Vikatan to get its readers 'TIMEPASS' with new offering from the bouquet

Vikatan Group, which was the house of 9 magazines, is all set to launch its 10th magazine, a weekly called TIMEPASS on the 6th October 2012.

 

The question is why 'TIMESPASS’? The answer learnt is that after a long research with 6000 subscribers ( as per their Hello Vikatan database and subscriber database), the readers wanted a fun filled, gossip, entertainment magazine covering politics and films as well. According to Vikatan Group, politics and films etc are sections in various magazines today but there is no magazine that has ‘only’ this content. With a strong recommendation and feedback from the Tamil readers, the Group has created this product for their valuable readers.

 

Vikatan is known for its unbiased and caustic content and with TIMEPASS they aim to offer a classic entertainment magazine and is also an irreverent offering for the young at heart and mind!

 

The database of their subscribers and Hello Vikatan callers have been filtered as per city, demographic, sex and age groups to get an insight of their reading needs. Again with the reader’s feedback, they have priced it at Rs.5. With all prices going up, they want something that is affordable and entertaining.

As far as promotions for visibility of the magazine are concerned, the group have budgeted a 3 crores media spend over 4-5 weeks. This includes the main channels, radio and outdoor. Online and social media also will be used effectively to promote the magazine. Apart from this they would also use their 9 magazines to promote TIMESPASS in every issue reaching out to 20 lac+ readers. Not only this, the usage of ads on their serials on their channel, Sun TV, will also be a focus.

 

As told by Vikatan Group, in the first 4 weeks, the target would be to grab new readers of Vikatan via sampling in key cities which will also include targeting colleges, restaurants and weekend crowd at malls and theaters.

 

The group informed that the initial print run inclusive of sampling is 5 lac copies and have budgeted and are targeting a 2.5  to 3 lac copies as subscribed/sold copies in 1 month.

 

If most of the purchase and entertainment is planned over the weekend, TIMESPASS will help you to reinforce the genuine reader with your communication. The group believes that the reader has taken his time and money to get the copy. He will consume the magazine in whole as he is interested in this magazine. Keeping all this in mind the Vikatan Group will maintain a low ad: edit ratio and hence the clutter is less and the OTS is much higher to weekend newspaper or TV ads. Hence as a policy they have decided that in the first half of the magazine, the ads would be published only in left and second half the ads would be published in the right hand page and also they would be giving branding option on certain highly read pages of the magazine.

 

Thus, the group holds the notion that with less ad:edit ration, less clutter, better branding on key sections it would be a win-win for advertiser and the reader.

 

The agencies roped in for the new magazine from the Vikatan bouquet are Mindshare as the media agency while the creatives will be done by Paradox69 team.