What will be the essence of your presentation in Munich?

Saranga Wijeyarathne: My presentation will focus on how Ceylon Today and Mawbima (Motherland) used newspaper innovations as a differentiation strategy to create a distinct image in the minds of readers. Our positioning strategy was to project our newspaper company as the most innovative newspaper company.

Print as a traditional medium was considered as dull and boring, although the credibility of what it reports is high. At Ceylon Today and Mawbima we gave a modern creative look to our newspapers and created a buzz of excitement which was missing in other newspapers in Sri Lanka for many years. My presentation will focus on how we drive this strategy to achieve our set objectives.

Newspaper branding is something that many newspapers seem to ignore or underestimate. Why do newspapers need to market themselves and what are some of your tips to do it right?

Saranga Wijeyarathne: Branding and Marketing in a newspaper was never considered seriously by the marketing fraternity. Newspapers were perceived as the property of the Editor and many thought that marketing has no say. But we believe a newspaper has business interests as well. We have marketing oriented editors within our company and it makes our lives easy to do branding exercises.

A newspaper needs to be considered in the same manner as any other product and must be run on basic marketing principals. Branding and also having a sound differentiation strategy is extremely important to a newspaper. Any newspaper has a habitual buying behavior and it is not easy to convert a reader to your newspaper from a competitor. But once you do that and build loyalty you won’t lose him easily.

We as a newspaper company just completed 2 years since our launch. In the initial stage we concentrated on building awareness and brand visibility which is important for any new product. We have done many advertising innovations and these innovations grabbed the attention of readers. This made them try out our newspapers, which is extremely important at the entry level. We wanted people to talk about us. We achieved it through doing innovations. We wanted to cultivate an image of our newspapers being hot and sexy, which is not easy to do in a traditional and conservative country.

But we had a holistic approach for this. It was not only advertising, but we equally concentrated on innovations in editorial and distribution as well. We have regular team meetings with our colleagues in all departments, especially editorial, to ensure that we maximize the synergies of the entire team, brainstorm new ideas, and obtain everyone’s full support.

Even the layout of the paper differentiated us from any other cover page of a competitor, which made our branding exercises easier. In a broad sense, we were competing with both traditional and modern mediums, and to keep our newspapers exciting we changed the overall look and feel of the product. The market grabbed these changes very positively.

What is most important is to have the right mindset among all divisions of the newspaper. It is not only a responsibility of the marketing department. Our whole company was converted to a marketing orientation and that took us to the number two position among newspapers in Sri Lanka, beating many well established players in the market.

You received different awards with your newspapers in 2013. What were the outstanding characteristics that were recognized and how important are national or international awards for the market position and development of a newspaper?

Saranga Wijeyarathne: Our Sinhala language newspaper Mawbima carried out an innovative ‘Lion Flag Campaign’ (see video), which we timed for our National Day, and won the first ever Cannes award for Sri Lanka. It has also won awards at Adfest and GoaFest and is by far the most internationally acclaimed innovation ever in Sri Lanka. Recently Mawbima won Gold awards for the ‘Best New Entrant of the Year’ at Sri Lanka’s biggest and most recognized marketing and branding awards “SLIM Brand Excellence Awards 2013” and became the first and only newspaper to win an award at this prestigious awards in 12 year history. This award is a turning point for newspaper marketing in Sri Lanka which was not previously considered a serious area in marketing. These awards that we have won have made our efforts tangible and measurable.

newspaper becomes a flag

We have put a lot of effort to achieve our marketing objectives. We have also used our awards for marketing purposes, to maximum effect. We must continuously communicate our success to the market and it will build confidence in the minds of consumers about our publications. We have done that very successfully and these awards bring us lot of courage to take risks, which is extremely important to a company which believes in aggressive marketing.

Mone information on the Printing Summit 2014 can be found on the website - the progamme is constantly updated.