dear friends
Flashback
Four years back, i.e. 21st Feb 2006 afternoon, a group of young professionals Narren, Satish, Meera, Sakthi, Vidya were discussing about the PR activities at my office. Suddenly a spark came to our mind as to why we should not start an 'ezine'. Within 15 minutes, we decided the name as "PR-e-Sense". Though, we did not know the format, content, etc., we decided to launch Feb 2006 issue within 10 days or max. by first week of March 2006. On the same day, we made announcement in the prpoint group about the launch of ezine, without any material on hand. That gave us the pressure and commitment to release the ezine.
The launch of the first issue within short time was a challenging task. we wanted to publish an ezine with rich contents. The format should be user friendly and readable with lower file size. It took more than a week to settle on the template itself.
We wanted to carry an interview with any CEO in the first edition. Being the maiden issue, nobody was willing to take risk. Even my best corpcom friends avoided getting their CEO interview. They were all looking for big media and for them ezine was a small affair. (It is a different story the same friends approach me for carrying an interview with their top bosses in the ezine and now we avoid them)
Launch of first edition of ezine
When I explained my position to Dr Y S Rajan, (then Principal advisor to CII and co-author of the book India 2020 with Dr Abdul Kalam),he readily agreed to give the first lead interview and also to launch digitally through this group. He gave us lot of encouragement and motivation. We picked up some of the discussions in the group written by Deon Binneman, Tushar, Uma Bhushan and Rita Bhimani and made the first ezine. The first edition of our ezine was launched on 6th March 2006 in prpoint and image management group. Pl look at the first edition in the following link:
Further journey of the ezine
With the success gained after the first edition, we thought we decided to publish the ezine on one unique theme every month. Till Feb 2010, we have published 48 editions without break. We have dealt with different useful themes every month and none of them were repeated. You may look at the back issues at www.corpezine.com .
Slowly, we also learnt to make good ezine by trial and error getting feedback from our members. Basically, we understood, content writing is totally different from the print media. Slowly we improved our quality over a period of time. The ezine gained credibility among the corporates. Many eminent persons of national and international stature offered to Guest Edit or exclusively contribute to this ezine.
In March 2008, we had the Second Anniversary Issue, with lead article from Dr Abdul Kalam. From the Second Anniversary issue, we changed PReSense logo and format style, which we follow till now. Most of our editions are integrated with podcast (podmagazine PodUniveral).
Awards and recogntions
As suggested by Dr Abdul Kalam, we introduced cartoons from August 2008. Triambak Sharma, a well known Indian Cartoonist has created a new cartoon character PRince (like R K Lakshman's comman man). PRince was launched by Dr Abdul Kalam himself. Now all our issues carry a wonderful cartoon by Triambak Sharrma with PRince making his presence felt.
For the first time in the world, the ezine was the Media Partner for the Global Conferences of CIPR, London and PRSA. Subsequently, the ezine became media partner for the global conventions of Marcus Evans and APC also. This ezine also got awards from ABCI, GFPR and PRCI..
In the ezine, we do not deal with current topics or contemporary issues We deal with only permanent themes like HR branding, internal communication, Social Media, etc. In view of this, all the past issues of our ezine is downloaded and read even today, globally.
We have also provided opportunities to young professionals to guest edit the ezine and to give them exposure on ezine tool.
Distribution
We distribute the ezine in pdf format (less than 500 k only) through various groups and reaches more than one lakh inboxes globally. The ezine is read globally by many corporates. .
Advertisment
Though, passionately, i spend time in researching the theme and producing the ezine, due to lack of marketing efforts, we are not able to market the ezine with advertisers, atleast to cover the expenses. In the past two months, a leading PSU company has found this ezine as a good advertising tool for global audience and has offered advertisements in three issues. Hope this will be a good beginning.
Golden Jubilee issue
Our April 2010 issue is the Golden Jubilee issue (50th edition) and we plan to focus on "UnSung Heroes". Since it is a prestigious issue, Dr Abdul Kalam has agreed to give an exclusive podcast interview for this edition. We also plan to have an offline function to honour some of the UnSung Heroes in the presence of eminent personalities.
Looking back
Looking back, we are proud that we have slowly brought this ezine to this level braving all challenges. The ezines were published promptly, even when I was not well due to surgeries. Being a new tool, we never had any earlier model. We had to learn ourselves by trial and error and experiment. We are confident that we are now comfortable to the extent of 80% on the contents, layout, formating, distribution, readership, etc. Probably this is only ezine in the world, which is integrated with podmagazine. We will continue to explore the improvements and try to give more and more useful contents in the days to come.
I take this opportunity to thank all the readers and editorial team members (past and present) for their continued support, guidance and cooperation.
You can also send your feedback to us at editor@corpezine.com
srinivasan
Editor in Cheif
PR-e-Sense
91766 50273
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Please visit the website http://www.indiavision2020.org to read inspiring articles of eminent personalities
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