MxMIndia

Tag: Mid-Day

  • Mid Day promoted Ask Me for the third time in one month.

    Mid Day hattrick for AskMe

    By A Correspondent

    AskMe was looking at promoting their positioning ‘sabka number ek’ and wanted to generate maximum attention through the promotion. Taking this brief forward, Mid Day created a package for AskMe inside which MiD DAY was wrapped. This package highlighted ‘sabka number ek’ positioning of AskMe along with focus on its features.

    This package was first delivered to Mid Day readers on October 14, 2011. Such was the impact of MiD DAY innovation for AskMe that AskMe implemented the same innovation two more times completing a hattrick for the innovation. Thus a second package was distributed to MiD DAY readers on October 16 and for those who could not grab their Mid Day AskMe package the last two times can grab the third package on October 31.

    Speaking on the innovation, Manajit Ghoshal, MD & CEO, MiD DAY Infomedia Ltd. said, “The effort with this innovation is to stand out and create buzz for our client. This is the third time we doing this innovation within this month which is a testimony to our success at creating hype and packing a punch. The prime motive of the innovation is to communicate in a simple, yet effective manner ensuring call to action. The placement of the number was also very strategic, so as to ensure maximum recall for our readers. Our focus is to adapt to each brand and clients requirement and leverage our strengths to deliver an effective communication platform.”

  • Mumbai tabloid Mid-Day has taken up cudgels on behalf of autorickshaw passengers again, with a renewal of its Meter Down campaign.

    Mid-Day re-launches Meter Down

    By A Correspondent

    Mid-Day has re-launched its Meter Down Campaign in Mumbai to put errant Rickshaw drivers to task. The campaign will be launched as a joint programme with the traffic department and the RTO. This year’s Meter Down campaign aims to take on the uncouth auto drivers to teach them a lesson. The campaign will go on for a period of four weeks and aims to garner support from the citizens across the city. According to Mid-Day, people have anger towards rickshaw drivers mainly for reasons such as tampered meters, refusal to ply and also for their rude behaviour.

     

    Mid-Day will identify key locations in the city where the authorities concerned will be present to reduce the hassles caused to the citizens. The focus will be on peak timings in the morning and in the evening when most office-goers are affected. The offenders will have strict fines levied on them and serious offences could also lead to cancellation of licences.

     

    Last year’s Mid-Day Meter Down campaign, which targeted the taxi drivers, received overwhelming support. In a span of just one month, the campaign saw as many as 1,551 taxis being booked for refusing fares across the city. In addition about 317 taxi drivers’ licenses were cancelled. Mid-Day followed up tirelessly with each department to ensure that the errant drivers are booked.

     

    Speaking on the re-launch of the campaign, Mr Manajit Ghoshal, MD and CEO, Mid Day Infomedia Limited said, “Mid-Day is a local city newspaper and therefore it is our endeavour to cater to issues pertinent to the people of the city. Mid-Day Meter Down campaign is an effort to resolve issues that a Mumbaikar faces on a daily basis. The last season saw great response from the city and we are more than happy to launch this campaign once again as people have again started facing a lot of issues with the rickshaw drivers. The kind of success that the campaign received last year makes us hope that this campaign will make a stronger impact.”

  • Mohit Sainani, who was head of marketing at Mid-Day, has called it a day. He has now joined Star India.

    Mohit Sainani quits Mid-Day, joins Star India

    By Shubhangi Mehta

    Mr Mohit Sainani who was working as the marketing head, Mid Day for the past four years, has quit and moved to Star India.

    Industry sources confirm that Mr Sainani’s designation at Star has not been decided yet but he will be working closely with Mr Neville Bastawalla, AVP marketing,Star India Pvt Ltd. It may be recalled that Mr Bastawala had joined Star India as Head of Marketing for Star World and Star Movies. He too was previously with Mid-Day as Head of Marketing for a little over three years from where he exited early in December 2010.

    Prior to Mid Day, Mr Sainani had a stint with Compass BPO as a Marketing Manager where he reported into the CEO. Before that he worked with Times of India as Assistant Manager and as Relationship Manager with Citibank NA.

    Star India, the leading media and Entertainment Company in India has the highest reach among the country’s broadcasters, beaming to over 140 million people every week across India and over 65 countries across the globe. Its portfolio includes 33 channels in eight languages spanning the household brands Star Plus, Star One, Star Gold, Channel [V], Star Jalsha, Star Pravah, Star World, Star Movies, Star Utsav; along with the joint venture channels Asianet, Asianet Plus, Star Vijay, Suvarna, Star News, ESPN and Star Sports.

    Star India also manages a portfolio of business ventures including DTH operator Tata Sky; cable system Hathway, channel distributor Star Den, news channel operator MCCS, the film production and distribution business Fox Star Studios India and Star CJ Home Shopping.

  • Delhi Mid-Day takes Bollywood to offices

    By A Correspondent

    Mid-Day gave its Delhi readers an opportunity to come face-to-face with the star cast of the movie Soundtrack through the  Mid-Day Bollywood Lunch Contest. Rajeev Khandelwal visited the office of Vivaki Exchange, Gurgaon to meet and have lunch with Nitin Dhingra, winner of Mid Day Bollywood Lunch Contest. Rajeev Khandelwal was accompanied by actress Mrinali Sharma and director Neerav Ghosh of the movie Soundtrack.

     

    Speaking on the occasion,Anirban Bagchi, Publisher, Delhi Mid-Day, said, “Mid-Day Bollywood Lunch Contest is an international award winning property with Mid-Day since the last four years, wherein we take the stars of the movie to corporate offices and give its employees an opportunity to interact with the stars. It is one of our many successful properties in Mumbai since the last 4 years and we have started executing this property in Delhi too, with the first one being BLC for Jhootha Hi Sahi with John Abraham.”

     

    The Bollywood lunch contest is an activity wherein Mid-Day runs a contest for the readers to win a lunch date with the stars of the movie. And because of the winner; all the office colleagues get to meet their favourite stars at their office.

     

    Mid-Day had earlier done Bollywood lunch contests with stars like Aamir Khan, Ajay Devgn, Ranbir Kapoor, John Abraham, Arjun Rampal, Emran Hashmi and Anil Kapoor.

  • DNA ed-in-chief Aditya Sinha's column is a win-win. He will turn into a martyr if he's sacked and a hero if he gets away with it

    Mediaah!: Of a toothless Press Council and spineless Editors’ Guild

    By Pradyuman Maheshwari

    Apologies for not being regular. A colleague has been indisposed. We’ve been getting our share of exclusives and firsts. So a good part of the day is spent in ensuring that MxMIndia turns into a broadbased media website. So all of you who’ve been missing your daily dose of Mediaah!, chill! I don’t think the blog will be a daily, but an update at least three to four times a week?!

     

    Mint editor R Sukumar’s ‘Edspace’ is a delight to read. Pity it doesn’t appear every Saturday. Delight for me because it deals essentially with the media, and often on ethics. For instance, last weekend, he wrote about journalists being responsible for the state in which the profession is in the India – the corruption levels given the direct and indirect favours journos take (see link). Like awards, being part of a government committee. Sukumar hopes the Editors’ Guild of India will debate these issues.

    Being a Delhi-based editor and “an unacknowledged member” of the Guild, I guess he hopes the apex association of editors will do something. My own belief is that it will not. It could do precious little when the paid political news controversy first surfaced a couple of years back and Medianet did a decade ago.

    If the Press Council of India is toothless, the Guild is spineless. And this is despite having editors like T N Ninan, M J Akbar and Rajdeep Sardesai at the helm. Guess it’s one thing writing about the government or demining, say, a Narendra Modi, but another to take on biggies in their own biradiri.

     

    Paid news and Mid-Day

    Mid-Day exec editor Sachin Kalbag makes a brave defence for the paid news practice that his paper indulges in. Quoted in The Big Story on MxMIndia.com earlier this week, he defends the ‘Centre Stage’ feature in his paper that contains advertorials. Just 15 percent of the content is paid for. He also calls the tagline under the Bombay Times masthead as a disclaimer.

    I don’t think people see it as a disclaimer. If The Times of India and Mid-Day are serious about informing their readers that some of the stuff in their papers is published not on the merit of its editorial content but the amount someone’s paid for it, they must clearly state that they are doing it. They must tell the reader that the content in question must not be construed as that done by the paper’s journalists. Just as Mint has been doing about its advertorials. So in every sense of the term, the 15% of the paper’s Centre Stage section is paid content.

    So, lemme repeat what Sachin says:

    My opinion on paid news is very simple: It’s an abhorrent practice. It demeans journalism. I don’t really know when this crept in, but it has plagued the media for decades. Unscrupulous journalists have been on the take for several years, and this is not a new phenomenon. The widely cited example of institutional selling of content space is Bombay Times which introduced a rate card for coverage in the supplement. Recently, the supplement began putting a disclaimer under its masthead. The phenomenon of institutional selling of content space crept into the media for various reasons – but the root cause was always to increase revenue.

    Our editorial policy is very clear: any “Advertorial” is placed in a two-page section called Centre Stage, which is part of the Classifieds section of the newspaper. Centre Stage in Mid-Day is differentiated in various ways from the editorial part of the newspaper. Here’s how: 1) The Centre Stage carries a prominent disclaimer in a large point size under the masthead “People, Parties, Promotions”. This has been happening since the day Mid-Day started Centre Stage, which was more than two years ago. In Centre Stage, we carry items on movie releases and profiles of actors, fashion designers, parties, etc, that happened in Mumbai that week, apart from product launches.

    Close to 85 percent of the Centre Stage advertorial section is non-paid, that is to say the Centre Stage team of writers (this team is not part of the Mid-Day editorial team) interviews people or writes about their parties or products. Around 15 per cent of the items are placed where the content space is sold by the sales team. Once again, these items are only about Bollywood, fashion, parties or product launches. There is a separate, specialized sales team that sells this space, and at no point in time do they dictate terms to

    Editorial, mainly because Centre Stage is not editorial space, but marketing real estate. In fact, there have been several instances when the Editorial staff in Mid-Day has trashed Centre Stage advertisers in the review section of the newspaper, and the sales team has gotten into trouble due to that negative coverage. Yet, we are very clear at Mid-Day that the Sales and Editorial wires do not cross, and that the Chinese wall between them stays even though we may be good friends outside the office.

    We are also very clear that Centre Stage will not carry any “news”, but only information on these three or four categories listed above. There is neither any opinion nor any recommendation made in the section that is endorsed by the editor. In the strictest sense of the term, it is an advertorial. Mid-Day, therefore, has stayed away from “paid news” and will continue to do so.

    Thus, Centre Stage in Mid-Day is institutional selling of content space which I guess has a rate card. I am told revenues are healthy and though they don’t run over a 100-odd crore as Medianet is said to be generating, but even if it’s 1/100th that, it’s too much to sacrifice for stupid things like editorial integrity.

    Guess for some publications, editorial ethics is also an abhorrent practice. It demeans ad sales!

     

    Dabbang Sinha!

    As a strategy, it’s a win-win. He took on the information broadcasting minister in public saying that ever since DNA went ballistic with the anti-corruption drive of Anna Hazare, the government stopped advertising in his paper. (Link to column)

    Now, from whatever I’ve known of Ambika Soni, she’s a pretty reasonable minister. Given all the complaints that every I&B mantri receives, she could’ve made life miserable for media players. Especially broadcasters. Like her predecessors did.

    A senior journalist in the Capital told me that Aditya Sinha’s column last Sunday is sure to see his scalp. Subhash Chandraji could find it too hot to handle, and the Zee supremo needs the government for his plans a helluva lot.

    But this is why I said it’s a win-win for Sinha. If he gets the sack, he will turn a martyr (that doesn’t help much, I can tell you from experience). And if he continues, he’ll turn into a hero because after all, few have had the balls to say the government is kinda blackmailing the press.

    Sample some gems from his column:

    > Soni’s statement led us to infer that our Anna Hazare coverage was being punished by a suspension of government ads, and that Soni met our ad executives just to ensure the point was driven home.

    >This was not surprising because DNA recently has faced suspicion and hostility from the government which has apparently adopted an attitude of “you’re either with us or against us”. The prime minister’s media advisor has privately accused DNA of an agenda against the government, and its Editor-in-Chief of being close to a political party in the opposition.

    >The day after the meeting with Soni, DNA started getting DAVP ads again. Presumably, from the government side, mission was accomplished

    >Loss of business can be measured, but the loss of credibility cannot. Above all, that someone in government tried to be petty and vindictive is, to us, validation that we were doing our job right

    The views expressed here are my own and are not necessarily those of MxMIndia and its editorial team. In fact often it’s in variance with their views. Meanwhile, buzz me if you have a story to tell. Confidentiality assured. There are various ways you can reach me: pradyumanm[at]mxmindia.com, 23050B5D, pradyumanm@gmail.com, @pmahesh, 98338 76278.

     

    Tomorrow:  Is The Times of India taking on Times Now?

  • Pradyuman Maheshwari on why Mid-Day must get back to carrying timepass, Bambaiyya content

    Wanted: a mast, mast Mid-Day

    Pradyuman MaheshwariBy Pradyuman Maheshwari

    We’ve been promising a review of Mid-Day. It would’ve been unfair to do one by just appraising a single day’s edition, so we thought of doing that over the last 10-odd days since the paper went for a new look.

    First off, a couple of disclosures. Okay, let me use the ‘I’ instead of ‘We’. I worked with the group for seven years (1993-2000), was a shareholder for a bit and I take great pride in the rapid strides that current executive editor Sachin Kalbag has been taking in his career.

     

     

    Yet another disclosure, I was invited to write for the paper’s new-look, but declined the offer because of a Medianet-like scheme that Mid-Day runs for part of the paper.

    But let’s get to the relaunch. I’ve always perceived Mid-Day as a Mumbai institution, with the paper celebrating the city and reporting on what’s happening in here. At first, it lost its constituency of the society circuit to Bombay Times and over the last six-odd years, Mumbai Mirror has been steadily eating into Mid-Day’s dominance on civic and Bollywood news.

    The Medianet-like practice that the paper started was the final nail on the coffin. When I spoke to former owner Tariq Ansari for an interview with Impact last year, he said he was against the concept but was forced to given commercial considerations. Well, a couple of crores of revenue is good to have, but all of it at the cost of integrity?

    While The Times of India group clearly says that Bombay Times is an ‘advertorial entertainment promotional feature’, while the statement upfront is a step in the right direction, it’s not enough as it ought to make a very clear announcement of what it means on its main Times of India page as well as on Bombay Times. I’m sure not many have noticed that small line under the Bombay, Delhi etc Times mastheads

    Back to Mid-Day, I believe it must reinforce as identity as a Mumbai paper. The Page 1 story must be ‘Bambaiyya’ in content and outlook, the feel ought to be tabloidy and the stories must have punch. I would like to see the Mate and snippety Diary back on Page 3. Or at least Page 2.

    Despite an edit page and some pretty good (and serious) content, Mid-Day was always known as a timepass read. Sachin was around in Mid-Day those days, so he should know.

    Agreed the look-and-feel has got to be more contemporary, but if it wants to create the same magic as it did until a few years back, it’s got to get its masti back.

    Why jail only for political paid content

    Beware, media barons and editors accepting money for publishing editorial content. While the election commission can do precious little about the corrupt practices of media entities carrying content in lieu of money and not clearly tagging it as an advertisement, it’s heartening to note that all those who are doing it for politics will be put behind bars for 2 years.

    Now, what about those doing it for lifestyle products? Shall we count the years?

    Read: an IndianTelevision report

    What’s a piece on the Campaign A-List doing on MxMIndia.com?

    If you’re surprised why the MxM anchor has Everest Brand Solutions president Dhunji Wadia telling us why it’s great to be on the Campaign India A-List, don’t be. It’s not that he put my name on the mail instead of the Campaign editor’s. We asked him to write it. He did that in record time, in between meetings. (Read Dhunji on the A-List)

    Here’s my take on the issue: MxMIndia is media-neutral and would like to write about every media entity. We will write about all the activities of even those who consider MxMIndia it’s rival. For in my books, no one is. I’ll be happy to cover the activities of all business publications and the media trade publications. This includes the Campaign A-List, the afaqs events, the exchange4media group events etc etc. That is, of course, if an MxM reporter is allowed in.

    Buzz me if you have a story to tell. Confidentiality assured. There are various ways you can reach me: pradyumanm[at]mxmindia.com, 23050B5D, Gtalk: pradyumanm[at]gmail.com, @pmahesh, 98338 76278