Category: THE ANCHOR

By Prashant Panday, CEO and Executive Director, ENIL (Radio Mirchi)

 

There is just one simple thing the government must do to release the animal spirits of the radio medium. Get out of the deep freeze!

 

The deep freeze is apparent. The Phase-3 policy of radio reforms was announced in July 2011. It’s already been 14 months and there is not even a mention of when the auctions will take place. In contrast, the Phase-2 auctions were conducted within six months of the policy announcement in 2006.

 

There have been no auctions since Jan 2006. In the last seven years, every other medium has grown dramatically, but radio is stuck in the past. On the one hand we have a strong and vibrant economy (yes yes….even now!) and on the other hand, our major metros offer only 4-9 private FM stations. How is this incongruity justifiable? Why should people of Mumbai and Delhi have to look towards Colombo and Manila to understand how powerful and entertaining radio can be?

 

There is one other crucial thing the government must do before Phase-3 auctions to change the face of radio. It must accept the recommendations of TRAI and reduce the “separation” between two adjoining FM channels from the present 800 Khz to 400 Khz. This one single initiative will help double the number of channels in every city. With so many channels available and with broadcasters being allowed to operate multiple channels, there is bound to be an increase in programming variety. I cannot understand why the great cities of Mumbai and Delhi cannot have dedicated retro channels, or regional language ones or news and talk ones or sports ones…..or why they cannot segment the contemporary music they play now into narrower and more homogeneous genres? With more programming variety, listeners will be a happy lot. Maybe they will even vote the government back to power! The government itself will avoid another allegation of a scam because it will increase its own license fees by an estimated Rs 1500 crores or so by doing so. In short, there is no argument against accepting TRAI’s recommendations.

 

When radio is truly reformed as explained above, its importance will grow. Today, FM accounts for just 4.5% of the advertising spend in the country. That number could rise to 7-8% in a few years time. With growing distances and car populations, radio is already the primary medium for millions of people. I know a lot of people who spend more time listening to radio than watching TV. Now….if more channels could be made available…..radio could also become as big as TV!

By Divya Gupta, CEO – Dentsu Media, India

 

Each medium has an inherent characteristic, which, when leveraged well, yields magic. Mobile is a one-on-one engagement, anywhere/everywhere, anytime/all the time medium. It maps us by:

 

• Who we are; demographics
• Where we go; geography
• Whom we call, whom we text; our core social network
• What we want, is of interest to us; promotions/offers we respond to
• What we consume; content, apps m-commerce purchases

 

Mobile as a medium is already a game-changer

 

– 700 million+ subscribers in India and growing, geometrically

– Many FMCG companies like P&G are using mobile to reach out to media dark areas of UP/Bihar

– With implications on not just the tailor-made advertisements being pushed through the pipeline but on the entire manufacturing, sales and marketing pipeline. Imagine a retail brand that employs you as a designer for your purchases!

 

Mobile’s inherent advantage and rapid adoption has ensured its active, vital role in the communication process. Rich media mobile advertising, coupled with the boom in Android and iOS devices, has shifted the game from the niche to the mass market.

 

Rich media, offering a seamless in-browser or in-app advertisement experience, has also enabled a shift in performance metrics other than the strict (and often unfair) intermedia comparison of CTR and clicks.

 

With mobile internet users soon/already numbering desktop internet users, the opportunity and the challenges in tracking distinct eyeballs is there for the taking.

 

Fast and furious changes are already underway… increasing sales of tablets; aided by launch of low cost tabs in tier 2 cities. Frost & Sullivan expects the Indian tablet market to reach 23+ million units by 2017, with sales doubling every year.

 

The speed and efficacy with which we communication practitioners pick up the gauntlet remains to be seen.

 

By Prasoon Joshi,  Chairman and CCO, McCann Worldgroup India and President, South Asia

 

The Indian creative industry needs to have an IPR in place. Today, if somebody creates an idea, and for some reason an agency doesn’t continue to have the same relationship and the client wants to move on but still wants to use the same idea, he definitely has to compensate the original creators of the idea. That would lead to some change in the way the fee structure is positioned in the industry but there is a need for a change as, in the current scenario, the relationship between a client and an agency ends even before it starts. In such cases there is a possibility of an idea that has already been created for a brand and the client continues to use the ideas that have been created by a certain team or an agency. So there needs to be a way out for registering those ideas by way of an IP so that they stand to gain a percentage of the revenue that came out from their end.

 

It needs to be made an intricate practice and for that the industry will have to sit together across the table and work out the nitty-gritty. In fact this could be expanded to even project-based relationships. Sometimes a client only commissions you for a project and if the project is over and the idea continues to be used by the client, then there has to be some way of compensating the original creators of that idea. It has always been a challenge that our industry has not been adequately compensated. This could lead to the industry not being able to attract good talent. At the end, it is all in the overall interest of the industry where we have great talent coming in consistently. But where would this talent come from if we do not have a good compensation model? A lot of the agencies these days are highly squeezed as the demands of the business are not decreasing but increasing. So we need to find an appropriate solution like an IPR if we are to attract and retain the best talent.

 

By Anuj Gandhi, Group CEO, IndiaCast

 

For me, the One Big Idea would be to make sure that digitization is a big success story. An even bigger challenge would be to ensure that the cash collected from homes reaches the MSOs. While there is enough talk about complete digitization being achieved across metros, the reality is that the bill has to reach homes and the agent who used to earlier pocket the money will now have to start maintaining party-by-party ledger accounts. So the challenge is, how do we as an industry ensure that in the next two months each household is accounted for in this country, at least in the metros?

 

It’s a rather daunting task but it is not impossible. We have to remember that whatever is going to happen across the four metros is going to happen in the rest of the country. So people will question issues and answers will have to be given.

 

While cash accountability will ensure that digitization is a smooth affair, it will also ensure that the ARPU corollary is taken care of. The industry will not be able to sustain at current ARPU levels and demand quality programming, channels etc if they do not get a fair share across the board. This could be true for niche channels or mass channels or even news channels.

 

It is up to the industry to drive this forward and see that ARPUs stack up sufficiently.

 

By Nabendu Bhattacharyya , Founder & Managing Director, Milestone Brandcom Pvt. Ltd.

 

Over the past couple of decades, the Out-of-Home industry has made a remarkable transformation from being just a reminder medium to becoming a key element in any successful brand campaign. With people spending almost nine hours outside their homes on an average in a day in metros, OOH sure is one of the most important mediums to target them on the go. OOH medium is larger than life has multiple formats and touch points and brings enormous possibilities for our creative minds.

 

But the problem of plenty still plagues the industry! With over 20,000 players and no common rules it’s difficult for serious stakeholders or international media giants to invest. Even while the industry continues to break new ground, there are persisting systemic issues that seriously impede the rate of growth. No common industry research, patchy regulation and too many sites and too many players for example, has always been and continues to be acknowledged as one of the most significant deterrents of progress in the industry. There is a dire need to stand united and address regulation-related issues by encouraging more public utility-driven solutions such as city beautification, public conveniences, solutions for complementing the city architecture and eco-friendly solutions among others as a win-win business strategy.

 

Simultaneously studying international market trends and its success stories, educating local authorities on the possibilities to create more revenue earning opportunities in a more standardized and neat and clean form with technological execution is also essential.

 

However, lack of unified common currency for the industry is a media planner’s nightmare and as a result of which the industry is left with residual budget and a sheer gut-based buying. With the launch of IOS in Mumbai & Pune (Industry Syndicated Study on Outdoor) the industry is definitely on its way to maturity and the opportunities before us are endless.

 

The one big idea that I feel will help shape up and alter the pace of the Indian OOH industry is ‘Innovation’ as no other country in the world offers such flexibility to execute innovations. While all other obstacles are beyond one’s control, creative and media innovations are in the hands of our creative minds placed in agencies. India is the only country where authorities are flexible to give permission if you have a great and big idea to execute. We believe that’s the intellect space that we as stakeholders can take advantage of. For brands, it is a great opportunity to explore through this medium where sky is not the limit….And we all have been seeing for last couple of years, how India is winning at Cannes mostly in OOH & BTL.

 

– Technological break-through with DOOH + Social (Digital Out of home & Social)

– Weaving into the social fabric beautifully

– Bringing measurability

– Creating win-win situations for the govt, public & brands

 

Lastly, understanding the medium and its potential, the OOH work done in our country has been lacking consistency. With the advent of digital technology into the segment, all the stakeholders will have opportunities to do good work. Apart from reducing the clutter in the segment, digital OOH will help in the growth of creative opportunities and ensure higher level of customer engagement. DOOH will also enable multiple messaging on a single platform which means incremental earnings on the same inventory without incurring production costs. It is the future of the OOH industry. It has also helped at the back-end in creating service standards with real time photo uploads from the site providing campaign updates on web portals in real time as soon as the campaign is up. Digital technology has tremendously helped in expediting reporting and service deliveries to clients.

 

Outdoor is the only medium with life as a backdrop; the need is to go SoLoMo – Social, Local & Mobile. Offer back to citizens a socially better, beautiful and healthier tomorrow and understand the geographic nuance and local contextual environment of the consumer for relevant brand interaction. With people connected 24X7 even while on the go, the need is to connect with meaningful and memorable engagements by getting up close and personal with them!

 

By Prema Sagar, Principal & Founder, Genesis Burson-Marsteller

 

The future of Public Relations in India will hinge on how we build trust and manage perceptions in a period when media and communications channels are evolving rapidly.

 

The proliferation of social media as a credible news source comes down to one thing — trust. With so many resources available to get news and information, audiences only seek sources they deem truly credible. The audience is wary of information sources today and this wariness extends to the PR industry which serves as a driver of communications. In order for our industry to continue forward and keep pace with advancements, we must be transparent and open — what I refer to as ethical influencing.

 

Ethical influencing is the new reality. The perception of those outside the industry must be favorable in order for the industry to succeed, but I believe we have a long way to go. This is an issue not just here in India but all over the world and one I have discussed in-depth with industry leaders like Harold Burson, the preeminent voice of leadership among PR professionals today.

 

Communicating is about influencing – whether to drive purchase consideration among consumers, or communicate to government the potential impact of policies and regulations, or just a company or organisation explaining their side of a story. It’s about delivering a message to influence behavior or influence perception. It’s about shaping ideas and motivating action, and it’s incumbent on all of us in the industry to do it ethically.

 

So what is the big idea? Industry standards that are validated and enforced by certification, an oath or some kind of formal promise. We advise our clients to be transparent and open about their practices and to communicate as much to their customers and stakeholders, so why not hold ourselves to the same standard.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

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