‘Bangalore Bias’ turns daily; Meridian roped in as ad agency

‘Bangalore Bias’, which was launched as a weekly in September 2005, has now turned a daily from Monday to Friday. The ad spend for the coming year is believed to be Rs 3-4 crore and Meridian has been roped in as the ad agency

‘Bangalore Bias’, the weekly newspaper launched in September 2005, has now turned into a daily from Monday to Friday.

‘Bangalore Bias’ was an independent Friday weekly, but in December 2005, its executives rethought their approach to it. “As the paper was doing well, we decided we wanted to make it a daily,” says managing editor Vedam Jaishankar. The newspaper continued to be a weekly till March 2006, after which publishing was suspended in order to get the team and content in place. Almost six months later, the newspaper is back, this time as a daily.

‘Bangalore Bias’ turns daily; Meridian roped in as ad agency

A big thank you in advance from all the squirrels, birds, bees and butterflies. Please plant trees.

To mark its launch as a daily, ‘Bangalore Bias’ required the services of an ad agency, for which Meridian was roped in. Jaishankar reveals that the company is planning ad spends of around Rs 3-4 crore for the coming year. ‘Bangalore Bias’ is more skewed towards corporates and professionals, targeting them with serious journalism and credible news. The entire re-launch campaign is based around the tagline, ‘For Better Living’.

As the newspaper is now committed to improving Bangalore as a city, it will undertake several initiatives on that front. First among these is a city greening project. Towards this end, ‘Bangalore Bias’ released 30 press ads urging people to plant more trees. The 30 ads, which had different creatives, were released consecutively for 30 days. ‘Bangalore Bias’ also tied up with a local plant nursery so that the citizens could buy plants, seeds and saplings easily.

The campaign was released in association with WWF, another Meridian client that had similar views on environment conservation.

“Bangalore is regarded as India’s garden city, but it is fast losing its tree cover to make way for ‘growth’,” says Prakash Belawadi, editorial advisor, ‘Bangalore Bias’. As is known, planting trees is the easiest, surest and cheapest way to solve most of the ecological problems we face today. “So, we decided to take up a cause to demonstrate the daily’s commitment to ‘better living’, rather than launch just another me-too newspaper campaign that boasts of it being the most widely read one. We really feel actions speak better than words.”

There are more presents in a Christmas tree than we see. Plant more trees.

Adding to that, Jaishankar says, “Today, unfortunately, for the larger part, journalism has been reduced to skin exhibition, gossip and sensationalism. Often, things are blown out of proportion. We’ve always believed that the media has a great responsibility towards the people and the community. ‘Bangalore Bias’ is all about engaging with the community with that responsibility.”

According to N Ramesh, national creative director, Meridian, launching the campaign was a good way of re-launching a no-nonsense newspaper like ‘Bangalore Bias’. “Such a campaign actually makes a difference to our readers’ lives and they, too, sincerely want to make things better in Bangalore. Planting more trees is an example of ‘better living’.”

More such efforts are being planned, including tie-ups and events to save Bangalore from its problems. ‘Bangalore Bias’ also tied up with the Rotary Club of Bangalore recently for a seminar on the Right to Information Act.

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