TAKEAWAY: It’s been three years since we were part of the team creating India’s new financial daily, Mint. Today, it is the second best read economic newspaper in the country. For Mint and its team, three extremely busy, but successful, years.
Here are two sample front pages from Mint.
Special front page following the elections in India
Cover of Lounge, the special lifestyle, culture, features section published each Saturday
Three year olds are usually peripatetic and growing fast, which is why I am not surprised to see the same characteristics in another three-year old, India’s newest financial daily, Mint. I remember the excitement of “creating” Mint, the first ever Berliner format daily in India, and choosing orange as the color that would make it stand out in the midst of that multi-hued fabric of all things Indian. Naming the newspaper Mint was not easy. Why Mint? Isn’t that about a sweet taste? Not really, we said, it is about coins, money, making it, taking care of it, writing about it.
Today, Mint, which has an exclusive partnership with The Wall Street Journal, has captured the imagination of the country’s young, savvy business people, who access it also online or on their mobile. Mint ,born in Delhi in 2007, has quickly extended its run into seven key cities nationally, and it is now published in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune,Chandigarh, Bangalore, Chennai, and Kolkata,
Says Vivek Khanna, of the Hindustantimes media company that publishes Mint:
Mint has made tremendous strides since the path-breaking newspaper launched exactly 3 years ago. It identified that a new confident Indian needs business news that is clear and credible, and presented in the most contemporary format. An orange colour masthead, an explicit journalistic code of conduct, Berliner format, printed on clear white paper. Added to this, a strong international section powered by WSJ, an integrated digital offering on the web(www.livemint.com) and phone (wap site), and a no-jargon-no-nonsense editorial style broke all conventions in the Indian newspaper scene.
Extending the brand
Part of the success of Mint within the Indian business community is its brand extension beyond the publishing of news. It is in this area that I think the role of Rajiv Verma,CEO, HT Media Limited, played a key role. Rajiv came to the newspaper business following an extensive and successful career in marketing with companies like Nestle and Whirlpool. From the start, as our team formed to create Mint, Rajiv was there to guide us and to make us see beyond the creation of merely a newspaper.
The positioning of “Refreshing Clarity in Business”, says Vivek, has received a spectacular response. In under 3 years, Mint is already the second largest business daily in the country with 25% share of readers. More importantly, the profile of its readers is better than that of the largest daily, and 4 out of 5 of Mint’s readers now do not read another business daily. This critical success is matched only by its success in building a business.
Mint was recently voted India’s No1 Media Brand across 125 top TV, Print and Radio brands in an exhaustive, independent study on Advertiser preference. And Mint is now more than a news brand. With a strong events business under the umbrella of “Clarity through Debate” series, Mint now hosts an event a month where the top industry and policy leaders come together to debate key issues facing business. Mint Lounge, the Saturday magazine, focuses on the Business of Life for its readers. With standout editorial in the areas of culture, workplace, health, style and related life concerns of the reader, Lounge again has already the best profile readership among ANY lifestyle or business magazine in the country.
All of this is great news, especially in the midst of a barrage of negativism about the print media. Yes, this is India, where newspapers are still revered by media consumers. However, that a print product (a financial newspaper no less) can be created in 2007 and that it rises so quickly to the level of preference where Mint finds itself is, indeed, reason for all of us to rejoice. A good product across various platforms, as Mint is, will not only survive, but it will thrive.
Mint shows us that it is so. Happy birthday, Mint, and many more.
When Mario Garcia Jr. takes a weekend trip to Florida’s Disney World with his family, he realizes how user friendly the whole Disney experience is, and thinks that web designers could turn to Mickey for some lessons.
Go to Garcia Interactive for Mario Jr.‘s blog:
http://garciainteractive.com/blog/view/52/
TheMarioBlog post #462