Yesterday, INNOVATION launched its latest project: a new free paper in Kiev, Ukraine.
VECHERKOM (By the Evening) is a Monday through Friday, eight-page free newspaper, under the leadership of INNOVATION’s Guillermo Schmitt, CEO, Editor in Chief and Publisher of Segodnya Multimedia.
Marina Dedenko is the force behind this fantastic new paper.
The editor is Eugen Smertenko and the Art Director is Svetlana Grekova.
All of them have been working with the INNOVATION team lead by Antonio Martin (design), Cesar Galera (design), Daniel Lozano (content) and Carlos Enrique Bayo (content).
A few months ago in Kiev, I met Guillermo and Marina, who wanted to produce a first-class, happy, friendly, service-oriented, full-color free newspaper.
They wanted our help because the local market had two low-quality free papers, and they knew about our experience in this field.
Antonio and Cesar were involved in the prototype of QUÉ!, now the second-largest free newspaper in Spain with a circulation of more than one million copies daily.
And INNOVATION’s Carlos Enrique Bayo was the founding managing editor of ADN, the third-largest free newspaper in Spain and the only one with an evening edition.
INNOVATION’s Daniel Lozano, our senior consultant, has been working in Ukraine for many years and knows this booming newspaper market very well.
His work on Segodnya, the leading quality popular newspaper in Ukraine, has been remarkable.
The Ukranian market is very dear to all of us for another reason:
INNOVATION’s Leo Bogart was born in this country. The expert on American newspapers did some of the field research that lead to the relaunch of Segodnya done by Juan Senor, Marta Botero, Michael Fairhead, Eduardo Tessler, Carlos Perez Diaz and Montse Roca, which has since become an example of how you can succeed in a former Soviet Republic with quality journalism and professional newsroom and management teams.
Now VECHERKOM is another example.
The first edition had 12 pages.
They printed 80,000 copies.
And they were gone in a few minutes through a network of almost one hundred people.
