AN INTERIM REPORT ON

Marketing Research and Execution of Company’s existing Marketing/Advertising plans

BY

ABHINAV PANDEY

ID: 13A1HP039

Interim Project report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the PGDM program of

IMT-Hyderabad

MINT, HINDUSTAN TIMES MEDIA LIMITD - HYDERABAD

SUBMITTED TO:

Mr. Sachin Ganguwar Dr. Romina Mathew

Asst. Manager (Marketing) Area Chairperson - HRM

MINT, HT Media IMT-Hyderabad

 COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Information and images contained within this report are copyright and intellectual property of

ABHINAV PANDEY (13A1HP039), batch of 2013-2015.

No part of this report may be reproduced in any manner without the permission of the

publisher.
Contents
Brief Introduction about MINT:-.......................................................................................................... 5
Introduction about the Project:-.......................................................................................................... 6
Internal analysis of Print media industry ............................................................................................. 6
Product Description:-............................................................................................................................ 7
Work done so far:- ................................................................................................................................ 8
Proposed approach:- ............................................................................................................................. 8
Learning so far: - .................................................................................................................................... 9
Stage 2 Project:-……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….10
Learning from this Phase:-……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….11
Upcoming approach for Stage 3:-……………………………………………………………………………………………………..11
References:-………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………12
Brief Introduction of the HT Media:-

HT Media Limited is an India mass media company based in New Delhi, India. It has holdings in Print,
electronic and digital media. HT’s online business, is largely handled by Firefly e-ventures internet
business, include the flagship web portal Hindustantimes.com, Livemint.com, Desimartini.com and
Shine.com. The Hindustan Times newspaper was formally inaugurated in 1924. In 1927, it was reborn as
Hindustan Times Ltd., a limited liability company. In 1936, the Hindi daily Hindustan was launched It also
publishes two magazines in Hindi, Kadambini a literary magazine established in 1960 and Nandan a
children's magazine, started in 1964.

In 2003, the company incorporated all of its media businesses under HT Media Ltd. In 2004, HT Media
Ltd was listed as a public company and attracted external funding. It moved to Mumbai in 2005, with a
new product and content mix. In 2006, Fever 104 FM was launched, in technical collaboration with the
Virgin Group. Hindustan was relaunched re-establishing the company's prominent presence in the
regional news space. In 2007, Mint, the business paper in partnership with the Wall Street Journal was
launched in Delhi and Mumbai. In the internet space, Hindustantimes.com was relaunched and
Livemint.com was introduced.
Brief Introduction about MINT:-

Mint is India's second largest business newspaper published by HT Media Ltd, the Delhi-based media
group which also publishes the Hindustan Times. It mostly targets readers who are business executives
and policy makers. It is India's first newspaper to be published in the Berliner format. Mint exclusively
carries "WSJ" branded editorial content in its pages by virtue of the content sharing partnership
between HT Media and Newscorp. It has also collaborated with US based MNC, Bloomberg TV in 2009.

The USP of Mint is its style which is similar to Wall street Journal
generally termed as “Berliner Format”. Its design and format is designed by Mario Garcia who has been
associated with WSJ. It uses info graphics to tell stories in analytics form which explains outcomes and
insight explanation of so called Cause and Effect theory. The newspaper basically targets to very niche
customer category, which are very particular about the outcomes generated by economic reforms and
its impact on common man. Although it is a daily newspaper (except on Sundays), Mint doesn't think of
itself as a newspaper of record, choosing instead to focus on the bigger stories of the day, served along
with analysis and lifestyle pieces. Some media critics have called Mint a “Daily magazine” because of
this choice of presentation.

On Saturday’s, there is special edition of mint called as “MINT Lounge” which us published across 10
different location includes Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad,
Ahmedabad and Kolkata which is more popular than the weekday issues based on increased circulation
figures, especially with women readers. Lounge is a magazine-style supplement that focuses on the arts,
food, culture, fashion, sport, music, etc. Mint carries a short editorial piece on the front page titled
"Quick Edit", which is quite popular for its concise, oft hard-hitting opinion. The longer opinion pieces
titled "Our View" and guest opinion pieces titled "My view" or "Their Views" are carried in views pages
towards the end of paper.

On the editorial side, Mint is organized into various teams based on reporting subject matter. Topic
editors usually decide on the composition of stories for the next day's edition in a news conference held
before the paper goes into the final stages of production. There are also small teams that focus on
strategy, marketing, advertising and other aspects of publishing the paper and its ancillary offerings.
Mint also houses technicians who work exclusively on HT Media's digital media projects, including apps
for mobiles and tablets featuring Mint and other publications from HT Media. The newsroom and
management follows a relatively 'flat' structure, unlike in other divisions of HT Media.
Introduction about the Project :-

Primarily our main aim is to increase the brand awareness and visibility of MINT newspaper in
Hyderabad, which is very young compared to other metro cities where availability of the Mint is there.
We had been assigned with different verticals like Automobile, Real estate, Gems & Jewellery, Electronic
Home appliances, Corporate Houses like Information Technology companies, Hospitals, Corporate
Hotels Financial Market etc. There are a lot of sectors on which company is experimenting like Gems &
Jewellery , Electronics home appliances and IT companies. The offerings are variable and changes
according to the Verticals we are approaching.

I have selected electronics appliances industry initially why because:-

1. This is a segment which serves products throughout the year targeting different segment of
customers which includes Air condition, Refrigerators, Smart phones, etc.
2. In Hyderabad, when we started our internship, there was mushrooming demand of products like
AC, Refrigerators and other cooling products.
3. India, now transforming into one of the largest e-retailing business, where companies like
Amazon, Flipkart is trying to tap the potential market of India. This gives a print media to avail
the opportunity via advertisements in Mint.
4. As per as survey from Reuters, Print Media generates approx 80% of their revenue through
advertisements and 20% of revenue through circulation. So advertisement is really an important
sector to generate revenue for Print media.

Internal analysis of Print Media Industry

The pricing of ad space in newspaper has always been a tricky question to answer. In India, the English
dailies are seen as premium and the ad space in these is sold to clients that are into high end products.
This makes the English and business dailies more demanding for advertisements. The pricing strategy
mostly depends on the circulation, Size of the ad, location of the Ad on the paper. The Indian print
media industry is estimated to have grown by 7.6% in 2008 and reaching around which is going to
increase at constant rate as literacy rate and business are expanding. Currently Indian print media has
reach of around 300 million which is expected to be grow to 400 million by 2014, a report from PwC
says.
 300

250

200

150 Magzines
Newspaper
100

50

0
FY06 FY07 FY08 FY09 FY10 FY11

Figure 1
X-axis -> Rs in Billion; Y-axis -> Financial year

Product Description:-
Daily features for Mint corresponds to different sections and are specially designed. It covers almost
every aspect of life. They have collaborated with WSJ and Bloomberg TV which have a special sections
covering international news analysis. Mint money is basically a section where investment geeks and
professionals can analyze the market and its depth analysis is done. There is analysis is done on mint
initially, which was one of our task. The business daily comes every day except, Sunday.

They are classified as :-

 Monday – Personal Finance

 Tuesday – Health
 Wednesday – Technology & Innovation
 Thursday – Design and Style
 Friday - Lifestyle
 Saturday – Mint Lounge ( Books, Lifestyle, Travel, Cuisines, Trend)
Work done so far:-

As we entered into our 8th week of internship, there is lot of learning particularly when we are dealing
B2B business. Print media, when people are migrating and switching towards Digital Advertisement, is
facing lots of challenges to generate its revenue. As from recent survey from Deloitte, more than half of
the world’s adult population reads a newspaper. More than 2.5 billion read the print edition and over
600 million read the digital edition. This represents more readers than total global users of the internet.

Electronics home appliances have varieties of product to be catered to the population depending upon
the demographics. I started to filter the companies according to the proposed plan of their launches.
Then after, we have to study and research about the client and its company’s details. The offerings can
be varied from client to client. Like, business colleges have a potential chunk of customer who all has to
be aware of the depth analysis of economic effects. The research is done before we pitch to our client.

Proposed approach:-
This is the most important part of our project where we have to select our client and approach them
depending upon the set of requirements. Business daily like Mint, which suits only specific set of
customer, has to be considered before listing them and Filtering. Initially, the approach was traditional
where set of clients were selected on the competitors list and was approached with best price offering.
Later on, with this approach, we started to filtering clients on secondary data base. The client portfolio is
introspected and the launch of any product is considered before the first communication made. The
following process is followed:-

1. Filtering the client: - List of Client is analyzed and approached if they suits the profile of
Mint.
2. Fixing appointments: - Meeting is fixed with the Marketing manager or Sales manager. If the
concerned person represents the department, offers are explained via telephone. Further
meetings are fixed if they are interested in the product offering.
3. Meetings to Pitch: - Mint is introduced to the Client in personal where USP of the business
daily is explained. How the newspaper can help them to generate revenue and how better it
can be paid off to them.
4. Following the client:- Client is followed up and reminded about the offerings. If there
is any better way to cater them, the deal can be flexible.
5. Settlement: - Final settlement is done with exchange of official papers and transaction is
made in favor to company.
Learning so far:-

 Promotions and discounts are the important factors of any offering when we are dealing with
B2B form. The bulk offering gives client sense of self satisfaction and positive thoughts about the
deal.
 When we are pitching to the clients who all are targeting the set of customers for 1st time, the
information and behavioral of the cluster can be deeply analyzed.
 Importance of relationship marketing in B2B products.
 Know your product: - Knowledge about the product and the benefits that it gives to the
customer will give full confidence.
 Where Advertising is the main source of revenue, building relationship for longer period is far
more important for any young product. Advertisement often determines the attractiveness of
the product, so it’s really important how the product is introduced to the customers. Factors
like, Size of the ad, use of the color, amount of white space, Graphics, etc matters to the client
 Target customer for Mint is limited as its serves only niche category of the customer. Not every
next person can be targeted as potential customer. The knowledge and detail which Mint is
catering is something very specific.
 Pitching should be very precise and up to the point. It shouldn’t be very short and or too long.
 The Behavior and expectation of the same client can be different for two different products.
One has to be open minded to tackle these situations.
 Offerings also varies with the season of the demand, as Educational Institute have season of
June-July and products like Gold and diamonds which do mega business during Indian festivals
like Dhanteras and Deepawali.
 The Project - Stage 2

In the second phase of our project, we are dealing basically with financial sectors like Banks and
Financial Institution. The approach is simple – “Increase the brand visibility of the product and generate
new potential customers”. The phase basically deals in Marketing and Sales of Mint Newspaper to the
niche customer like Banks, where newspaper is still the main source of knowledge to their employees
and customers, sitting in Lobby and waiting for their turn. In this process we have prepared the client
database with different circles i.e Himayat Nagar, Bank Street, Koti, Somajiguda, Banjara Hills. The circle
consists of different Banking Branches and their Regional and head offices. We have been assigned to
give cold calls and fix the meeting.

Following are my findings from the campaign we are engaged with:-

1. The campaign gives more visibility and introduction to the product.

2. The Segmentation of the customer is done considering the benefits provided by Government
and Semi Government banks to their employees i.e. An officer in Government Banks gets 2 set
of different newspaper free for their personal reading at home. Even the customer lobby has
few set of English and Regional dailies. These Potential customers are targeted with different
offers on monthly and yearly subscription.
3. The Banks looking for advertisement are also covered in the meeting as if they are interested
to post any promotional ads or any financial audited sheet.
4. This campaign gives a Bank to maintain the personal relationship with their important clients
by special subscription of copies to be sent from our side containing a special message.
5. The deal with International School “Abhyasa” by our team helps us in understanding the
Funnel approach of “Segmentation, Targeting & Positioning”.
6. We as a team are now aware of the Requirement of the client “Abhyasa” International School,
Hyderabad. The target customers for client are people who are financially equipped and want
their children to get better education and morals. For this the primary target place is Shopping
Malls, Specialized Kids showroom, Child Specialist Hospitals and school.

In the wave of Digital media, print media still holds a good chance to compete and fill the Void
which has been left when people frequently shifted to Smartphone and other digital gadgets.
According to survey done Pitney Bowes, 76% of small businesses agreed for both Digital and
Print Media advertising. There is a concept used called as “Variable Printing” in print media and
advertising. Variable printing is specially configured and customized where each piece of media
is changed according to the client and customer wants. They take the advantage of the “Power
of complex personalization”
Learning from this Phase:-
1. Understanding of the product at grass root level and analyzing the consumer behavior
is more important in this chain. The product has to be perceived by the customer in a
term we want.
2. In spite of the say called B2C features doesn’t go for longer relation with clients, we as
team trying to build the relation for longer period and prospective. Complementary
copies are idle way to start with any customer where he is made to aware of the
product and feedback is taken later on.
3. Regardless of the approach followed in B2B and B2C, the Marketing is basically all
about P2P i.e. Person to Person.
4. Building a client relation targeting the future business need is very important in Print
advertising companies.

Upcoming approach for Stage 3:-

The basic understanding of the print media industry should be analyzed while working on the
live project for the Mint Newspaper, HT Media. The basic root of marketing your product is
dependent on the Marketing strategy and innovation idea of the strategic planner. The
newspaper industry generates revenue by Advertisement mainly.
References:-
1. http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2014/24084/print-marketing-will-thrive-in-2014-
and-beyond
2. http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/b2b-versus-b2c-sales-cycle
3. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/btoc.asp
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media#Print_media
5. http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/media_and_entertainment/expertise/advertising_s
ales
6. https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/media_entertainment_digital_economy_t
ransforming_print_media/