Post 1
When we first met - a small group of staffers from editorial, circulation and advertisement departments from our newspaper - in mid-2007, none of us had an inkling that the management would ask us to launch a daily tabloid in less than 5 months' time.
It was on July 10, 2007, that the group was formed and called to discuss, what appeared at first, to be a strategy to try and revamp the content of the main paper to attract young readers.
The specific target group we were asked to focus on were the youngsters who worked at IT services companies of the IT Corridor of Chennai, home to some of the biggest IT services companies that had set base in the city over the past two decades.
The corridor was where thousands of young people headed to work every day, often spending longs hours in transit. The profile of the blue-collared workers - highly aspirational and with considerably good levels of disposable income - was of interest to advertisers, and as a result, publishers alike.
The group met twice a week over the next month to try and figure out ways on how to meet our target group, and hear from them first-hand on what they liked to read in a newspaper.
I knew a few people at these companies, it was my responsibility to set up the meetings. We began visiting some campuses. But during the course of conversations, we never mentioned that we would be launching a new, free tabloid because none of us knew.
My own impression was that the newspaper was going to launch a supplement targeting the IT employees as a special interest group.
Our meetings threw up some interesting discussions with the the target group but we would also end up inadvertently seeing ourselves engaged in debates on the newspaper's editorial policies and what not. We felt very happy some days and frustrated at the outcome on some other days. This cycle will haunt me personally for quite some time that came after.
We compiled whatever we found relevant from these meetings and prepared a presentation for our directors.
It is a matter of coincidence that I must publish this post today. We made our presentation on August 20, 2007.
And that was the first step.
Story of Ergo will continue ...
When we first met - a small group of staffers from editorial, circulation and advertisement departments from our newspaper - in mid-2007, none of us had an inkling that the management would ask us to launch a daily tabloid in less than 5 months' time.
It was on July 10, 2007, that the group was formed and called to discuss, what appeared at first, to be a strategy to try and revamp the content of the main paper to attract young readers.
The specific target group we were asked to focus on were the youngsters who worked at IT services companies of the IT Corridor of Chennai, home to some of the biggest IT services companies that had set base in the city over the past two decades.
The corridor was where thousands of young people headed to work every day, often spending longs hours in transit. The profile of the blue-collared workers - highly aspirational and with considerably good levels of disposable income - was of interest to advertisers, and as a result, publishers alike.
The group met twice a week over the next month to try and figure out ways on how to meet our target group, and hear from them first-hand on what they liked to read in a newspaper.
I knew a few people at these companies, it was my responsibility to set up the meetings. We began visiting some campuses. But during the course of conversations, we never mentioned that we would be launching a new, free tabloid because none of us knew.
My own impression was that the newspaper was going to launch a supplement targeting the IT employees as a special interest group.
Our meetings threw up some interesting discussions with the the target group but we would also end up inadvertently seeing ourselves engaged in debates on the newspaper's editorial policies and what not. We felt very happy some days and frustrated at the outcome on some other days. This cycle will haunt me personally for quite some time that came after.
We compiled whatever we found relevant from these meetings and prepared a presentation for our directors.
It is a matter of coincidence that I must publish this post today. We made our presentation on August 20, 2007.
And that was the first step.
Story of Ergo will continue ...
