Author: Dr Bhaskar Das

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Q. Any advice to the new leadership of the two news networks that have seen changes at the top

A: Leaders generally know what they have to deliver and they don’t need lecturing on the same. So, I won’t walk into that path.

Having said that, I may hasten to add that leadership tasks in any organisation and in any sector have become more complex than before as one has to be ambidextrous in balancing external volatilities of the market and expectations of various stakeholders with internal cultural alignment. Not an easy task. Hence, leadership by example to deliver outcomes as per the shareholders’ vision is an imperative. The media landscape is evolving continuously, thanks to accelerated technology-led transformation and changing consumption behaviour. These have made it imperative to reinvent organisations multiple times to survive and thrive.

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Q. The new Budget will be presented soon. Any steps that you think can help marketers turn buoyant?

A: The Finance Minister is gearing up to present the first Union Budget of NDA 3.0/Modi 3.0 this month. There are high expectations from various quarters for steps that would accelerate growth in topline and bottom of India Inc (including growth in employment opportunities). The upcoming full Budget has to balance between fueling growth, curbing inflation, and ensuring fiscal discipline and generate employment.

With crucial support from key allies, the Finance Minister faces the challenging task of delivering strategic initiatives that will stimulate sectors such as defence, railways, infrastructure, renewable energy and digital infrastructure and its progression. Inflationary pressures have to kept under check too.

I hope the above steps would also, in turn, result in the buoyancy of M&E sector.  With a stronger opposition, the populist demands have to catered to with a few state elections round the corner. Economics and politics have to be mingled adroitly by the finance ministry – not an easy task. But good economics can result in good politics too. Am I dreaming of a utopian world?

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Q. Do you believe that the democratisation of news via social media platforms poses a threat to legacy journalists? Not just in political news but in every sphere?

A: There is no doubt that democratisation of news or content for that matter have created a different competitive landscape for legacy media. But this is a mixed truth as such a statement needs more granular probing.

For legacy media, whether print media  or TV news channels, the audience can be anyone from baby boomers to Generations X, Y or Z. Alpha may be too young to be interested in consuming news content which is either static or lacks interactivity. In the new mediascape, such infirmities engender audience migration to substitutes. Social media caters to that aplenty.

While audience has many options of news as per individual preferences, social media has its own challenges. For example, the trust quotient of digital news media isn’t very high as the veracity of source of news is often suspect. The real-time news break in social media can have different socio-economic and political Implications. In the age of generative AI, the challenges are only getting compounded. Leading print titles generally enjoy high trust quotient. The electronic news media in India have earned the sobriquet of towing the establishment line to the point of disbelief. The exit poll of the recent Lok Sabha elections is a classic testimony of that.

In the same way, the creator economy has plenty of content generators under various genres but each one of them has to fight fleeting loyalty of the audience by constantly creating novelty and prove authenticity of their content.

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Q. In the rush for reaching out to the youth and women audiences, would you say that the media has forgotten senior citizens given that it’s a growing strata? Is yes, how can the 60+ be targeted?

A: The 60-plus or GenS (if I may use the term) are not neglected technically as they get benefits as a residual audience. The addressable market for each brand is generally younger demographics but in the process around a 149million audience base is ignored. Even if one ignores the underserved or bottom end of the pyramid, yet 50 million of the top end of the pyramid are ignored, willingly or unwillingly, by marketers. Interestingly, the segment offers significant opportunity for corporates as the 60-plus segment has resources to splurge on various products and services. Decoding their unique needs and wants (which requires empathy) can expand possibilities in an already existing market.

In case of the underserved and the people at the bottom end of the pyramid, innovation can open up consumers for affordable routes to need satisfaction. For this, understanding of the relevant audience’s circumstances of life are very critical and basic human requirements for those who are at the fringes of the economy, could be added to the mainstream of consumption. That’s a tall order in terms of social and economic will of the corporates (apart from politicians) beyond platitudes and tokenism and commit to make tangible difference.

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Q. Is there a bit of an overkill on the Indian team victory and now the Ambani wedding? Or is that what it will be since content is served as per what is consumed most?

A: One needs to be clear about the definition of the word ‘overkill’. IMHO, it’s a relative and subjective concept and what is overkill to you might not be an overkill for someone else. The proof the concept in recent times is the celebration of homecoming of the T20 World Cup winning team in Mumbai. While viewership on TV leapfrongged, an incredible number of fans congregated at Marine Drive.  Now, I didn’t go there and perhaps you haven’t joined the celebration too. The final was over on June 29, but the celebrations weren’t. It wasn’t an overkill for fans.

The same is true for other social engagements of celebrities or other leading citizens of the country. Media is in some ways leverages the voyeurist inside us. We like escapism from the daily grind through content immersion.

Biologically, human beings are also programmed to be curious creatures. We have evolved to retain neotenic traits. This implies that as a species we are more childlike than other mammals. Curiosity is one of these neotenic traits that has helped our species to survive as we constantly look for new data points to adjust to our environment.

Social media sites such as Meta, Instagram etc also activate the brain’s reward centre, called the nucleus accumbens. When we get positive feedback on social media sites, in the form of likes, hearts or comments, our brain processes rewarding feelings. Therefore, we become addicted to consuming other people’s social media content as well as posting our own content. Hence, in the prevailing time of hyper-individualism, there is nothing called overkill. Every content has a relevant audience and customer satiation of the same is infinite.

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Q. Influencers seem to be making easy money. And some of them are pretty below par. Do you think it would be a good alternative career for folks in our business?

A: I wish life would have been so easy. I agree that the influence of the Influencers has grown with the increasing penetration of social media, but like any career it needs continuous honing of requisite skills to remain at the cutting edge of technology to deliver unique and authentic content (audio, video etc) in a sustained manner. In case of specialised subjects like fashion, finance etc, domain understanding and expertise are indispensable for growing the user base. The content need to be unique and differentiated. For this, knowledge of subject, technology and social media marketing tools are a must.

There are some challenges for influencers as the lack of a typical full-time career, volatile income structures, dependence on popularity for earnings, exposure to public feedback that can potentially impact one’s image and mental well-being (due to the pressure to maintain consistent quality output).

The possibility of burnout due to the constant need for content creation, public scrutiny and the pressure to maintain a certain image online and dependence on single platform ( generally) are some common risks associated with the career of an influencer. Finally, the influencer must also be ready to face air pockets in the form of ever-changing social media algorithms, which might affect content visibility and immersion of the audience in the same.

Net -net, like any other career options, life of an Influencer is not strewn with roses. One needs to navigate the thorns also. Hope I haven’t discouraged you for making a career shift.

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Q. These days when you meet a person who says s/he works in print, what’s the first response you have? You feel sorry for him/her as the view of print is that it’s a has-been medium? Or do you feel happy that the future is bright for the business?

A: I can talk about myself so far response to your question is concerned.  First, why should I be judgmental about anyone’s career choice. Secondly, I focus what is the role an individual plays in an organisation and not on which sector one works.

The mission criticality of the role determines an individual’s capability. Thirdly, when an industry size is 20 thousand crore (in 2024), why should working in that sector would have infra dig perception? I wonder.

Finally, doomsayers have been predicting demise of print media’s demise from the early 1990s but the industry is still growing unlike the print media of developed countries of the western world.

I am neither  an astrologer nor an expert on predicting any sector’s future. But I am convinced that an organisation can be a sunrise company in a sunset sector, or a sunset company in a sunrise sector. It’s true for an individual also.

If you wish to access the archives, please go to the Das Ka Dum tab on the website’s top navigation bar or click here: https://www.mxmindia.com/category/columns/das-ka-dum/

Q. Is there a rulebook for who makes for an efficient media network CEO. Sony has had a string of CFOs in the past, Disney-Star had a journalist, now Sony has a content person. According to you, who works best?

A: In a business landscape that is perpetually volatile, the days of one pony trick leader are over. A legacy mindset of fitting in a job description to a position is a sure recipe for failure. It is critical to link delivery of outcomes that is expected from a leader who constantly adjusts to a shifting landscape of an operating environment. It is preferable to look for talent base _— an attitude of problem solving, future backwards mindset, assumptions-based action to solution-based action, perpetually in a learning mode and be a team player for mining collective wisdom and collective play without trampling individual uniqueness (one can’t expect Sehwag to play like Rahul Dravid;.. just to expand what I meant by last observation).I am neither  an astrologer nor an expert on predicting any sector’s future. But I am convinced that an organisation can be a sunrise company in a sunset sector, or a sunset company in a sunrise sector. It’s true for an individual also.

If you wish to access the archives, please go to the Das Ka Dum tab on the website’s top navigation bar or click here: https://www.mxmindia.com/category/columns/das-ka-dum/

Q. The Budget presentation is scheduled for July 23. Do you think there should be a pause in between the speech – like between Part A and B of the speech – to allow for advertising? Like a Strategic Timeout?

A: Your question is really creative and looks like a stretched imagination. Media sales guys would be excited by the monetisation potential but Budget as a subject has lost its content stickiness and accordingly its advertisements attracting potential (AAP). It’s also not like an IPL game as the gravitas of the subject doesn’t lend itself to such monetisation frivolities (if I may). So, I can’t imagine that your imaginative question would get a serious consideration in any quarters in North Block.

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Q. While one can always appoint a microbiologist as an Editor or a film-maker as director of a science museum, do you think the adsales team or editor of a large legacy media organisation must be headed by a pedigreed adsales/editorial person? Or it doesn’t really matter?

A: I don’t agree that domain expertise is an indispensable condition for running a marketing or sales department of an organisation.

While domain expertise can provide an advantage for any function, it can also create a blindness towards new possibilities. Relying too heavily on past knowledge or experience can hinder innovation and adaptability. I have seen individuals from different disciplines make significant contributions in new industries when they possess a curiosity to learn, a commitment to work, and an appropriate passion.

Transitioning into a new industry might initially pose challenges, but with the right approach, it can lead to a shift in business trajectory and expansion. It’s crucial to learn from multiple disciplines and apply that knowledge effectively. Today, learning occurs at the intersections of various fields, and technology has blurred the boundaries of functional knowledge or territorial myopia.

If you wish to access the archives, please go to the Das Ka Dum tab on the website’s top navigation bar or click here: https://www.mxmindia.com/category/columns/das-ka-dum/

Q. We weren’t invited for the Ambani wedding. Does that mean we haven’t arrived?

A Ha ha. You and I were not also invited in so many weddings or festivities. I wonder why you should suffer from a FOMO syndrome. I have a different syndrome —JOMO— Joy of Missing Out. Please don’t interpret it as a grapes-are-sour syndrome. My personality type at this juncture is that I love aloneness,  serenity and bliss. May be I have realised the significance of my insignificance.

Besides, LIFE is also so beautiful outside a marriage programme. I would have missed all that.

Finally, an invitation list is a prerogative of the organisers. So, the jurisprudence of civility demands that no one can question the same. And I don’t have such a finite definition of “arrival in life“ concept, when one doesn’t know when the exit door would appear. So, enjoy the bliss of life.

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Q. Share of Model is being billed as the new marketing metric in the GenAI world. Referring to the number of mentions of a brand by one or multiple LLMs, as a proportion of total mentions of brands in the same category. Have Indian marketers woken up to this new metric? Or it’s early days yet?

A. IMHO- it’s an old wine in a new bottle. Erudite academicians would vehemently object to it but let me elaborate my stand. Metrics of Business and Marketing (quantitative or qualitative) have always been there for eons. It’s getting sophisticated, thanks to technology and cognitive progression. The arrival of Generative AI/ LLM have made the precision of predictive/ attribution modelling more precise and scientific. But fact remains that some form of metrics have been there to know the ROI of investments in terms of allocation of resources. Secondly, brands have always evaluated their competitive position in the market- the analysis are getting more and more sophisticated. And CMOs wake up before any journalistic interrogation. New age CMOs are more tech savvy than previous cohorts. So, they develop faster adoption of new measurement tools to tick all the boxes of performance evaluation. I must admit that the Share of Model (SOM) metric is a robust metric with whatever public domain knowledge I have.