Briolette necklace, Cartier etc to allow our readers to explore the new and stylish opportunities.”

When asked about the Idea and criteria while selecting these products, Adajania told us that the concept was to come up with something unique and different. They themselves wanted to experience something different and give some exclusive information about certain things which people generally do not think about. We choose all completely different products and ideas which are at the end of the day reality and people would love to do that. It is basically realistic fantasy.

When asked what prompted her to take up fashion as her career, she said, “I always had an inclination towards fashion. When I started my career, being a stylist was not an option. There were designers at that point of time so I decided to become a fashion designer.”

Styling happened incidentally in her life. Before she came to know what she was doing she was already doing a job of a ‘Stylist’. She has worked with an ad-film director Mahesh Mathai from where she realized what she loved to do most.

Pointing out her works that she is really proud of, she said, “One would be the cover pages of Vogue of the February issue with Aishwarya Rai which I believe has been one of the beautiful cover pages. Then I am really proud of my work in Hindi Cinema including Dhoom 2, Being Cyrus, Everybody Says I’m Fine!, and Love Aaj Kal.”

Speaking about her association with vogue India, she said, “I work as a fashion director at Vogue and plan the cover pages at Vogue including all the fashion stories, photo shoots etc. Basically I take care of anything that is fashion related in the magazine whether it is a jewellery design page, celebrity styling page or anything.”

As a magazine they work seasonally, speaking about the future plans, she said, “For Spring-Summer season we would use more of colours in the issue making it more appealing and colourful including canvy colours to peacock colours but all in a very clean cut minimalistic avtaar.”

A lot of fun trends like use of mischievous ‘Pick-a-boo’ trends wherein use of plastics somewhere in clothing and all such trends would be seen in the upcoming editions of Vogue.

A fashion stylist by profession, Anaita has been instrumental for a number of trendsetting campaigns (such as Rado, Swatch, Maybeline, L’Oreal, Lux, Debeers, Garnier, Lakme to name a few) that have changed the face of Indian style resulting in global acclaim.

A part of the Vogue India family since 2007, Anaita is well-versed with the overall functioning of the magazine. Her extensive experience and knowledge coupled with her familiarity with the Conde Nast landscape, ensure she will fulfill the challenging role of acting editor. | By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal(at)adgully.com]

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Princess Rym, whose journalism career included stints at CNN, BBC, UPITN, Bloomberg and Radio Monte Carlo, is the founder of the Jordan Media Institute, which is affiliated with the University of Jordan and offers a Masters Degree programme in Journalism and New Media.

She joins regional and international media experts at the annual WAN-IFRA event, which presents best case studies and examines successful strategies for media companies. Full details can be found here.

The two-day conference is built around five big themes that are essential for media companies in the modern age: social media; leadership and human resource management; innovations in newsrooms; advertising revenue generation; and the power of print.

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Better Photography’s contest, currently in its seventh year declared S L Shanthkumar as the rightful winner by the final judge, the legendary photojournalist and Magnum photographer Raghu Rai.

Working with a leading newspaper, S L Shanthkumar was extremely excited after the win. “I am extremely grateful to Better Photography. Being judged by the best in the industry that appreciates and recognizes your talent is an extremely humbling experience. It was hard work and dedication that persuaded me to concentrate on photography. Achieving a title as the ‘photographer of the year’ is completely priceless. I am thrilled and honoured.”

As the grand prize, he has won a Canon EOS 7D, among other exciting prizes and earned the title , Canon-Better Photography Photographer of the Year 2011 on a national platform.

The competition was organized by Better Photography India’s No.1 photography magazine in sponsorship with title partner Canon along with Associate Partner Canvera and Television Partner CNBC TV18 and the win was celebrated at the gala awards ceremony on 1st February 2012. The award night saw a large presence from both sides of the photography fraternity, the photographers as well as the manufacturers.

Seiji Hamanishi, Group Head, Image Communications Products Group, “Canon is delighted to support the Better Photography in this endeavor. Opportunities like these assist people to share their thoughts and ideas through photography and Canon salutes these outstanding minds.”

The contest submissions closed on December 31, 2011 and the magazine received a whopping 66,782 entries. The entrants were allowed to participate in multiple themes with a maximum of four entries per theme. For the photo essay, participants could send up to two series of images-each containing a minimum of six and maximum of 12 images.

The chosen eight contestants were from different cities and were flown to Mumbai and each of the eight categories was selected by an esteemed panel of judges.

The winners of the eight categories are as follows:

The Joy of Colour- S L Shanthkumar, Still Life: Obvious Things- Nilesh Bhange, Portraiture: I, Me, Myself- Nirvair Singh, Reflections- Gokul Mudambile , Landscapes: Play of Light-Neelima Vallangi,Wildlife: Animal Behaviour- Baiju Patil ,Life on the Streets- Sudipto Das, Photo Essay: Song of the Road- Vinit Gupta.
The eight contestants had to fight it out in a decisive final face-off that took place from 29th- 31st January 2012 wherein they had the opportunity to shoot the city of Mumbai through their lenses.

According to Raghu Rai, “These awards are a great platform for young photographers. For them, it is important to realize that their photographs must exude freshness, instead of simply duplicating the kind of work they have seen before. The talent India has is spectacular. All we need to do is to channelize it in a better way, and focus our energies to make pictures that are shot straight from the heart.”

Better Photography editor, K Madhavan Pillai said “The number of entries was unbelievable. It’s the seventh year for the contest and we are going strong. During the category judging we realized that there is so much untapped talent in the country. We plan to conduct many more opportunities through photography to explore the talent and capabilities of the people of India.”

The curtain raiser of Photographer Of the Year 2012 would be telecasted on CNBC TV18 and would be featured on 18th February 2012 at 3:30pm and the final awards show would be telecasted on 19th February 2012 at 5:30pm. The contest was promoted on a large scale through television promotions on CNBC TV18, CNN IBN, Awaaz, CNN IBN, IBN Lokmat, magazine advertisements in Better Photography, Overdrive, T3, Chip, AV Max, Better Interiors, Entrepreneur, Burrp, Noise Factory along with banner ads across web18 sites including In.com , Moneycontrol.com , Ibnlive, Ibn khabar, Cricketnext.com and e-mailers to the vast Network 18 database.

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It seems that Krishnan’s future plans are still being finalized. He will remain in the field of media.

Another development that has come to the fore is that Jaisurya Das and Shailesh Amonkar are expected to return to the group from next week as CEO and chief marketing Officer respectively.

Jaisurya Das who was earlier a consultant to the Pune-based Sakal group has also worked with The Times of India group and successfully launched the edition in Pune. Shailesh Amonkar has been with the Sakal group from 2003-06 and was the director-sales.

Both of them moved on to be entrepreneurs. While Das had set up Xanadu Consulting, a media and human resources advisory firm; Amonkar has started Kemistry Media in Pune.