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First day, First show: Only a handful have seen HT Mumbai

It could be a coincidence, but out of the 11 ad professionals that agencyfaqs! spoke to, only two – Piyush Pandey and Prasoon Joshi – had read the paper

Delhi’s leading newspaper, Hindustan Times, made its Mumbai debut on Thursday. People, who have seen the product, say, they like it. But the problem is very few Mumbaikars seem to have actually seen/read HT on the day of its launch.

To find out how Mumbai’s advertising industry has responded to HT, agencyfaqs! spoke to a cross-section of industry seniors. It could be a coincidence, but out of the eleven professionals that we spoke to, only two – O&M’s Piyush Pandey and McCann’s Prasoon Joshi – had actually read the paper.

Our list included the who’s who of Mumbai’s advertising: Lowe’s Pranesh Mishra, JWT’s Colvyn Harris, Lowe’s Balki, MindShare’s Hiren Pandit, Media Direction’s Sandeep Tarkas, rmg david’s Josy Paul, Everest’s Milind Dhaimade, JWT’s Senthil Kumar, Mudra’s Ryan Menezes, O&M’s Piyush Pandey and McCann’s Prasoon Joshi.

As the list suggests, most of the people that agencyfaqs! spoke to were from the creative side of advertising since these professionals know a thing or two about design, creativity and aesthetics.

What’s heartening for HT is the encouraging reviews that it has received from Piyush Pandey and Prasoon Joshi – arguably the best known creative professionals in the country.

Joshi said, “I think HT Mumbai is very nice. I especially liked its lay-out and printing quality. While it’s too early to comment on how the newspaper will do in future, I certainly liked HT’s first edition.” Pandey, on his part, described the edition as “extremely refreshing” and “very promising”. O&M handles the advertising account of HT.

HT’s Mumbai’s launch edition has 24 pages, including sections such as HT Metro, HT Classifieds, HT Nation, HT World, HT Business and HT Sports. Besides, the edition has an eight-page supplement, HT Style. The launch edition also provided readers with Mumbai Magic, a 32-page photo magazine featuring some of the most talked about areas in Mumbai. There is also a luxury magazine ‘Spend’ sent across with this issue.

HT Mumbai is priced at Rs 2.50 between Monday and Saturday. The Sunday edition is priced marginally higher.

Some of the advertisers in the launch edition were Fidelity, BPL Mobile, LG, Intel, Ambi Malls, HDFC, Tata Steel, Orange, Casio and Siemens.

© 2005 agencyfaqs!

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