‘Know our Customer’ is a very special initiative for releaseMyAd. It is one of the favourite sections of our entire team. This is simply because, “Know our Customer” helps us solve issues faced by our clients, make amends in our system, highlight the strengths and features of a medium of advertising, improve our services and above all communicate on one-to-one basis with our customers. Through this section we understand our customers and attempt to convey that how newspaper as a medium has aided their purpose or need for advertising.’
Obesity is a major issue for many Indians these days due to the lifestyle we lead. Stagnant positions due to work pressure and desk job, intake of junk food, lack of proper exercise are some of the reasons for which people suffer from excessive weight problems. Along with such problems there are many clinics and weight management institutes that are coming up. Helping people reduce or manage their weight has become one of the rapidly developing business ventures in India. People face problems with obesity and everyone wants to look good, that is what the health care clinics harp upon. Dr. Dwivesh Bhagat, Obesity Super Specialist at Aakar Health Care Clinic, discusses about the effects of newspaper advertising on this specific medical line.
Q. Please tell us about yourself and your work.
A. I am Dr. Dwivesh Bhagat and my designation is that of an Obesity Super Specialist at Aakar Health Care Clinic. I hold a PhD. in
obesity prevention and am the consulting physician at the Clinic. It is a centre based out of Surat, Gujarat and the owners are also originally from the same place.
At our clinic we help people lose weight, manage weight, provide treatments for obesity through the varied methods of liposys, ultrasound, laser treatments, providing them with diet charts etc. All these processes are termed as non-surgical and non-invasion medical line of management. There is no involvement of any surgical or harmful instruments that leave scars or marks or pierce the human body. The clinic is USFDA (United States Food and Drug Administration) certified, which is a part of the Department Health and Human Services of US.
Q. What was marketing objective?
A. The newspaper ad was an initial test ad run as we wanted to see the response rate of the audience we targeted. We wanted to target a specific set of audience for rendering our services. But we had to change our marketing strategy as the newspapers we wanted to advertise in were not taking ad bookings through releaseMyAd. We are now distributing hand-to-hand pamphlets in the regions we wanted to target the most.
Q. Who was your target audience?
A. Aakar Health Care Clinic being a Gujarat based Clinic was intended to be promoted to the specific region of South Mumbai and major cities of Gujarat. South Mumbai was the main target region because, it consists of a high number of Gujarati residents who are financially well-off and often face issues of obesity. Our ad was also intended to be published in Gujarati. This is why we chose to advertise in Gujarat Samachar but were not successful, as they weren’t accepting ads via releaseMyAd as I was informed by the customer care representatives.
We finally had to go for DNA, an English newspaper, which was the closest option to Gujarat Samachar.
Q. How effective was newspaper advertising in your case? Do you intend to advertise in newspapers in future?
A. Well, frankly speaking, the ad was not much effective as it did not reach the intended audience, simply because we did not get the newspaper we wanted. The alternative newspaper wasn’t as effective as was expected from Gujarat Samachar and the responses were obviously negatively affected. The area we had targeted has 30-40 percent of Gujarati people among all the residents and that had the potential to generate a large client base. We had planned the strategy and ad placement accordingly but at the end it didn’t work out.
I would surely like to advertise in newspapers again only if there is proper availability of necessary newspapers for different regions. The entire advertising purpose is put to waste and the campaign becomes completely unproductive.
Q. Why did you choose to book your newspaper ad through an online portal like releaseMyAd?
A. I actually didn’t know of any other option. I wanted to book an ad in a Gujarati newspaper to reach out to a section of people in Mumbai, so online booking of ads was the only option I could think of while the ad was to be booked from Surat, Gujarat. I was apprehensive about the process of booking ads as the online company through which I booked the ad is located in Kolkata, which is releaseMyAd, the newspaper is in Mumbai and so are the readers while I am in Gujarat. It was quite a tricky situation for me.
Unfortunately, my apprehensions were proved right at the end though I can’t blame releaseMyAd for the issue.
Q. How was your experience with releaseMyAd?
A. We could book the ad in Gujarat Samachar through the releaseMyAd website and also make the payment but our ad wasn’t published on the specified date. We had to get it published in DNA again later on as an alternative. That wasn’t a very pleasant experience, but we got to know of the reasons from the releaseMyAd team, so we understand the situation that you were in at that point of time.
We did get a lot of help from the Customer Care people whole trying to book the ad in the intended newspaper. They presented us with the alternate newspaper to get our ad published. But it is essential to keep the users updated and completely informed about availability and non-availability of newspapers or any other major updates, via emails or notifications on the website, that’s all.
We are glad that our customer service representatives proved helpful to Dr. Dwivesh but at the same time we are also apologetic for the problems he faced on our website and with his bookings. We will surely try to implement his suggestions into our CRM system. We would also like to thank him for giving us his precious time and completing the survey successfully with us. To get help with your newspaper ads booking requirements, please visit: 
