Strengthening the IMPRINT

How our consulting initiatives with a city-based magazine brought about a 50% growth in advertising revenue and improvement in profits.

Background

Channel 6 started off in the early-1990s as Hyderabad’s first-ever city magazine, with focused local content as well as classifieds. For close to 20 years, it sold successfully through subscriptions as well as on the stands.

Around 2010, a couple of developments brought about the need for fresh thinking – the launch of other city magazines (which put pressure on both ad revenues as well as magazine sales), and a shift in reading habits due to changes in the city’s resident profile.

Channel 6’s publishers reached out to White Cloud Brands in early-2012 to suggest ways to boost magazine sales, grow ad revenues and undertake brand-building initiatives.

Business Challenge

Being the pioneer in Hyderabad, Channel 6 was perceived positively by long-time residents. However, around the early 2000s, Hyderabad’s profile began changing with the influx of several young professionals from different parts of the country. There was greater demand for content that showcased the ‘happening Hyderabad’ (nightlife, hangouts, hotspots, etc.). While Channel 6’s content quality was among the best, the topics appealed more to an audience of 35+, rather than readers in the 18-35 age bracket.

Added to this, the other publishers were spending big on advertising, branding and sales promotion offers.

White Cloud Brands had the mandate to boost ad revenues, magazine sales and brand visibility in a period of six months.

Client Brief

The client’s expectation from us was to

• directly manage the adverting and circulation teams to improve revenues on both fronts
• suggest and put into action brand development initiatives
• collaborate with the Editorial team to simultaneously work on re-engineering the product to appeal to a younger reader base

Approach & Concept

On the advertising front, we:

• undertook an assessment of the existing ad sales team to understand strengths of different individuals
• re-assigned roles to give individuals target verticals and accounts in line with their age, strengths and approach
• streamlined processes such as ad booking, confirmation to Editorial, finalization of pagination, etc. to reduce inadvertent cases of wrong commitments to advertisers, communication gaps between the Editorial and ad sales teams, etc.
• introduced a system of daily reporting to improve transparency and collaboration

In terms of magazine sales, we:

• evaluated the break-up of the copies being printed (between stand sales, subscriptions, free copies to advertisers and promotional copies) to minimize wasteful distribution and reduce printing cost
• tied-up with a leading restaurant chain of the city to display the magazine on branded stands at over 25 restaurants in the city, which also served as a subscription enrolment opportunity
• associated with leading family- and women-focused events in the city, to boost visibility and subscriptions

Results

At the end of six months, average advertisers per issue shot up from 21 to 31 (an increase of ~50%). What made this result even more significant was that White Cloud’s engagement period coincided with the six traditionally lean months (March-September), just before the festive season kicked off in October. On the printing and circulation front, wasteful spend on printing excess copies was significantly reduced and the brand started to benefit from the visibility generated through brand development initiatives. Based on our suggestions to combine high-quality editorial with a more youthful outlook, the magazine also underwent a design overhaul a few months later.

Testimonials

"White Cloud Brands was associated with Channel 6 in the capacity of Marketing Consultants for over six months. In this period, they endeavoured to truly understand the organization, improve processes and motivate the team to deliver better results. Advertising improved by 50% in this period, and we also entered into some exciting brand tie-ups that gave us good visibility. The White Cloud team worked closely with key members of the management team to evolve an operational framework that was efficient and encouraged greater collaboration."

Publisher, Channel 6