Read the caselet carefully and answer the following questions:
Discuss Porter’s generic strategies that help firms analyze their position and attractiveness in an industry. In order to establish itself, which of these strategies would be appropriate for Chandamama and why?
Although Chandamama has revamped, it faces competition in the world of children’s entertainment. What are the various factors that Chandamama should take into consideration in order to fight competition as well as to do an analysis of competitors?
The English edition of the children's magazine series, Chandamama, was given a major facelift in late 1999. The children's magazine was relaunched in a new avatar to keep step in a globalised entertainment world where Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles compete with Shaktimaans for a child's fancy. In addition to English, Chandamama was to be relaunched in all 11 regional languages it was being published in, including Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya and Assamese.
The revamped edition is targeted at urban kids. The objective is to inculcate a reading habit among urban children, which has taken a beating with the inroads of television and computers. Though the entire magazine is in story format, there are lots of quizzes, puzzles, interesting snippets associated with the stories activity charts and an eight-page supplement, called Young Chandamama, for kids in the age group of five to eight years. All this would definitely attract children.
The focus of the magazine continues to be on Indian history, culture and mythology, but there would be sections on contemporary issues such as environment and ecology. The company plans to invite more children's writers such as Ms Swapna Dutta to write for the magazine. Well-known writers for children such as Ruskin Bond and Manoj Das are already writing for the magazine.
To reboot their fortunes, Chandamama's publishers, the Chennai-based Reddys, set up a new company, Chandamama India Ltd (CIL). Chandamama's founders, B Nagi Reddy and Chakrapani, were involved with the freedom movement and felt the need to inspire children of the sub-continent to imbibe the heritage of the country. They founded Chandamama in July 1947 with a vision to serve independent India. Since then, the magazine's trademark USP has been an illustrated color cover, folk tales from India and abroad and quizzes, profiles and science and ecology tid-bits. The magazine was even available in Gurmukhi and Sinhalese, but the editions were suspended in 1981 and 1987 respectively due to ethnic unrest. A Braille edition in four languages were added on in 1980 for free distribution among the blind and in 1984, a Sanskrit edition.
The intervening idle period has forced a rethink in content. “We felt the need for a formal relaunching of Chandamama with some improvements both in presentation and production, at the same time keeping the content value intact,” said V Madhusudhan, director, marketing. “Many have tried the concept, but at the heart of Chandamama is something that nobody could touch. It’s not just a storybook, but has character and instills human values. It’s been a read-along for children for generations,” he added.
Subtle changes were incorporated to make the magazine contemporary. But these changes were not to mean that Chandamama would lose its brand appeal. It was to have a more pleasant feel in terms of quality of paper and color illustrations. But the magazine would not lose its Oriental appeal.
The company also intended to continue having the same vibrant and happy colors on covers. The new series of Chandamama is priced at Rs 15, and was to be made available at bookstores and magazine stalls across the country. The company also intended putting up publicity material like posters at various points-of-sale and also planned to go to schools with subscription offers. Schools will be an important direct marketing avenue tapped by the company to peddle Chandamama.
The company planned a door-to-door sales campaign for the new summer issue in 1999 and targeted a sale of at least
20,000 copies through this campaign. A 16-page supplement on bio-diversity was part of summer issue and the supplement marked the World Environment Day.
Though Chandamama India Ltd. doesn't have major plans to revamp its 11 regional language editions, the company is planning to foray into CD-ROMS, which will also be in a story format. Chandamama, with its multilingual editions, is reported to have a circulation of three lakh copies, with the company's turnover being approximately Rs 5 crore.
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