Anant’s blog: The Rs.100+ magazine club

In completely coincidental circumstances, I met Alex Kuruvilla of Conde Nast, Tarun Rai of Worldwide Media, Ajay Chacko of Network 18, Suprio Guha Thakurta of The Economist and Vinay Hebbar of Harvard Business Publishing, all in the same week.

So there’s Vogue India, GQ India, Lonely Planet India, Forbes India, The Economist and Harvard Business Review in discussions in the same week.

They’re all Rs.100+ magazines (sorry, Suprio and Vinay, to bracket you here, but Rs.100+ is a bracket all of its own), so pricing of magazines and circulation were, for me, top of mind.

Closer home, Autocar India, a sister title to Campaign India (which is priced at Rs.100), raised the cover price to Rs. 150 a few months ago. Even closer, I'm involved in the imminent (we hope, subject to the laws of the land) launch of the Indian edition of a football focused magazine called FourFourTwo, which we propose to price at Rs. 100.

That’s a lot of Rs.100+ magazines – and there are a lot more.

These magazines, together with others that I’ve not named, are, slowly but surely changing the game in India. Each is content strong and appeals to a small and defined audience – an audience that advertisers seek and will pay a premium for.

That’s a big shift: small numbers but large premium. The focus and the content strength of the titles ensures that there is no wastage as far as the advertising rupee is concerned. The high cover price that readers are willing to pay suggests, immediately, that the content is in demand and that reader involvement will be high. Thanks to the high cover price, the pressure on revenue from advertising drops immensely – and sales teams can hold out for much better yields.

As they continue to hold out, the clutter in the titles is far less than in titles that drop their yields and sell their pages for a pittance. No clutter and how can the advertiser not love it?

For the advertiser, it’s a new experience. Pay a premium and reap the benefits.

Worth thinking about.