The Indian Magazine Congress (IMC) is all set for a comeback as the flagship event of the Association of Indian Magazines (AIM) is slated to be organised on March 24th, at the Oberoi, New Delhi.
The Congress has been an annual affair since 2006, one that brings together the entire magazine publishing fraternity including editors, publishers, digital heads of media houses, policy makers, media owners, marketers, media planners, as well as researchers and industry analysts. It is the forum that connects the Who’s Who of the Publishing fraternity.
The association is organising the event after a gap of four years, and at a time when magazine publishing has adopted new paradigms to remain ever more relevant to its readers in the post Covid era.
This year’s Congress theme is how even in the digital age, magazines are the most effective medium for “Building Engaged Communities”. The theme is rooted in the empirical evidence that in the digital age, marred by information overload and cluttered digital spaces, the need for highly engaged and involved communities is becoming ever more important, as users feel the urge to break away from the clutter of social media lead content deluge, and find solace and comfort in spaces that align with their interests and with like-minded peers. Magazine brands are uniquely poised to nurture such engaged communities.
Towards this end, Indian magazines have kept pace with change, and have adopted the best practices from around the world to keep themselves relevant. Along with cutting age innovations in the online space, magazine publishers have also resolved many of the bottlenecks and challenges of the physical world, starting from distribution and subscriptions.
So the Congress will cover wide ranging conversations- innovative editorial and publishing models for nurturing involved communities, reader revenues at the centre stage of publishing, product thinking and technology enablers for digital publishing, power of compelling branded content, fixing distribution challenges, creating new IPs from editorial content, and much more.
The Congress will bring together an exciting line up of speakers from India and around the world:
- Minette Ferriera, Media 24, South Africa
- James Elliott, USA
- Jean-Paul Reparon, Agrimedia, Netherlands
- Jan Thoreson, Aller X, Norway
- James Hewes, President, FIPP
- Acharya Balakrishnan, Patanjali
- Shashi Sinha, IPG Mediabrands
- Tarun Rai, Wunderman Thompson
- Prasanth Kumar, Group M
- Ram Suresh Akella, Maruti Suzuki
- Kalli Purie, India Today
- Jayant Shriram, Innovation Media Consulting
- B Srinivasan, Ananda Vikatan
- Anant Nath, Delhi Press
- Manoj Sharma, India Today
- Dhaval Gupta, Cyber Media
- Anurag Batra, Business World
Speaking on the Congress, the president of AIM, B Srinivasan, said “the magazine is a unique device that has always driven perspective and enabled its communities to draw insights, rather than simply reporting and provoking audiences like most other media. We thrive in digging deep, then digging wide in our coverage of happenings around us, rather than rely on the length and breadth our coverage.
“In the world where readers have become our competition (influencers), fake news has overtaken relevance over fact checking, ChatGPT has almost crossed the Rubicon of human reportage with machine language (AI/ML), when big tech and governments in vibrant democracies decide what content is ripe for take-down, it is ever so important that we discuss our concerns around policy, technology, distribution, client needs, and most importantly, what our communities expect of us.
“That is what we have been fostering under the hood for 6 months now, and so we are proud to present AIM’s 12th Indian Magazine Congress – Building Engaged Communities,” Srinivasan said.