MxMIndia

Category: BLOGS

  • Personally speaking, I am all ready for the future. I have decided to start a specialized scam ads shop. Which to me sounds like a really lucrative business

    Anil Thakraney: Channel V: A wasted opportunity

    By Anil Thakraney

     

    Channel V has announced they are giving up music for good, and it will be all about youth entertainment from hereon. My first reaction: ‘So what’s new, guys?’ Because whenever I have made the mistake of dropping by at Channel V, I have never spotted a music video, only some mindless trash involving screaming and yelping kids.

     

    Channel V has been around for nearly two decades, and I must say they have struggled badly in terms of the content mix, from the start. From music to comic promos (remember Quick Gun Murugan?) to juvenile reality shows… they’ve been trying to pull all sorts of stunts, with the hope that something will get the Indian youth hooked. This hasn’t worked. Channel V has remained a very small player in the STAR bouquet, and every other year there are murmurs of a shut down.

     

    The core problem, in my books, has been lack of focus. As programming heads and CEOs changed over the years, each one added new confusion to the proceedings. With the result that today, all these years later, Channel V stands for nothing really to the youth segment. It’s become like that proverbial dhobi ka kutta… na ghar ka na ghat ka. This is bad news for any brand, leave alone a television channel operating in a very saturated market.

     

    Anyways, they seem to have finally decided it’s going to be all about entertainment content, whatever that means. But it appears to be good bye to music for sure. Let’s see how this pans out in terms of actual programming, though going by past records, this is likely to be 24X7 nonsense stuff.

     

    When I look back, there appears to be one very important trick that Channel V missed. And it’s cost them heavily. They should have positioned the brand as THE Bollywood music channel from the very start. Hindi film songs are always popular in this nation (the local pop and rock bands are sidey shows anyway). And the channel, being an early starter, could have owned this genre, leaving no place for those who came in later, such as Sony Mix, Mastii, and others. Channel V could have become Bollywood’s official music station. This would have translated into loyal viewership and a lot of ad revenue.

     

    But instead of that, they opted for retarded reality shows, and today they are neither here nor there. Channel V should consider itself lucky its parent has very, very deep pockets.

     

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    PS: Harvey Nichols recently ran this outdoor campaign inLondon. The idea is totally sensational and many locals found it to be deeply offensive. But the damage was done before it could get pulled. Wonder when we’ll see such stuff in India. And wonder how the hockey loving ACP Vasant Dhoble would react. 🙂

     

    Anil Thakraney is a senior journalist and commentator. He is Editor-at-Large, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are his own.

     

     

     

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    Ranjona Banerji: Media forgets more than it remembers

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Most Indian newspapers stayed up late to bring readers the results of the Euro semi-final between Germany and Italy. The Times of India also managed to check up the Wimbledon scores and had a front page snippet on Rafael Nadal’s shocker of a second round exit. This is unusual because TOI usually does much less for tennis than other newspapers.

     

    (But CNN tennis reporter, I have a question for you: Is Rafael Nadal’s second round exit bigger than Pete Sampras’s fourth round exit in 2001, since you said that Nadal’s upset was the biggest in tennis history and no one could remember another? Nadal has two Wimbledon titles, Sampras at the time had seven Wimbledon titles – a record he holds with William Renshaw – and would never win another. The man Sampras lost to: Roger Federer. It was only 11 years ago, a little history is not a bad thing for a sports reporter. Or even, a good memory!)

     

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    The Houston Chronicle has fired a reporter for working as an exotic dancer (sometimes known as stripper) as a second job. The woman was exposed by a rival publication. Snitching on your competitors is a trend in Western journalism which is yet to reach India and one wonders whether that is not a good thing. The Guardian’s exposes of phone-hacking and other dubious practices by rival newspapers, especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch, perhaps fall in the realm of both public service and dogged investigative journalism. (The Hindu comes the closest in India, as it occasionally pulls up lesser media houses for journalistic and marketing transgressions.) But “investigating” fellow journalists of media houses and their personal lives to inform readers? Am not sure what category of journalism this falls into.

     

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    A minor storm in Indian journalism has been over the death of a photographer who worked with Tehelka, was sent into the hinterland to do a story on Naxals, got malaria there and died. The newspaper is at fault for apparently not factoring malaria into the threat element of this assignment.

     

    Newspapers in India are notorious for not being bothered about the dangers of newsgathering – mainly because most newspapers have dispensed with most kinds of dangerous reporting. (I could I suppose say the same thing about TV, in that they hardly started.) Gone are the days when even gossip columnists – like Devyani Chaubal being slapped by Dharmendra – faced physical dangers while working. I am being facetious I know but bullet-proof vests are hardly part of a reporter’s must-haves in India. There should be no room for callousness. But I am still unconvinced what Tehelka could have done about a mosquito. If they did not help the photographer or his family later, then there is cause for criticism.

     

    Still, it would not hurt media houses to take a closer look at employee welfare (this does not mean a box of mithai at Diwali) and on-the-job dangers.

     

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    Interesting that the anniversary of the Emergency came and went with little media attention. Are we moving on or did we just, like, forget?

     

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    The case of Abu Jundal or Jindal or Zaby or whatever his name is – the Lashkar handler of the 26/11 attacks sent to India by Saudi Arabia – is exciting but it is still in its early stages. Rather than focus their hysterics only on Pakistan, the Indian television media might like to look at it as a story first and probe all angles rather than jump into jingoistic propaganda.

     

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    The Indian media – particularly TV – got itself into a bit of a bind over Pakistan’s flip-flop over the release of Sarabjit Singh. Sarabjit is a celebrity prisoner whose family has ceaselessly campaigned for his release. Pakistan announced Sarabjit’s name and then changed it the next day to Surjeet Singh. Now the dilemma: should the media show happiness for Surjeet, rage against the machine for Sarabjit, damn Pakistan or blame Pakistan? Is one Indian equal to another or are famous Indians more equal? It is not known how hard Surjeet Singh’s family worked the media to get him released, so perhaps there’s an answer. Also Surjeet Singh walked across the Wagah border and claimed he was a RAW agent, a tag Sarabjit and his family have consistently denied!

     

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    Congratulations to Mid-Day on its 33rd anniversary and a whopping anniversary issue of 200 pages which I haven’t had the time to read yet. Might take me all week!.

     

  • Since the last Olympics, a lot of Indian sportspersons have come to the fore. Apart from gold medals, I think our chances of winning a larger number of medals are higher than ever, says Prasana Krishnan

    The Anchor: Prasana Krishnan on 5 things to watch out for in the 2012 Olympics

    By Prasana Krishnan

     

    1. Indian contingent: The Indian sportspersons have only improved since Beijing 2008. Apart from gold medals, I think our chances of winning a larger number of medals are higher than ever – meaning more silver and bronze medals too – leading to a larger overall tally of medals.

     

    2. Individual performances: Since the last Olympics, a lot of Indian sportspersons have come to the fore. Our boxers and shooters will do us proud this time as well. And, so will the badminton players.

     

    3. Team spirit: Controversies might have outshone them. But I do feel that Indian tennis team’s performance will be worth watching. The players are in great form.

     

    4. Hockey: It’s our national sport and hopefully they will make us proud. The hockey team’s performance is definitely something to look forward to.

     

    5. Usain Bolt: Don’t be surprised if he smashes his own record. After all, he is ‘Lightning Bolt’!

     

    Prasana Krishnan is COO, Neo Sports Broadcasting Pvt Ltd

     

  • Although we are often accused of being jingoistic (by me), when it comes to football, it is the beauty of the game which gets us

    Ranjona Banerji: India’s great football triumph = Viva Espana!

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    So who was bigger this week? European football or the prime minister as the finance minister? In spite of how much we love the Indian economy and can now all speak knowingly about repo rates and supply side economics, actually it is the question of whether Spain is really the greatest sporting nation in the world or not that concerns us.

     

    Since everyone stayed up all night on Sunday to find out – all the newspapers that is, not me – we can now safely say that football is the second biggest sport in India, after cricket. In fact, sometimes newspapers do not stay up all night to bring us the results of late night cricket matches, especially where India is not playing, so…

     

    I point this out because the chances of India playing at the Euro Cup are, of course, zero but the chances of India playing football at the international level are also, er, zero.

     

    No one, however, cares. Although we are often accused of being jingoistic (by me), when it comes to football, it is the beauty of the game which gets us. All these European countries fighting each other as they chase a ball around a field affects us deeply. We take on loyalties that are deep and meaningful, we become close to all the players and we have no compunctions about fighting with our friends who support the wrong team. I see “we” in a generous sense that has nothing to do with me, since I don’t understand any of this.

     

    Funnily enough, we don’t even care that we can’t even make tenuous Indian connections which make us so happy at other times – the white mayor of Pigsknuckle, Arkansas once ate an Indian meal made by second-generation Indian immigrant Lucky Kohli, thus proving how great India is.

     

    Spain is now top country for India (I make this arbitrary judgment based on Twitter), even though I don’t think that Spain has many of the celebrity footballers who make the news the rest of the time when they play for clubs (Messi, Ronaldo, Rooney are the ones who pop up all the time for philistines like me). Also, once the World Cup arrives and the South American teams take part, all these loyalties will shift again.

     

    Indian TV news does devote some time to football but not as much as Indian newspapers which even sent correspondents to Poland and Ukraine. That is why newspapers are at the vanguard of identifying the sports which fascinate the new India.

     

    TV news is involved in saving India night after night so sport, unless it involves scandal, is not really that newsworthy. No?

     

    PS: The prime minister as finance minister? Boring!

     

  • Digital Media advertisers end up creating metrics which are not 100 per cent aligned to the business goals, which they wish to achieve, with campaigns being driven via digital media planned, says Siddharth Puri

    The Anchor: 5 reasons why advertisers don’t get desired ROI from Digital Media plans

    By Siddharth Puri

     

    1. Advertisers inability to identify right metrics to evaluate media plan performance

    Digital Media advertisers end up creating metrics which are not 100 per cent aligned to the business goals, which they wish to achieve, with campaigns being driven via digital media planned. For example, e-commerce advertiser looks to advertise and drive more transactions, but instead deploys money on media and optimizing media plan for a metric such as number of visits received on the e-commerce store front, instead of owning up to all metrics in the funnel till business objective of transaction. Lot of advertisers end up treating metric like on-site conversion ratio as black box instead of demystifying up to product searches, carts created, number of users reaching closer to end metric of transaction and optimizing media plan on deeper in sales funnel metrics.

     

    2. Cross Digital Media Channel Attribution Management

    Digital Channels have evolved from being a single channel to a medium with multiple media channels like social, search, display, mobile, affiliate among many others. With advent of multiple channels and ability to measure via technology, it is important that the advertiser doesn’t make a mistake in establishing, not only channel which leads to last content before conversion of customer in campaign, but the medias which lead user down the funnel.

     

    Performance channels like Search and affiliate networks sit lower in funnel and closer to conversion, but study of users’ path before conversion reflects strong display activities with correct frequency and media placement on media plan reflected as high as 50-60 per cent work done to influence conversion.

     

    3. Digital Media plan created with over-dependency on single creative format type

    To create 360 degree impact, it’s important that all formats, including Mailers and Text Ads, beyond Display should be used effectively to capture the user intent created. What’s required is the ability to synchronize communication across formats to deliver higher ROI than single creative format type plans.

     

    4. Measuring of Google as single property/channel on media plan

    Google is made up of multiple line items for an advertiser for instance:-

    1. Brand Keywords – Users search for your branded products and are captured via Google text ad words advertisers at the cheapest cost. The ROI should compete with your SEO/organic traffic metrics as there is no effect of advertising but ability for technology to funnel direct demand for you. 30 per cent is the ideal spend for a brand advertiser.

    2. Non Brand Keywords – Spend done on this bucket is for placing your ads in front of category specific searches happening and trying to influence or win SOV – 40 per cent spend for an advertiser

    3. Google Content Network – Spend done on this bucket is to place your ad in contextually relevant environment basis audience targeting driven from content on page taken as input or measurement of relevance. This category constitutes approximately 30 per cent of an advertisers spend

     

    From a ROI cost perspective, the above channels have been listed in order of their cost to return ratio, indicating clearly that the average ROI delivered by Google is lesser than ROI metric achieved on non brand keyword due to averages from brand keywords making other channels on digital media plan look ineffective in meeting goals. If, as an advertiser you treat all the three as different channels, you will be able to increase ROI efficiency on your media investments by 30-40 per cent.

     

    5. Ad Network buys which constitute 20 per cent of the media plans are bought on price with comparison of channel against Search than Display Properties

    Ad Networks are fundamentally Display Format Publishers and hence inherit strengths and weaknesses of Display. Their performance and optimization which can be achieved is similar to display properties. One uses Ad Networks over display properties due to the technology which brings along additional optimization capability beyond creative and placement optimization. Digital Media plans are being developed as operations plan rather than strategy plans. If brands marketers/advertisers change their approach to Digital Media plans, they will be able to generate desired ROI since the Demand being less than Supply scenario still exists on digital media.

     

    Siddharth Puri is the Business Head, Tyroo Direct

     

  • In my belief, that answer lies inside the marketing office of Cadbury India, the company that enjoys a 70 per cent market share in this category

    Anil Thakraney: How ads helped chocolates treble sales

    By Anil Thakraney

     

    Read an interesting story in The Times of India. It reported that chocolate consumption has trebled in India, not in the last 30 years, but in the last seven years alone! This is a huge rate of growth in any product category, and by any stretch of imagination.

     

    So, then what happened? Has India suddenly developed a sweet tooth? Can’t be that, because mithais and other sweetmeats have been part of our tradition and eating habits for centuries together. There must be another explanation. TOI’s story seems to link the growth in choc consumption to the rising income levels in this country. I find this link a bit tenuous. Because rising income usually translates into increased expenditure on consumer durables and other high ticket items, those that import some degree of status to a person’s life. How on earth does a bar of chocolate fit in this scenario? It’s a low cost impulse purchase product, much like all other sweets and snacks. So the answer lies elsewhere.

     

    In my belief, that answer lies inside the marketing office of Cadbury India, the company that enjoys a 70 per cent market share in this category. All those years and efforts the chocolate major has invested in expanding the market in India, to make their brands attractive to the adult segment, have paid off big-time. And Cadbury’s rivals have benefited in the process, too. This is the key reason behind the booming choc market.

     

    Some of you may not know this, but as recently as 20 years ago, chocolates used to be targetted only at kids, and this imagery of the product totally alienated the vast adult population. In the year 1992 if you dared to consume a Cadbury Dairy Milk bar in a public place, you ran the risk of being scoffed at for ‘shamelessly eating a bachchon ka product’. And in just twenty years the market has turned on its head.

     

    And this has been achieved by Cadbury purely on the power of advertising. It took some years, but the results are showing now, and how! The Cadbury commercials have won many awards over the years but their biggest victory has been that they turned the fortunes of the entire category. Cadbury India has shown the world the magic you can do when your strategy is innovative and when the creative work shines. The trebling of the choc market in India is the victory of advertising alone.

     

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    [youtube width=”400″ height=”225″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI7Oq8y-jXA[/youtube]

    PS: This is why I am so looking forward to watching The Newsroom, the latest, hottest American TV serial. Am excited not just as a viewer, but also as a journalist. It’s high time the media looked at its own self. This is gonna be something else, going by this kickass capsule. Must watch.

     

  • In Freaking News, Ranjona Banerji reviews the fare in the morning papers and the nightly news. And sometimes the afternooners, the newsmags and all that's on the Web

    Ranjona Banerji: Don’t be jingoistic; do your job, journos!

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The coverage of the arrest of Abu Jundal or Zahibuddin Ansari has, sadly and as usual, tilted towards being a spokesperson for the investigating agencies. Rather than take a cold and dispassionate look at investigations into terrorist attacks or activities, all too often even very senior journalists become jingoistic, as if criticism of the way a probe is being conducted somehow impacts on their own personal patriotic duties.

     

    Yet the fact is that in the Mumbai terror attacks at least, it was the personal bravery of constable Tukaram Ombale that led to the capture of the lone surviving terrorist Ajmal Kasab. The shame of the attacks is still enormous and the blame for that rests solely on our police force and state administration. (Is that my own sense of nationalism asserting itself, albeit in a converse manner? Perhaps.) The court which sentenced Kasab to death let off the other two names added to the case by the Mumbai police for lack of evidence. This was the worst, most audacious terrorist attack on India’s premier city and the police could not come up with enough evidence.

     

    The media in any other country would have gone to town on this. We instead had some mild criticism and more PR activity. It is only when there is enormous embarrassment like sending a list of wanted criminals to Pakistan for return to India only to find that some are dead and others are in Indian jails that there is obvious criticism.

     

    Crime reporting in Indian newspapers veers between police mouthpieces and gangster mouthpieces – a sad outcome of which is the murder of one journalist J Dey and the arrest of another, Jigna Vora, in his death. The onus for this lies with editors who seem unable to analyse the bigger picture in the race for some exciting story. Sensationalism is fine but somewhere there has to be a larger responsibility to present the reader with a more comprehensive story.

     

    In the Abu Jundul case, I would like to read more about how the police have been unable to crack these apparent sleeper cells all over the country, how the same names crop up as being responsible for most terrorist attacks in the country and yet we never get closer to catching them, why we still don’t know which dreaded terrorist is in the country and which is not, how the conflicts between various investigating agencies is impacting their efforts, the progress of our diplomatic efforts with Pakistan on the issue of terrorism… the list goes on. Yet what is available in newspapers is scanty and one can only glean all this from throwaway remarks here and there.

     

    TV news has to absolved from all this because its levels of maturity are still low. One of the funniest moments for me remains when the verdict on the Mumbai terrorist attacks was pronounced and the judge acquitted ?? and ?? for lack of evidence.

     

    Policeman turned activist and lawyer YP Singh was on NDTV. He said the acquittal reflected very badly on the Mumbai police. The NDTV anchor said: “how can you say that sir, they work so hard”. The expression of speechless incredulous horror on Singh’s face was classic!

     

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    As with terrorists, so also in the killings of “Naxals” in Chattisgarh, we put “patriotism” or adherence to state policies before journalistic rigour. It took the Indian Express to point out that many of these so-called dreaded Naxals were ordinary villagers and school children. If the media does not call out the government on these transgressions, then it is conceding all its “freedom of expression” space to NGOs and activists and thus abdicating one of its biggest responsibilities.

     

  • It looks like the media (who thrive on noise of their own kind) has accepted that every Indian famous and otherwise, has an inalienable, constitutional right to make as much noise whenever and wherever he/she pleases, notes Gouri Dange

    [MJR] Gouri Dange: Why this silence over the noise?

    By Gouri Dange

     

    Since the feeding frenzy over the Saif tidbit that fell into the media shark tank is over, one is loathe to bring it up again and create more sites where the moronic incident will pop up on search engines. But there’s one thing that no one asked or discussed anywhere in any medium, earth, fire, water, or air – meaning print, Hindi news channels, English news channels and on the internet: Is it not at all legitimate and reasonable for a person to ask for quiet and decorum in a public space?

     

    As backward and foolish and boorish as the punching out of a diner in the Taj by Saif, is the attitude that he (and crores of his fellow Indians) display when he airily said to the man who asked him and his women and men pals repeatedly to keep it down: ‘If you want silence, go to a library’. (Fortunately he thought of ‘library’ and not ‘graveyard’).

     

    Ha! Is that the only place where one can expect and demand some quiet in this sub-continent, is what SOMEONE should have asked this Nawabling, when the story was being followed so closely. But, typically, all we had by way of coverage is ‘who started it’ and ‘what did the Taj have to say’ and ‘was there CCTV footage or not’, and ‘was Saif’s phone on or off’ and other such nitty-gritty matters delivered to us with such round-the-clock efficiency by every media that there is. But about the fact that he was making enough noise for fellow diners (who are not all gosh-golly about Bollywood) to find him and everyone at his table galling and bad for the digestion, no one said a thing. At least someone could have asked him that prim but significant question that our teachers asked us often: “Is this what your mummy-daddy taught you to do?”

     

    However, it looks like the media too (who thrive on noise of their own kind) has accepted that every Indian famous and otherwise, has an inalienable, constitutional right to make as much noise whenever and wherever he/she pleases. No one asked the Princelet whether he felt free to talk, shout, laugh and horse around in any country outside the sub-continent. I’m trying to think of him and his gang in some toney restaurant in the western world behaving this way in the first place (forget punching out a fellow-patron) and I can’t see it happening. On top of it, the media reports that 48 hours later, when he had come down off his uncha-ghoda, he admitted that he had done something wrong (as opposed to the previous day’s “mummy-tell-him-no…he-beat-me-first” stance) he said something about “We (the royal We) should set a good example as we are constantly watched…etc”. My point is, you should behave well not because you are watched but because your mummy-daddy spent good money getting you an education and some polish. And because other people have a right to be in a pleasant dining situation (outside of a library).

     

    It was only some voices of Facebook et al that were all a-twitter with the right questions on this ‘silence is only in libraries’ school of Indian philosophy.  And about how the same minor-Mughals behave impeccably in public places outside of this great land, where silence and not shoving people is kind of expected of everyone.

     

    One last point that any responsible media person must kindly caution these Beautiful People (various Khans, Aroras, and suchlike) about after such a fracas, is this: don’t get into physical brawls, because you never know, those hair weaves, that botox, the silicon, and the stitches, can all come undone right there in public, and then what a mess there will be to clean up. (And can the media possibly NOT quote a bunch of puranay-paapi ‘vouching’ for each other’s decency and honesty? I mean come on, do we really want to hear about solidarity for Saif coming from sundry blackbuck shooters and hit-and-run-drivers with infamous anger-management issues of their own?)

     

  • What would have been even better is, if they had weaved in entertaining situations around the hand motion, that would have added adrenalin to the TVC

    Debrief: Hero: Desh Ka Vroom Vroom!

    By Anil Thakraney

     

    The advertising promise is quite simple: Because Hero’s bikes offer terrific mileage, the entire nation rides out more often. And in the creative interpretation of that, Hero has done one boring thing and one interesting thing, so I have mixed reactions to their new TVC.

     

    Boring, first. They have gone ahead and done that same old, tired ‘Desh Ka Hero’ number. The commercial features people cutting across social, economic and religious divides. Wonder when Indian advertisers will evolve and avoid this route like the swine flu. It’s no longer interesting, really. However, the one good thing Hero has done is to use the hand technique needed to ride a bike as the central creative idea, and this device unites all the people featured in the ad. I like this touch. Because this particular hand motion is unique to bike riding (unless you are a plumber!), and it can and should become a neat memory hook for Hero. This is smart thinking.

     

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”225″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j7BkAOtbFE[/youtube]

    However, what would have been even better is, if they had weaved in entertaining situations around the hand motion, that would have added adrenalin to the TVC. And it would have made it watchable on repeat exposure. But this issue can be dealt with as the campaign moves forward, so that’s fine. Also, must say the jingle is peppy and fun.

     

    Rating: (On a scale of 1 to 5): 3. Old route. But an interesting creative device.

     

     

  • Marketers should define their category by the way their customers see it, rather than the way the industry sees it, says Suman Srivastava

    The Anchor: Suman Srivastava on 5 Reasons why Marketing is a Creative Business

    By Suman Srivastava

     

    1. The marketer has to define the category he is in:

    Marketers should define their category by the way their customers see it, rather than the way the industry sees it wrote Theodore Levitt in Marketing Myopia. This is true even today. One can argue that a discount airline and a full service airline operate in different categories, even though they both fly planes.

     

    2. Pricing has become an art and not an accountancy exercise:

    Cost plus pricing is dead. Today consumers live in a “free” economy. Musicians give away their music for free from their websites and then make money on the concerts and the merchandize. Printers in the USA cost less than a full set of cartridges in them. Go figure.

     

    3. Marketers increasingly sell augmented products:

    You never just buy the car. You buy the car and the service and the resale value. As products become more commoditized, the pressure is on the marketer to differentiate the product in some other way. Hyundai offered to buy back cars from people who lost their jobs in America. That ensured that it increased its market share in a declining market.

     

    4. In India, creative distribution ideas can truly disrupt markets:

    Cavin Kare changed the rules of the game by launching shampoos in sachets. They started a revolution that has extended from personal care products to telecom (prepaid cards). Sachets could be placed in the smallest of stores and be within reach of the poorest of customers.

     

    5. Advertising doesn’t work as well as it did before, so marketers need to think of unique brand experiences:

    Smirnoff is not allowed to advertise, so it created a series of events where consumers were taught to make cocktails. These were fun events where the consumers left after not just having a few drinks, but also learning the right way to make and serve cocktails. Beats a 30 sec TVC any day.

     

    Suman Srivastava is Founder & Innovation Artist at Marketing Unplugged, a firm that helps firms create marketing innovations

     

  • Let's not forget that it's the profits of today's so called BadCo that were used to acquire, build and grow the television businesses in the first place, which are now seen as today's GoodCo

    Peter Mukerjea: GoodCo, BadCo & NewCo

    By Peter Mukerjea

     

    So it has finally happened. The break up of a mega corp. And it’s happening before our very eyes, and like global warming, it’s a sign of the times. In years to come, students at media schools in India and elsewhere in the world will be reading how the media landscape evolved and how new media slowly, but surely, took it’s place in society. The demise of print and eventually, television, along with the numerous obituaries on the subject will all be in the history books eventually. How media moguls like Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch were literally pushed off their lofty perches and new names and faces like Mark and Sergei took their places will all be a chapter or two in reference books. The erosion of the powerful dominance of print media brands will be replaced by brand names like Google, Facebook, Instagram. This period in social history will be seen by students of media studies as part of a process of evolution and not much more.

     

    But for those of us who are seeing this unfold, it’s indeed an interesting and captivating phase.

     

    Speaking to friends and ex-colleagues in New York, LA and in London recently, it seems many of them are seeing this as the transitioning of one company which comprises of both GoodCo and BadCo to several NewCos. Many of them are also now wondering how many more NewCos will emerge from this, and how soon, but more importantly for them, who will run them. The share price of the company stock has always been a subject of conversation amongst those fortunate enough to get share options, and the fact that it has been static or of negative value for long periods of time has been a source of annoyance. But the fact that this announcement has caused a flutter of activity and raised the share price is seen by many to be a good thing for them personally, so they can now actually make some use of the stock options and realise some value. Most also believe that this value will increase more dramatically when the family gives up control but that could be like waiting for Godot.

     

    Let’s not forget that it’s the profits of today’s so called BadCo that  were used to acquire, build and grow the television businesses in the first place, which are now seen as today’s GoodCo. Like God made little green apples, surely there will come a day, very soon, given that the seed of thought has been planted, when these very television businesses at GoodCo will also be spun off into individual entities, driven by the same principles that are the cause for the split today – providing better shareholder value and value creation. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

     

    The company which is the largest revenue driver within GoodCo could well find a viable financial spreadsheet reason and which showcases a scenario where better shareholder value could be created if certain parts of their GoodCo were then hacked off and cut away into separate entities as they were losing money or were no longer beneficial to their shareholders.

     

    I do think that the possibility that billions of dollars of further investments into the UK and Europe being stopped and being diverted to the US is more of a veiled threat than reality, but the possibility that the Euro Zone and their currency itself may not survive for too long, will have financial planners everywhere crunching their numbers and hedging their bets in all sorts of different currencies, anyway. So for Rupert Murdoch to say this so plainly in a recent CNBC interview is not altogether surprising but is reminiscent of childhood cricket games, where if one could not get to bat then, they would pick stumps, bat and ball and go home so no one else could play either. Maybe some of those billions will head to India or Afghanistan or Pakistan, where there’s plenty of low hanging media fruit and bargains to be had for those with pockets of cash.

     

    In India though, the trend compared to the UK seems to be the reverse and where each of the various media segments – print, television, cable, radio, outdoor and new media are all growing – albeit in an unregulated and pressure cooker kind of environment. This has to be great news for those working in the industry, and the business case for setting up several GoodCo, BadCo and NewCos would be different but the ethos and principles would of course be the same.

     

    Maybe it’s time for the head of an Indian conglomerate to sail across to meet the boss of the media company that is now busy setting up GoodCo, BadCo, NewCo and  ‘make him an offer that he can’t refuse’ as they say in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. Not that this is in any way connected to the words used by British MPs in the select committee set up to investigate the hacking scandal in the UK – when asking James Murdoch if he ever felt that he was running a mafia company or words to that effect? James Murdoch was, of course, most offended by that question and as expected, he refuted it completely.

     

    Nevertheless, maybe it’s time for an Indian company to do what Rupert did some decades ago when he moved out of Australia and bought papers in the UK, thus  creating a global media company. For an Indian company now to own a few internationally acclaimed newspaper titles around the world, then cut losses by injecting Indian cost control systems and management into them would create real shareholder value – rather like the brilliant way in which Tatas have done with the Tata Motors acquisition of Jaguar Land Rover which was a real BadCo and is now a true GoodCo.

     

    Maybe this is where the NewCo will come in.

     

  • Media Matrix by Paritosh Joshi, until recently CEO, Star CJ, analyses issues concerning the business of media, measurement and research

    Paritosh Joshi: Wither Digitization?

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    We are down to just over a month for mandatory digitisation in the 4 metros. Newspaper stories suggest bullishness among DTH players even as major cable providers signal some nervousness and even seek extra time to get all their ducks in a row.

     

    Let me say this bluntly.India will lose a massive opportunity if all the spoils of digitization went to DTH.

     

    But first, a quick look back. To the beginning of this developing story.

     

    India’s economic liberalization and initiation into C&S television happened almost simultaneously. Even as Peter Arnett on CNN was telling the world about the bombing of Baghdad during Operation Desert Storm in early 1991, Dr Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Narasimha Rao were getting busy with preparing the blueprint for India’s economic liberalisation. Almost by some divine providence, television and the economy were both getting set to kick into high gear in tandem. As the period since has shown with impressive consistency, as television has grown wider and deeper, so has the economy.

     

    Inevitably, technology has reached the point where the legacy of the analog system must be superceded by digital technology. The change is not sudden, having begun with the Conditional Access System (CAS) in 2002 and gathered momentum with DTH’s arrival in the form of Dish TV in 2005. While CAS was unable to make much headway, even in markets where it was made mandatory, DTH saw accelerating growth after the launch of Tata Sky in 2006, and then an operator explosion, starting 2008.India now has as many as six commercial and one public service DTH services, more than any other major market in the world.

     

    By definition, DTH services cover a very wide footprint, typically the entire Indian subcontinent, and often extending to points well beyond that. This provides great advantages to multi- or pan-national audiences, but is of little use to broadcasters or content owners who target a more tightly defined audience, be it based on ethnicity, language or geography. Also, since the service is delivered via satellite and doesn’t have a native return path, return paths have to be bolted on separately using a terrestrial or cellular telecom network, or an independent vendor’s internet service as is being tried by Indian DTH operators.

     

    Terrestrial digital cable services, on the other hand, frequently bundle television and internet services on the same cable and, by implication, have an inbuilt return path from viewer to platform operator. This creates a range of opportunities in terms of bringing transaction based services, payment solutions and so on that are accessible from a simple TV remote. Indeed, the best of breed in many parts of the world now offer triple play (TV, Internet and Basic Telephony) or even quadruple play (triple + Cellular Telephony) off a single connection.

     

    In addition to their versatility, digital cable systems simply have much more bandwidth to accommodate more content and services than satellite transponders. This advantage will become more significant as more genres and channels move from standard definition to high definition (or SD to HD is common parlance). HD channels use 3 to 4 times the bandwidth of SD and as setup costs of HD fall, broadcasters will be looking to deliver better viewer experiences with the switch.

     

    Amongst all the issues we have raised above, perhaps the most significant is the possibility of localizing television. Every city and town in the country is, potentially, a distinct television market. There is local news to be reported. There are local stories that must be told. There are local merchants who must advertise to their customers. And there is plenty of creative talent that is raring to have a go at tapping into these opportunities. If only there is a platform that can support them.

     

    That platform is not DTH.

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and been a key officebearer on industry bodies. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero