Print has to be an aligned media vehicle: Pradeep Dwivedi, Dainik Bhaskar Group

In his new role, Pradeep Dwivedi is responsible for the overall sales revenue and leads nationwide corporate sales for the group publications. His responsibilities include trade marketing and establishment of the brand in the corporate market.

Based in Mumbai, Dwivedi has more than 19 years' experience across sales and marketing, service delivery, risk operations and business development. He has worked with Tata Teleservices, American Express, Standard Chartered, GE Capital and Eicher Motors. Earlier, Dwivedi was with Tata Teleservices as regional COO and senior VP, enterprise business.

Edited Excerpts

There are significant similarities between all my past industries - telecom, banking, financial services as well as the automotive sector - and the print industry. The focus in all B2B marketing relationships is on creating long term customer value by enhancing either coverage, productivity, profitability or end-customer salience. Often, such a solution is a result of co-creation rather than pursuing a 'sell-side' story.

The overall idea is to have a carte blanche revisit of our brand architecture and then look to develop a greater cohesion in keeping with the overall business transformation agenda.

One key area is to address how the brand is perceived in local, that is, state markets, versus corporate trade markets. You will see a significant harmony in the way the brand is understood by various stakeholders, leading to a sustained re-invention.

Many publications, especially the metro-centric ones, believe that if they launch regional language variants, they will automatically get advertisement revenue by virtue of their position in the metros. They are largely cross-subsiding their revenues to gain traction with the advertisers. But, the real test will lie in building readership and reader connect, which is the only real value that appeals to the advertiser. This takes consistent effort and on-ground presence, rather than creating a language translation of the metro offering.

The primary challenge is to drive sustainable and profitable revenue growth by working on some of the key transformation initiatives in synergy with our media agency partners and clients. This will include positioning of Bhaskar group markets as the land of opportunities and growth drivers for Indian economy now, and to distinguish markets as per client needs. We will also create competencies and drive sustainable market-specific focus by creating differentiated value proposition for advertisers, and capitalise on business development opportunities in several emerging categories.

I think the media industry is at a point of inflexion. Two years of near static revenues and minimal growth have ensured that there is significant focus on value delivered. The print industry has to renew itself by ensuring that it significantly improves its relevance to categories and campaigns that are targeted to a specific market/demographic consumer base.

There is an opportunity for doing so, as the return on investment for an advertiser is compounded when the precision of campaign audience is established. Instead of being an 'alternate' media vehicle, print has to be an 'aligned' media vehicle that works in tandem with broadcast (TV/FM), digital and OOH plans of a campaigner.

Print publications have to wean away from volume-centric business model to a fundamental market strength-value delivered business model, where returns to a print business should relate to returns to the advertiser. While monetising every available space appears to be a great business idea, it will lead to long term erosion of reader connect.

The diversity of our product and publication portfolio allows for distinctive positioning of all our offerings. Divya Bhaskar has emerged as a newspaper of choice for the emerging generation of new Gujarat; one which does not believe in the legacy publication and is willing to demand more from the paper. Our brand and local branding initiatives and activities are synchronised to the same.

From a sales standpoint, it provides substantial appeal to those seeking to make an impact on youth and upwardly mobile community of readers. Also, customisation of campaigns for city editions of key Gujarat markets (A-B-S-R, that is, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot) yield excellent results on coverage and recall. The challenge is to build on this credibility.

For Divya Marathi, the brand is clearly positioned as the voice of central Maharashtra, long ignored by mainstream media, which has largely been Mumbai/Pune or Vidarbha-centric.