-Aarthi Chandru

 Started in 1958 in Bhopal, M P  Enjoys wide circulation in UP, MP, Rajasthan, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Chandigarh, Enjoys over 20 editions in 8 states  Basically, good circulation & readership in the cow-belt  Some areas include: Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Raipur, Bilaspur, Ajmer, Bikaner, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota, Sekhawati, Udaipur, Hisar, Panipat, Amritsar, Jalandhar etc

 Uses state of the art machinery  Over 90% of NP content is politics oriented  From village to State to national level politics covered extensively  NRS- ‘03- 1 st NP to cross the 1.5 crore readership  A year before- launched a campaign to create a “world history of 1.50 crore readers”

 Established in 1942 in Jhansi, Founder- Puran Chand Gupta  Has over 30 editions, HQ- Kanpur, U P  NRS 2005 listed DJ as highest read Hindi daily  Stated readership of million  1 st Indian publication to cross the 20 million readership mark  ABC ‘05- Circulation of over 2.4 million copies  Has 29 printing centres in 10 states

 Uses ‘bol-chal ki bhasha’ – to reach out to a larger audience  Often uses English words written in Devanagri script  Seldom uses chaste/pure Hindi

 Has many innovations to its credit  Localization of news- best feature  Each edition has a local page  E.g.; Gujarati version has 4 editions  Has reach even in small towns  One of the fastest growing daily in India  National edition- circulates in metros & main cities

 Distribution channel- key to good circulation  Initial years- DB available everywhere, every nook & corner of the city, at bus stands, in trains (for which it used hawkers), eating out joints etc  To get a quick foothold- kept attractive invitation price  Never ran short of copies  Went out of its way to keep the distributors happy

 Recognized the need to manage ad revenue early on  For e.g., If some ad appeared in rival NP, say NaiDunia- called up ad executive why they had chose ND over DB!  Actively pursued advertisers  As a result, were high in the minds of the advertisers  In spite of being top Hindi NP, made the effort to reach out to advertisers

 Also maintained link with ad agencies  E.g., During days of monopoly of NaiDunia in Indore, an annual gathering would be organised where everyone associated with the NP would be invited including people from ad agencies. The Chief Ed & owner would not interact much, apart from the routine “please have snacks, thank you for coming” bit  DB gave ad agencies royal treatment to be preferred over others

 DB started the trend of creating marketing events to bring about brand excitement in readers  Followed the twin model scheme: Conducted major events on one hand & offered media partnership to event management companies to conduct the event under their flag  This included: Career fairs, Bollywood star shows, dance shows, great prizes schemes, fun events etc

 Marketing aggression  Localization of news  Use of local & Hinglish language  Good distribution  Favorable rapport with advertisers & ad agencies  Creative innovations such as events marketing

 Customer feedback not enough, take advertisers feedback too  Launch of Chandigarh edition of DB, pre-launch customer preference survey held  Results showed reader’s preference for a Hinglish paper as compared to a chaste Hindi paper  Paper adapted that language in the Chandigarh edition

 Involved the readers, collected their requirements, their suggestions and then worked out the NP accordingly  Realized the important role pricing plays  Believed no system is sacrosanct, flexibility is the key  During planning of supplements - for 2 Ahmedabad editions (East Ahmedabad & West Ahmedabad)- realized that people from east wanted to know about local affairs of the west- Hence owing to market demands, a combination was worked out

Books  Journalism in India: Rangaswami Parthasarathy  Indian Regional Journalism: P K Ravindranath Websites  Wikipedia  (Refer)  bhaskar.html bhaskar.html 