The question was meant to provoke, and we are happy we did that. For, the answer that you are about to read is, in one word: brilliant. Here’s Dr Bhaskar Das in the February 15 edition of Das ka Dum. Read on…
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Q. GroupM forecasts a drop of 1% in television and print. Are you still bullish on the legacy media
A. First, bullishness is not a function of irrational exhuberence. It is contextual and not predicated on some statistical deviation. Secondly, I am not bullish (slightly exaggerated adjective though). I have fact-based confidence, as of now, on both the formats of delivery in Indian context. For instance, my position on print is very clear: that is, print market leaders still deliver to the advertisers inspite of any real-time data. This is because of variety of factors like: pecking order in a market, a factor like primary pick-up, empirical evidence and for passive medium, active audience as a format advantage. Now, for television, the sheer Reach is a sizeable market for marketers (India has still maximum number of single TV homes) which can’t be ignored. Secondly, in an omnichannel media ecosystem, complementarity of media usage for maximising reach is equally important than only performance marketing as marketers are divided on the final verdict on the subject, as it is dependent on nature of the product/service. Even today, legacy media is critical for brand-building. Finally , a 1% negative variance on a large base, can’t reduce the efficacy of a medium. With increasing fragmentation of media and consumer attention and tepidness in the demand side of various industries, due to both local and global volatilities, a marginal negative growth can’t be conflated with a significant erosion of effectiveness of a media format of delivery.