Sumita Vaid
Media

Brick and Click launches Brandsum, a ready reckoner of print advertising

Portal brandemataram.com, launched recently by Brick and Click, has unveiled an offline application Brandsum, a database of brand-wise print advertising data and image

A bunch of advertising, marketing and research professionals based in Kolkata hopes to make life easier for those in the business looking for information on print advertising - be it data or images. Portal brandemataram.com, launched recently by Brick and Click, has unveiled an offline application Brandsum, a database of brand-wise print advertising data and image.

Speaking on behalf of Brick and Click, Ujjal Sinha, managing director, explained the need for a product such as the Brandsum. "If the requirement is to have 360-degree knowledge about what's happening to your and to your competitor's advertising in the print medium, Brandsum is the database you need." According to Sinha, the spiralling cost of HR and real estate makes Brandsum a cost effective and reliable alternative for agencies, marketing departments, research organisations and media houses looking for a ready reference library. The product will be delivered every month in a CD format.

Brandsum offers an archive of print advertisements covering leading English publications and includes 50 dailies and magazines (all editions) encompassing general interest, financial and speciality publications such as in-flight magazines. The user can search through categories and brands to view and save original sized ad images. Apart from the images, the software also helps to generate an editable (in excel sheet) report for brands and products, containing such information as brand names, headlines, ad sizes, hue, date of release, page of release and publication in which the ads have appeared. Brandsum currently covers more than 15,000 Indian brands for around 500 products, categorised into 65 categories. It adds roughly 200 new adverts with all their release details everyday.

The company proposes to go to the community through direct contact mostly for the promotion of the product. While the cost of subscribing for a pre-decided category would be in the range of Rs 5,000 per month, because there is "immense scope of customisation" the price may not be uniform or predetermined.

Elaborating on the kind of customisations that Brandsum can offer, Sinha says, "We can, every evening, send an email to a publication somewhere in India informing them about all the ads that came out in a pre-identified set of publications. We have built up a huge archive of print ads over the last three years. We plan to enter the Hindi and Bengali print media and thus the size of our information bank is expected to rise exponentially."

The inclusion of non-English publications in Brandsum is the next step towards providing information in a holistic manner. "The future of Brandsum lies in bringing data and images from non-English publications under its fold. Brandsum is exploring ways and means of archiving data from below-the-line and television," Sinha added. © 2003 agencyfaqs!

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