MxMIndia

Category: BLOGS

  • Television gets back to doing what it does best – confusing everyone, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: After playing “war war”, now “economy economy”?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The apparent war-mongering by our TV news channels has been tamped down for the moment but that doesn’t mean that it is any less dangerous or that it should be forgotten. The media has to reflect public opinion not manipulate it. A provocative media is fine as far as it goes but a media which goes overboard into hysteria about every single subject is about the little boy who cried wolf once too often.

     

    (This edit from the Hindu makes clear the perils of playing “war war” because you can’t find anything better to entertain yourself with: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/stop-baying-for-blood/article4310116.ece)

     

    Therefore, having “solved” the problem with Pakistan, TV now shifted its focus to the diesel price hike introduced by the government. For hours on the Newshour debate on Times Now, the issue was discussed. Populism, sops, subsidies and fiscal deficits were some of the words thrown around but with the anchor batting for different sides at every half hour (it was a very long programme), the viewer can be forgiven for turning into a quivering mess of protoplasm at the end of it. Arnab Goswami was sometimes for helping the fiscal deficit along, sometimes he was batting for the middle class, sometimes he was for sops for the poor, sometimes he was calling political parties out for their hypocrisy… who knows at the end what that diesel price policy means (actually I know: read a newspaper, any newspaper).

     

    **

     

    But why blame Indian TV all the time, eh? It was interesting to see just how long the BBC World Service in India took to report on the helicopter crash in central London on Wednesday morning. They were stuck on the euro for about 45 minutes – by which time CNN and Al-Jazeera both had it – until they got to the story. And when they did, they only had mobile phone footage of the crash.

     

    Even more interesting was the amount of support they had on Twitter. When I made a couple of jokes about the delay by the BBC, several people sent me links to the BBC website to tell me that they had the news there first.

     

    The web then as we all know is the biggest threat to all other idea and the sooner the fuddy-duddies figure that out the better for them.

     

    **

     

    The death of former veejay Sophiya Haque got plenty of play in Friday’s newspapers. Haque was very popular on TV once amongst the MTV-watching crowd but has not been seen in India for almost a decade. Was the coverage given to her sudden death from cancer a result of the sentimental nature of some editors or because there’s a new generation of editors who can’t be older than their mid-40s, for whom Haque was an important part of their growing up years?

     

    **

     

    I have a request from the people of Ranchi for sports journalists: while you’re covering the One Day International between India and England, please also spare a few column centimetres for the ongoing hockey league (which has a Ranchi team apparently) and is being ignored because of the cricket.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Mumbai. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are her own

     

  • The time has come for Hollywood award show organisers to clamp down hard on family homilies, writes Anil Thakraney

    Anil Thakraney: Boring Golden Globes

    By Anil Thakraney

     

    The movie awards season is underway, and for the next month or so we shall be overloaded with the TV versions, both national and international. I shall review the assorted Bollywood award dramas along the way, but must say the start to the season has been less than exciting.

     

    As always, the Golden Globes opened the awards jamboree, and I was all set for some fun, wit and glory on VH1. Thing is, Hollywood award nights are usually crisp and sans all the natak that happens with Bollywood awards, so one expects to focus mainly on the winners and their winning performances. And some funnies from the show hosts. The Golden Globes did not disappoint on that count, and thank god their stars don’t perform raunchy item numbers on stage. It was a well-conceived show, so then why am I cribbing?

     

    Well, it’s got to do with the winners and their monotonous acceptance speech. Ten years ago, the trophy holders would go on and on and on, and make a billion viewers across the globe cringe with disgust. This prompted the organisers to get smart, and they came up with the idea of playing elevator music when the award acceptance speech time was up. Some die hard winners continued to ramble regardless, and so they started the practice of raising the music levels to blank out the extra verbosity. But clearly, Hollywood stars still haven’t learnt the virtue of a quick, snappy ‘Thank you everyone.’ They are still rambling and rambling like hell.

     

    The big problem (and thankfully this doesn’t happen with desi stars) is the desperate need to thank members of the family. Mother, father, husband, wife, sister, cousin, Moti, the dog, everyone. These incestuous greetings have nothing to do with the world at large, but that doesn’t discourage the winners. Ideally, we faithful viewers should be rewarded with a quick insight from the winning performance, a funny anecdote from the shoot or stuff we’ll otherwise never get to know. That would also make the show entertaining.

     

    I think time has come for Hollywood award show organisers to clamp down hard on family homilies. They should play Himesh Reshammiya’s scintillating nasal songs the moment a winner begins belting out the tiresome thank-you laundry list. 🙂

     

    PS: Haha. Found this ancient ad in my archives. This is America in the good ol’ fifties. In just sixty years, the world has turned upside down. If an organisation dares to release such an ad today, the brand manager and the ad agency staffers would get lynched under pointy stiletto heels. But have the mindsets really changed? That’s the moot question.

     

  • Anchor | One Big Idea by Apurva Purohit: Rationalization of OTEF a must

    By Apurva Purohit, CEO, Radio City

     

    For any business to survive it has to have a favourable regulatory environment and a cost structure which has the potential to translate ultimately into profit and a reasonable return on capital for the investors. For the past 11 years that the private FM has been operational in this country, it has had to consistently grapple with two major deterrents -License fees and Music Royalty.

     

    While the Copyright Board judgment in 2011 was clearly a game changer for the industry in the matter of royalty, the next biggest game changer that can fillip investment in the industry is rationalization of the OTEF (one time entry fee) that is paid for the licenses.

     

    One way of doing this is to have a differential OTEF for different genres which would encourage existing/new FM players to set up niche channels which would help the Industry offer listeners a varied choice in content.

     

    Today, even if an FM operator wants to offer classical or folk music which many listeners ask for, he is expected to pay the same OTEF as others. This investment does not justify the revenues that could be generated out of the station as a niche offering.

     

    Almost all towns in India with a population of over 10 million people already have enough FM stations offering popular music. The scope for expansion for FM players lies in offering new genres and to set up new genres, the current reserve price is a huge deterrent and therefore the above suggestion would circumvent the challenge.

     

    Finally, of course, the ultimate game changer for FM is for the Government to move into allowing players to set up FM stations on a plug and play mode. Like TV and digital and print can do, any potential FM operator should be allowed the liberty to set up FM stations without any content restrictions at any point of time instead of waiting for an auction that happens once in five years.

     

     

     

  • Anchor | One Big Idea by Dhiman Mukherji: Creating contextually relevant ecosystem essential for brands

    By Dhiman Mukherji, Director, Marketing Solutions, LinkedIn India

     

    With public becoming the new private, social media platforms present brands with valuable assets in the form of their member base. Leveraging the power of these networks, brands are increasingly capitalizing through customized campaigns reaching out to a sharply targeted audience.

     

    Brands today are keenly listening to consumer conversations online, developing programmes that enable them to participate in these conversations by creating a contextually relevant ecosystem with customized and targeted marketing campaigns, thereby engaging with consumers directly.

     

    Businesses globally seek focused and measurable solutions to engage with their audience online. Businesses, from large- scale enterprise to SMEs, are benefiting by creating relevant follower ecosystems, which enable them to identify and acquire the right followers through relevant content.

     

    A very interesting case is that of DSP BlackRock Mutual Fund. The company has successfully leveraged LinkedIn’s professional member base to engage with their core audience by employing LinkedIn’s “Targeted Updates and enhanced Follower Statistics” feature, which enabled the company to educate and interact with its core audience, deepen its engagement and help consumers make informed decisions.

     

     

     

  • Every week, Deepa Gahlot casts a critical eye over media reviews of Bollywood releases… in Reviewing the Reviews

    Reviewing the Reviews: Inkaar

    Inkaar

    Key Cast: Arjun Rampal, Chitrangada Singh

    Written By: Sudhir Mishra

    Directed By: Sudhir Mishra

    Produced By: Viacom 18 Motion Pictures

     

    Some said yay, some said nay, some said maybe. But all critics were in agreement over one thing – that Sudhir Mishra took a topical and sensitive issue like sexual harassment and botched it. Several female critics used the term ‘trivialise’ and most were disappointed with the bizarre, dithering climax.

     

    The film got between two- and three-star ratings, nonetheless, maybe because it is a Sudhir Mishra film and he has made good films in the past.

     

    Anupama Chopra of the Hindustan Times felt let down. “There are too many cheesy parties where everyone gets drunk, and the climax is a staggeringly disappointing cop-out. It undermines everything that has gone before. What, you wonder, was the whole war about? Arjun and Chitrangada work hard to give Inkaar heft. Both struggle to bring conviction to their characters. But ultimately the film remains a dish half-baked.”

     

    Rajeev Masand of IBNLive commented, “The performances are of the skim-on-the-surface variety. Arjun and Chitrangada look like a dream and valiantly tackle difficult roles, but you get the idea that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. Despite the bold, controversial theme, Inkaar fizzles out once the fireworks fade, not least because of its awkward climax – in the office restroom, of all places!”

     

    Sukanya Verma’s review in rediff.com was understandably angry. “In a sexual context, to judge sociable from suggestive and vice versa in a part-liberal, part-conservative society is highly precarious. One person’s idea of harmless flirtation could be another’s criteria for inappropriate conduct. But under NO circumstances is exploitation okay. No matter what line of work one is in, at some point, every individual has to decide on his/her own as to where they want to draw a line and when they need to object. Instead of expounding on the opaqueness of this matter with sensitivity and substance, Inkaar trivialises something so serious and rampant as sexual harassment into a terrible joke. I wouldn’t have so many issues with Sudhir Mishra’s new film if it wasn’t so irresponsibly promoting Inkaar as something it’s not. Especially now.”

     

    Shubhra Gupta of the Indian Express was left unimpressed too. “The tough questions that the film had started to lay out for us, about what constitutes sexual harassment, the pressures to succeed in a demanding workplace, the moral and ethical dilemmas that have to be faced to reach the pinnacle, all get buried under a hurried, compromised end. Inkaar could have been truly radical. But it becomes a film that prefers to cop out, rather than deliver on the promise it held out so bravely in its initial passages.”

     

    Aniruddha Guha of DNA was dismissive. “Sudhir Mishra seems to be in a weird space as a filmmaker right now. His penchant for simple storytelling and real, complex characters have resulted in some great films, and he tries to juggle his strengths with more mainstream elements in Inkaar. Nothing wrong with that, except that the result is an unfortunately botched attempt at portraying a relevant issue, even as Mishra struggles to strike a balance between style and substance. The film starts out with promise, but a jarringly loud background score, hammy actors and a cliched ending ruin whatever chance Inkaar had at being considered watchable.”

     

    Srijana Mitra Das of the Times of India wrote, “You know those cakes that look gorgeous in pictures but collapse when they bake? Inkaar is like that. Polished-looking, its edges – the tension of feeling harassed at work, office politics, ego flashes – hold rather well. But its centre collapses in a soft mess.”

     

    According to Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV, “Much of the film’s strength, for whatever it is worth, stems from its unbending and ambitious career woman-protagonist who stands up to the tyranny of Alpha males in a high-profile corporate set-up where the glass ceiling is an everyday, if only subliminal, reality. It is in the motivational detailing of this character that Inkaar goes off-track. For a film that is remarkable in many significant ways, it ultimately disappoints because, despite showing the nerve to deal squarely with a demanding subject, it eventually chickens out of the prospect of going the whole distance to a coherent and radical conclusion.”

     

    Janhavi Samant of Mid-day ranted, “The biggest problem area with Inkaar, and most films revolving around workplace issues, is the portrayal of the female protagonist. For such an ambitious woman, Maya is shown to be a clueless trainee, remarkably insecure about her own rise, a paranoid leader, and prone to frequent emotional outbursts in work situations. Another problem area is the many brazen generalizations about scorned women, how flirting is natural when beautiful men and women work together all hours of the day, the fine line between camaraderie, flirting and harassment. Maybe a little more time in an actual office observing day-to-day dynamics between colleagues of the opposite sex or interacting with mature women professionals would have added a little insight to the plot. One expected more maturity from a Sudhir Mishra film.”

     

    Anuj Kumar of The Hindu wrote, “Mishra has a knack for hitting where it hurts, but here, after a point, he strikes more on the surface than at the soul. When he delves into the motivations and impulses of his characters, the drama is not consistently satisfying and the climax is a disappointment because in an attempt to leave with a ray of hope, Mishra tones down the denouement. After going almost all the way, he takes the ‘escapist’ route.”

     

    Pratim D Gupta of The Telegraph liked the film but pointed its flaws. “Inkaar has an excellent first half, which really puts you in the middle of the flashy, fierce world of advertising and in the ring with these two drop-dead-gorgeous individuals looking for more than love in their lives. Or so we are made to think. And while the tempo is kept up in the second half, the rest-room resolution is a disappointing and cliched copout that kind of subverts the whole serious issue of sexual harassment at the workplace.”

     

    Karan Anshuman of Mumbai Mirror stood out with a four-star rave, “Inkaar is not about office politics as you might imagine, even though many moments shape an accurate portrayal. It is not about sexual harassment in the workplace as it is being marketed though that is the searing crucible in which complex, often unnatural dollops of human emotion are left to sputter and interact, never coalescing. Everything else is an elaborate backdrop. And finally when the truth unravels – when motives come to light – I had a great urge to watch the film again. And with movies, this urge supersedes all flaws.”

     

  • Anchor | One Big Idea by Rahul Johri: Digitization to re-ignite Indian television industry

    By Rahul Johri, Senior Vice President and General Manager, South Asia, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific

     

    Digital television is here in India in abundance and it is about to transform the national viewer experience and the industry economics.

     

    The government’s push to digitization of television has made India step up to the next level of technology and efficiency in television. It is set to revolutionize the creation, broadcasting and distribution of television shows. It is also full of new possibilities of branding and differentiation of content.

     

    Most importantly, digitization has ensured that television remains the centrepiece of knowledge and entertainment in India.

     

    The Indian television industry has reinvented itself repeatedly to enhance consumer experience. From colour transmission to cable TV to live broadcast and now to digital TV, it has mesmerized the viewers. Digitisation will not only multiply channel choice but also enhance television’s utility to the consumer through interactive entertainment, education and communication services.

     

    DTH has already catalysed the transformation of television’s quality and utility and now digital cable is set to make this change universal.

     

    Now, plenty of niche channels can viably coexist with the mass channels. Digitization will lead to improved revenues from all kinds of content and it will encourage channel differentiation and packaging innovation.

     

    At Discovery, we anticipated this transformation a few years ago. We have been preparing for this new environment. In the last few years, Discovery has increased its channel portfolio in India from three to eight networks and from two to five languages, triggering a new and robust category in the industry of unique content channels. Discovery Networks pioneered new genres with the launch of Discovery Science, Discovery Turbo, Discovery HD World, Discovery Tamil, and most recently Discovery Kids. We proved that the viewers, when offered choice, will prefer well-defined and high-quality content. The rest of the industry has also responded to this consumer trend by launching various multiple channels across categories. All these channels have found distinct viewer groups. The major networks have introduced new programming genres and new formats.

     

    The future belongs to special-interest channels. Finally, the consumer is king.

     

     

     

  • Anchor | One Big Idea by Ambi MG Parameswaran: Build a broad-based talent cadre, build the country’s GDP

    By Ambi MG Parameswaran, Executive Director & CEO, Draftfcb + Ulka

     

    Advertising industry and advertising spends are at a paltry 0.5% of the GDP of India. Even smaller countries like Malaysia have almost 1.3% of GDP spent in advertising. As our country develops I believe we will need to help brands connect with consumers, educate consumers and help them develop better tastes. The options of reaching consumers is dramatically changing with new media and new activation options exploding around us. We are still working in silos and trying to build narrow pipes between silos.

     

    The Big Idea that I can suggest for a rapid transformation of the industry is the development of a base of talent that is a lot more broad-based than what it is today. Can we create a new breed of advertising professionals who can play the role of understanding what role each media can play, how the brand message needs to be tweaked and how the entire game is to be played?

     

    If the industry can help create a new generation of advertising decathlon players, we will be able to realize the dream of making advertising contribute about 1.5% of the national GDP. This in turn should help improve consumption and drive overall GDP growth to 8%+ levels.

     

  • Ranjona Banerji urges ESPN Star to stop buying rights to tennis tournaments if it isn't interested in showing them properly

    Ranjona Banerji: An Open Letter to ESPN-Star Sports

    Dear Sirs and Madams

     

    This is an earnest plea from the tennis lovers of India. While we appreciate all the good intentions with which your channel Star Sports buys the rights to tennis tournaments, we feel that this intention gets slightly dented when you do not actually show the said tournaments. Let’s look at the ongoing Australian Open, one of the four biggest tennis tournaments of the year. I add that descriptive because it is not immediately clear that everyone in your organization knows that.

     

    On the night of January 20, a Sunday, World number 1 Novak Djokovic and Stanislas Wawrinka were locked in what many experts are calling the match of the tournament. To begin with, Star Sports did not show the match from the beginning. When it got into it two sets and an hour and a half later, hopes of tennis fans were lifted that at last they would be able to watch this compelling match on their television sets. Alas. As the two players were evenly matched at 10-9 on serve in the fifth and final set, the clock turned to 8 pm and the television screen turned to hockey. That’s it. Djokovic is mid-serve and the telecast stops. No explanation, nothing.

     

    For those of us of a certain age this smacks of those strange days in the 1970s and 1980s when the only television in India was provided by the Government of India and there was only one channel. Doordarshan had this incredible ability of buying the rights to Wimbledon (another major tennis tournament, the oldest and most prestigious in the world, just for your information), and suddenly stopping mid-telecast for the news or for a collection of Hindi film songs.

     

    Some of us foolishly thought that life would be different after privatization and the plethora of TV channels that India is now blessed with. But for the past few years with Star Sports, our experience as tennis fans has been quite a blast from the past.

     

    I only use the Djokovic (world number 1, made $12 million in prize money alone last year I believe) and Wawrinka match as an example. Two days before that, it was Roger Federer and Bernard Tomic who got the same treatment from Star Sports. It could be that no one in your channel has heard of Federer so perhaps I might explain. He is considered by many to be the greatest player of all time. He is the most successful male player ever with 17 grand slam titles. He is also in the top 5 of the highest earning sports persons in the world. He has innumerable fans across the world, more than half of whom live in India, incidentally, according to his managers.

     

    This tennis match with Tomic which I mention was also billed as a big contest (the Djokovic-Wawrinka thriller was a surprise, I’ll grant you that). Tomic is an astounding young talent from Australia, which once produced some of the world’s greatest tennis players – Rod Laver, Margaret Court, Ken Rosewall, Roy Emerson, Evonne Goolagong to name only a few. He is also a brash young man with great game and lots of chutzpah. Would he manage to teach a lesson to the Great Man or would Federer swat him like a fly? Of course, only those Indians with access to the internet can answer that question because Star Sports did not show the match. At all.

     

    Earlier in this tournament, the Australian Open matches were switched to ESPN. Thank you for that. But that was just once. Maybe they sometimes switch to your HD channels. The problem is that not all of us have access to HD channels. Perhaps some of us cannot justify the extra expense that the DTH/cable provider demands. In my own case, for instance, the cable operator I use does not have the HD channels within his grasp.

     

    I have mentioned the money earned by tennis players only because I crassly assume that there is some commercial consideration in the way tennis is treated by your channel. It could be that the advertisements from Rolex, Thai Airways, Cadbury’s, Micromax and the others are insufficient. My commiserations.

     

    I would therefore request your channel to please stop buying the rights to tennis tournaments if you are not interested in showing them properly. All of us tennis fans in India know that we cannot compete with cricket. So when you buy the rights to a cricket tournament, please don’t strain your budget by buying a tennis tournament as well. All of us in India are sympathetic with the struggle to give hockey its prominence. So when you are committed to the cause of hockey (in between cricket) please do not buy a tennis tournament.

     

    You may feel that we tennis fans should be pleased with a bit of tennis now and then. But you are mistaken. We want it all. And if you can’t give us that, you could allow your competitors a chance to bid for these tennis tournaments. They are more committed to tennis anyway. (Or maybe, they just don’t have the same cricket rights!)

     

    And as a post-script: in this world of social media, please do allow your persons (or bots) who handle your twitter account (@espnstar) to answer questions and respond to fans.

     

    Yours sincerely

     

    Ranjona Banerji, a tennis fan

     

    The writer is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are her own

     

  • The last thing a troubled soul wants is to be judged by the interviewer. And there's a lesson in this for our aggressive, judgmental, in-your-face TV anchors and interviewers. Sadly, we don't have a single TV person out here in Oprah's league

    Anil Thakraney: We need an Oprah in India

    By Anil Thakraney

     

    Why do top celebs like speaking to Oprah? Especially so when they desire to come clean on their sins? One obvious reason is the penetration of her show. You are assured of reaching millions of people at one go, so it’s a big bang for the buck. There are also nasty rumours going around in the case of the Lance Armstrong interview, suggesting that Oprah’s company and the TV channel paid major bucks to the cycling champ to ‘confess’ on their show. I suspect this is loose talk from Oprah’s envious rivals, so this reasoning is best left ignored.

     

    The other reason why Oprah gets preferred is that she’s a wonderful television interviewer. She brings in a healthy combination of curiosity and compassion to the interview. So, even as she fires tough questions, her eyes seem to suggest she does feel a tad sorry for the celebrity, for the trauma he/she is going through. This makes Oprah’s guests comfortable, and that’s critical for a good interview. Another good thing about Oprah is that she’s non-judgmental, she leaves that part of the deal to her audiences. This, again, is another reason why she’s favoured by celebs; the last thing a troubled soul wants is to be judged by the interviewer. And there’s a lesson in this for our aggressive, judgmental, in-your-face TV anchors and interviewers. Sadly, we don’t have a single TV person out here in Oprah’s league.

     

    About her much publicized two-part interview with Lance Armstrong, which the entire world watched, I have to say the disgraced champ blew an opportunity to win a little public sympathy. Even though he freely pleaded guilty to the doping charges, his mannerism and his body language told us the man isn’t really sorry for what he’s done, and it was also clear this TV interview was an exercise in currying favour with the anti-doping authorities, a desperate last ditch attempt at winning another chance to get back to the races. The key word he used is ‘flawed’. This means he’s still not taking responsibility for his actions, Armstrong seems to suggest there’s something wrong in his genetic make-up. Ergo, the cheatfest wasn’t deliberate. Complete nonsense, I say. Only the really gullible will fall for this crappy DNA logic.

     

    But full marks to Ms Winfrey for a good job done. In a way I feel bad for our desi celebs. Even when they decide to come clean, there’s not a single TV host they can go to without feeling edgy and nervy.

     

    ***

     

    PS: Disruptive advertising at its best. That too from a direct television brand. Also, super use of movie star Charlie Sheen. A good example of how to be crazy in advertising while remaining focused on the product/service on offer.

     

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”220″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ZYIdmdx14[/youtube]

     

  • Coke should go all-out on the crazy quotient; they need to think of wild and charming incidents. No need for multiple situations, they should tell us one cool story/incident at a time. This will make the communication stronger

    Debrief: Coke: Crazy nahin kiya re!

    By Anil Thakraney

     

    Coke has extended the ‘open happiness’ idea. The latest TVC features ‘crazy’ things people do to bring joy to strangers. Apparently the situations are based on real incidents filed by Coke drinkers. This not a new thought, Maggi noodles has been doing the real stories gig for some time, and Coke has made the same error Maggi made in the treatment, but we’ll come to that soon.

     

    The ad features a collage of so-called crazy actions. A young cyclist high fives a middle-aged gent who’s extending his hand to hail an auto-rickshaw. One kindly soul gifts a Coke bottle to a security guard. A kid leaves a bottle for a tired Santa. And so on. I like the jingle, it’s quite catchy. This is a good thought because it opens up opportunities for thinking offbeat situations, and it should work in India because we folks usually ignore strangers. Nobody even exchanges smiles on the streets in this stuck-up nation, so people will find the idea novel.

     

    Yes, all fine and dandy. The problem is this: Situations featured aren’t really crazy. They might just make you smile on the first exposure but from thereon they do nothing to you. I think Coke should go all-out on the crazy quotient; they need to think of wild and charming incidents. And there’s no need for multiple situations, they should tell us one cool story/incident at a time. This will make the communication stronger.

     

    And if Coke isn’t able to get hold of exciting stuff from the janata, the creative team should cook it up. Viewers don’t care about the modus operandi, they look for entertainment. Maggi ads suffered from the same problem because they weren’t able to obtain fantastic Maggi moments. I think this can be handled in both the cases very easily.

     

    So go crazy full-on, dear Coke. You are onto a good thing, don’t mess it up by relying on dull real stories.

     

    [youtube width=”400″ height=”220″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyEWtpYtpv4[/youtube]

    Rating: (On a scale of 1-5): 2.5 Idea has potential, needs to get wings.

     

  • Anchor | One Big Idea by Sundeep Nagpal: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

    By Sundeep Nagpal

     

    Only over the last decade-and-a-half, our industry has witnessed the emergence of a new occupation – called media negotiations. It even serves as a source of livelihood for some. Much as the industry would like to be described as an ‘organized’ sector, this practice (of negotiations), which leaves no official trail or record of prevalent pricing, has now come to thrive in the same way as in the real-estate industry. Rate cards, even if some of them still exist, have become meaningless. They don’t even serve as a yard-stick any longer, and for strange reason, buyers (even large advertisers) still prefer to make savings, a criterion for remuneration / evaluation of a professional service (that of an agency)!

     

    Another popular conception in our business seems to be that value can be driven by clout (and by now, thankfully some of us have understood the fallacy of this notion), and since the negotiation process, per se, doesn’t seem to involve much expertise, it tends to become anyone’s prerogative.

     

    And needless to say, what’s much worse, is that business becomes much more opaque (shrouded in secrecy) in a competitive scenario.  While one could argue that this is the most natural outcome of a demand-supply situation, one can’t help feeling that among other ramifications (such as a change of culture and fraternity), it deprives media practitioners of their due respect, and thereby even reduces media space / time to a commodity.  Even this would be acceptable if whatever was being transacted was just plain vanilla space/ time, or the decision making process was really straight-forward. But as we all know, that’s not true, because what is being bought / sold is a specific set of audiences who could be potential consumers of a brand! And therefore, even the decision making process has to bring some intellect into play.  And this is what could restore the respect and the value of a business.

     

    All said and done, a huge amount of time and energy gets spent on negotiations and I believe this can be effectively avoided – especially on Print media!

     

    The possible solution can be, what I prefer to call, “Value-Based Pricing”! In other words, in my opinion, it’s not difficult to quantify both, delivery and value (even if some of it is intangible), on Print Media. I also submit that in some cases, it may be happening willy-nilly, but in the ultimate analysis, there still seems to be a huge variation in yield for any given publication, and (if I may reiterate), even after much time and energy has been devoted to negotiating! And if one has to reluctantly submit that this phenomenon has now pervaded the industry, the challenge remains to be able to put it on paper and revert to a more organized and productive system.

     

    And, it’s easy to imagine why the print media (let’s say dailies, more specifically), could be the first to adapt to this model. That’s because, the medium is relatively less dynamic & more stable (it hasn’t witnessed high birth/ mortality rates & positions don’t change radically) and as a result, it makes it easier to quantify delivery & value and thereby practice Value Based Pricing, sustainably.

     

    So, on print media, it mostly boils down to just following the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle. It’s not that difficult…really!

     

    – The writer is Founder-Director, Stratagem Media and Contributing Editor, MxMIndia

     

  • Anchor | One Big Idea by Devendra Chawla: QR Code – the next big thing

    By Devendra Chawla, President, Food & FMCG, Future Group

     

    As far as mobile as a medium of marketing communication goes, QR or Quick Response code is the next big thing. It is an idea which, when used extensively, has the potential of redefining consumer interaction in our country – more so in urban areas. The reason for this is extensive mobile phone usage, and lowering costs of smart phones.

     

    QR codes, square in shape, are being extensively used in Japan & the East- and their usage and consumption is increasing in the West and the US as well.

     

    They work well for various communication needs and across product categories, but they can be put to optimum use by retailers, and can be the bridge between online and brick-and-mortar retail which, at the moment,  work as two separate business streams.

     

    For the uninitiated (though there won’t be many), QR Codes are a kind of two-dimensional barcode square in shape. These can be scanned and read using smartphones and dedicated QR reading devices, and link directly to emails, websites, promotional messages, phone numbers etc.

     

    As for where they can be placed, choices are many – packaging, PoPs, print ads, billboard and online. Even T-shirts and walls. As the QR codes require interactivity, and have high engagement level, they increase consumer involvement.

     

    One key thing to remember is the gratification that the consumer gets by using the QR code. It can be in form of a discount, a reward, or information that would be of interest to him/her.