Weekly tabloid G Plus launched in Guwahati

The 24-page coloured weekly infotainment tabloid is priced at Rs 10.

Insight Brandcom, a Guwahati-based advertising agency, has launched G Plus, a weekly English infotainment tabloid in Guwahati, Assam. The 24-page tabloid has a cover price of Rs 10 and has been launched with a print run of 10,000 copies.

The weekly focuses on city-specific issues, lifestyle, brands, new launches, entertainment and content for women. It does not cover state/national/international news and carries more analytical, investigative and rich in data stories instead of news reports.

The tabloid primarily caters to readers above the age of 16, belonging to SEC B and above category. It mainly targets students, working professionals, entrepreneurs and the youth.

G Plus was launched in October 2013 and has come out with its 12th issue recently (http://g-plus.in/).

It is circulated only in Guwahati and has a content-ad ratio of 85:15, which the company aims to bring down to 70:30 in 2014. According to the company, Assam's ad market is valued at Rs 200-250 crore.

G Plus is currently edited by Koushik Hazarika, who has an experience of eight years and has worked with Eclectic Northeast and Good Times.

The company launched a marketing campaign titled 'I Love GHY' around the launch of the tabloid. The outdoor campaign informed people about its launch.

According to Insight Brandcom, basic research revealed the need for such a paper in Guwahati as the other English dailies in the region provide mainly hard news and dedicate less space to lifestyle, fashion, women-centric and other content.

Speaking about the idea, Sunit Jain, MD, Insight Brandcom, says, "Guwahati is an emerging market in the country. The audience's taste is evolving much more than before and the current print medium options are largely classified into dailies that offer reports and hard news and magazines (mostly monthly) that are largely in the lifestyle genre. This gives space for a city-based English weekly in the infotainment genre for a population almost 2 million strong and having a literacy rate of almost 90 per cent. This apart, we also wanted to create a medium that the city could call its own."

He further adds that the print medium in the region has not evolved as much as the audience. It has to be ultra-local providing more value to advertisers. The idea to keep it city-centric also stemmed from the fact that the demographic dynamics, tastes and preferences of the urban population is very different from the rest of the state/region, like Bengaluru and the rest of Karnataka.

G Plus' segmented approach will benefit advertisers as it will reduce spill-over and unnecessary advertising expense on media circulated all over the state and the region. G Plus is also present on the digital platform through social media, website and mobile app.

Speaking on the idea behind choosing the tabloid format, Jain adds that tabloid has always been a world favourite and provides the chance to tackle content which is different from dailies or magazines. It is an exciting medium and since the new Indian is always on the move, something concise and at the same time informative would do well. Also, he adds that the platform is secondary; it is the content that will make it click. The tabloid format appeared most suitable for the content being provided by the publication.

According to the company, automobiles, white goods and lifestyle brands have already come forward and as the market corrects, it hopes to get responses from categories like real estate, education and others, where the audience is very local.

Insight Brandcom is a two-year old mainline advertising agency based in Guwahati. It offers creative and PR services to local/regional brands. Insight has an impressive clientele list and a good track record. Its OOH unit, Outreach Advertising, is an award-winning outdoor media agency from the region that has been operational for the last four years. It also has an event management team and a printing unit.