Mathrubhumi aims at driving up circulation with aggressive new campaign

Close on the heels of the personality-led campaign launched in February this year, Mathrubhumi has launched a new campaign aimed squarely at driving its circulation up. "While the earlier campaign was to demonstrate the equity and trust enjoyed by the newspaper, this time we are directly working on driving circulation," says Sajan Abraham, managing director, Maitri Advertising, the agency handling the campaign.

As part of its latest initiative, Mathrubhumi kicked off a mega scheme in early May "aimed at changing the way Malayalees look at the newspaper and the advertisements in it". Christened ‘Sammana Mazha' (shower of gifts), the scheme, the company claims, has drawn tremendous response from readers and advertisers alike. According to Abraham, "This is a first of its kind in the publishing history - the scheme brings readers prizes worth Rs 1.25 crore in a span of three months." That, without filling in coupons, writing slogans or mailing entry forms. All a reader had to do is subscribe to Mathrubhumi and "prizes will come searching for them".

On the advertising front, Kerala has witnessed a few innovations with Maitri coming up with some hard-hitting print ads. Those who don't subscribe to Mathrubhumi were reached through a full-page ad - designed like the front page of Mathrubhumi, complete with masthead and cartoons - which appeared in The Hindu and in the Indian Express recently.

Just one week into the scheme, the circulation of Mathrubhumi, claim company executives, has shot up by "thousands of copies". It seems an in-house study has shown that the 11 brands that took part in the Mathrubhumi scheme registered "higher recall than any other brand in any other newspaper".

Of course, the official surveys on circulation and readership will eventually capture the real story later, but for now we give readers the version as presented by Mathrubhumi. © 2003 agencyfaqs!