Growing importance of Vernacular Media
Tactics PR pros can adopt to approach the Regional Lions
Just stumbled upon the recent IRS findings, and the writing on the wall was pretty clear and that was the rising dominance of language publications. Many publications lead by Hindi have been consistently showing remarkable growth over the period of time in their circulation as well readership figures.
The quarter report of Indian Readership Survey - IRS (Q4, IRS 2012) ranks the top 10 publications and the top 5 are regional/language newspapers such as Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Hindustan, Malayala Manorama and Amar Ujala. Check the details here: http://www.afaqs.com/news/story/37102_Q4-IRS-2012:-Top-10-publications-maintain-status-quo
While all of us are aware that vernacular media is an important vehicle for reaching out to the consumers in India's emergent and growing small towns and rural markets. The relevance of vernacular media is increasing more than ever before. And if you notice, many of the scoops picked up by the national media, most times, first appear in the vernacular press.
This is not all; vernaculars have also (for the first time in our history) become the language of power discourse within Parliament and the legislative assemblies.
Some more facts which reinstate the growing importance of this medium, is a recent industry report about newspaper readership in India, which shows that there are more readers for language newspapers. Readership of Print media (newspapers) is divided as: English – 34%, Hindi - 25%, Tamil + Telugu + Kannada + Malayalam – 24%, Other Languages: 17%. Here is a good list of regional language newspapers in India: http://thehoot.org/web/Regional-language-newspapers-in-India/1335-1-1-16-true.html
The primary reason for this could be the slowly and steadily increasing literacy in the rural India, which means when rural Indian embraces education, he gets in first lessons through his own mother tongue. Hence you don't need to be too intelligent to understand the background behind this growth.
Now that we all have taken a bow to the supremacy of the language media, will we also consider positioning it as an important element of our PR Strategy or we will still focus on the top English Publications? Even if we are able to convince the client to recognize that regional media is at par with English media, do we as PR professionals have the required skill sets to work along with journalists of language publications and successfully pitch our client's stories?
There are few top agencies who not only recognize this fact but have given due importance to this section of media by creating a separate wing of qualified and capable professionals to solely deal with language media. For those professionals who are not supported with such artillery, following are some of the tactics that can be effectively deployed.
1. Face-to-face meetings: Journalists in regional media prefer to have regular face-to-face meetings with companies to discuss updates, future plans, industry trends etc. Most companies do not give preference to meetings with regional media. Email interviews are not preferred and mostly do not work
2. As far as possible learn to communicate in their own language: if you are able to then it can certainly work wonders.
3. Locally relevant news: Though covering news of national and international relevance, regional media extensively covers local news as it helps connect with local audience and can give a big boost to their circulation
4. Tailor made information: Most regional media prefer receiving information through press releases/concept notes etc. in the local language. In fact what also works very well is corporates having a dedicated spokesperson who can speak in the local language and address multi-language newspapers
5. Press Releases/Concept Notes: In terms of content, regional media love to cover announcements through press releases but again local relevance plays an important role. Concept notes which highlight company's initiatives undertaken and some future plans are also of interest.
Anything else we need to keep in mind when pitching to regional media? Do share in your experiences and inputs which could be useful for all.
Best Regards,
Richa Seth
PR Consultant
Mob: 9930143531
Email id: richa.seth30@gmail.com
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