Telugu print market to heat up as political families jump in

YS Jaganmohan Reddy, son of Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, has decided to launch a Telugu daily, Sakshi. This new daily – expected to launch in February 2008 – will offer competition to the current market leader, Eenadu.

Sakshi will start with 19 editions in Andhra Pradesh and an initial print run of more than 11 lakh copies. Eenadu has an all India circulation of 11,16,275 copies (ABC figures for January-June 2007).

KRP Reddy, director, marketing, Sakshi, spoke to agencyfaqs! about the new broadsheet. He seemed confident that Sakshi would capture about 55 per cent of the Telugu market on day one itself. Besides Eenadu, the Andhra market has other Telugu papers such as Andhra Bhoomi, Andhra Jyothi, Andhra Prabha, Vartha and Surya.

How will Sakshi be different from Eenadu? Reddy offered a standard answer, “The paper is going to be more colourful – more colour pages, reader friendly format, more clarity in news stories and easy segmentation of political, business, entertainment and sports news and use of the latest printing technology.”

According to Reddy, Sakshi is toying with three taglines, though ‘Unnadhi Unnatugu’, which means ‘Fact as it is’, is most likely to find favour.

The newspaper has identified 8,000 “exclusive agencies”, which will take care of its distribution. It has hired O&M Hyderabad to take care of its creative plan. Incidentally, O&M earlier handled the Eenadu account.

The paper has earmarked an ad spend of Rs 10 crore, which, Reddy said, will be utilised for a 45 day pre-launch and two month post-launch campaign. The media plan includes a 360 degree massive campaign, including electronic, print (some local Telugu papers and a couple of national English newspapers) and outdoors. “The amount can be increased as per the agency’s plan,” he added.

The paper has already started the campaign with wall writing. It has also started a three phase, door to door campaign in towns with populations of more than one lakh. “Each household will be visited thrice. In the first phase, information such as number of family members, gender, age and their reading habits will be collected. In the second phase, they will be given a glimpse of Sakshi and asked if they would like to switch over to the new daily,” Reddy said. The third phase will be confirmation of subscriptions.

Sakshi is targeted at SEC A, B and C above 16 years.