Indian Magazine Congress highlights local and global challenges and opportunities

Mediamorphosis – the future of magazines and the magazines of the Future

Juan Senor, partner and co-founder, Innovation Media Consulting 

Senor covered topics such as how to make magazines “heavier” with content and how the digital era has transformed reading habits. He highlighted data showing that digital reading on mobiles and smart devices is now preferred. He said: “It’s a mobile age for magazines”. He also shared his experience of few organisational structures of top companies and brands, which were remarkable.

Indian language magazines connecting with audiences and extending platforms

Paresh Nath, chairman, Delhi Press Group

Nath focussed on how magazines need to foresee the need for regional vernacular content. The availability of such content is not enough compared to the demand. He also provided statistical data, mentioning that Indian readers incline more towards reading regional vernacular content.

B. Srinivasan, managing director, Vikatan Group

Srinivasan highlighted the ways and means publishers should utilise social media to popularise their brands. He said that in-house team building and encouraging brainstorming within teams will produce great ideas. Interestingly, he also said that the general behaviour of smart device users has shown their completely favoured interest towards social media.

Emerging consumer trends and implications for magazines

Santosh Desai, MD and CEO, Future Brands

Desai highlighted data that compared print and digital reading habits. He said that print is not dead – but that digital growing rapidly. He said that people want to read quality content at nominal prices, and emphasised that social media interaction will play a major role in keeping readers intact. He said that it is important to categorise your readers and deliver them the best content in order to fight the competition.

Publishing in the digital whirlpool – drivers of change in the Indian and global market

Jim Bilton, managing director, Wessenden Marketing, UK

Bilton stated key aspects that a publisher needs to look at, apart from content. He also spoke about statistics from the UK where the ratio between print and digital sales is 99:1. He said that publishers should foresee beyond geographies and make their print editions interactive so that the ratio between print and digital improves. He also highlighted the importance of social media and its impact on magazine brands.

10 key magazine media trends for 2015

Chris Llewellyn, president and CEO, FIPP

Llewellyn’s key points of focus included the need to be digital, the shift of focus upon millennials, the distribution channel which is now reader determined, the need for depth and quality content, the mobile dominated world, key advertising streams, the need to diversify revenue, the role of ecommerce in magazines, increased focus on offline events and sustaining brand authenticity.

Understanding interactive print

Jessica Butcher, CMO and founding director, Blippar

While the world is going digital and everyone speaks about interactivity, Butcher said that print is not dead and can never die. She explained the Blippar app that can make print magazines interactive. It’s an era of smart phones, declared Butcher, who said that the free Blippar app scans QR codes from print pages in magazines using the smart device cameras and display interactive content in mobile screens, in order to make pages come alive.

Readership and promotion – capturing millennials

Girish Ramdas, CEO and co-founder, Magzter

Ramdas said millennials should be the key focus of all publishers. He said that this generation is born and brought up with the technology and publishers need to understand their needs and publish content which reaches them appropriately.

He highlighted current digital reading habits via smart phones and also emphasised the high engagement levels of millennials with social media. He said it is important for publishers to adopt to shortening content, as this generation demands content to be short and crisp. He also spoke about how digital newsstands have paved the way for millennials to choose more and read across the fly. He concluded by stating that publishers need to think beyond boundaries and the only way to do that is to “go digital”.

Egnitha Ponnuru is PR and corporate communications manager at Magzter