To the world of advertising and media, Abraham Thomas needs no introduction. Having spent over two decades with organizations such as the Indian Express, Sony, MTV and Red FM, Abe, as he is known in the industry, has proven track record of running large media businesses, having demonstrated the ability to work with high performance teams to build and scale businesses within a competitive environment. But it’s his work at Red FM that got him into the big league of media captains. Excerpts from a free-wheeling interview
A little over months at Radio City and for for many years you were at Red FM. You are now working with a rival and perhaps attempting to outwit the same station that you nurtured. So how’s it been over here?
It’s been a great two months. A lot has changed in radio from where we were in my earlier stint…  when it was like the Wild West. We were all cowboys, we were thinking of something and shooting from the hip. A lot of stations operated in that play. Now, when the business has matured, it is organised even by system and processes and lots of information. Then, we didn’t have the amount of information that is currently available. That is one big difference that I am seeing. Radio City is extremely driven by very strong MIS and processes. Earlier, we didn’t have information, we just kind of assumed stuff. Also, I think in the last 4-5 years, everybody is settled in to their comfortable position. That will change now with the launch of all these suddenly, there will be disruption. And out of 28 cities, 23 will have new competition. So trying to sharpen each of those, ready to welcome the new entrants who come is a big task. Properties that were created over the years have reached a certain level. I have to try refresh them, go to the next level, right from Babbar Sher and Love Guru. A lot of those properties have survived 15 years and are still among the most recalled and memorable properties. So the canvas here is huge. First is refining, I won’t say refining but actually sharpening the existing things. Because competition is going to come. Competition will come with newer formats, they will have..some of them being second stations they will definitely do newer formats…
What you are saying is earlier there was madness in the method now it’s method in the madness.
Yes
And so, what do you think, is possible a better way to do things?
Definitely method in the madness. Because it is a far more strategic way of being able to go where you want to go. Now, there is some level of maturity, where local advertising is beginning to equal national advertising. But those days, not only was the ad pie small, it was dominated by the national advertisers. And national advertisers use to give us jingles of their TV commercials and say, ‘Chalo ye chala do’. To now people creating content, to people now creating campaigns for Radio.
Specifically what are you looking at tweaking at Radio City? Your reputation precedes you… you did a whole lot lot of dramatic things at Red.
Basically I love brands and also media brands. Every brand has a certain space in terms what to operate. While the middle-of-the-road, sunshine radio space was a great space to occupy which is why a slightly more edgier activisty kind of brand needed to be created as a challenger to that… that was the strategy then. Currently we are in the centre of the road that occupies both the ends and the other competitors have in that sense moved to the edges. Therefore, the strategy for this brand has to be different. Having said that, audiences have grown old from 10 years ago to now they are in completely different life spaces. So, I won’t use the word tweaking, the attempt is to get more relevant to this new audience.
Is there a sentiment that radio as a medium is on a shaky grounds because people have got tired of it?
I won’t use such strong words, but yes, I’m saying the audience has changed. Five or ten years ago, your objective was to dumb it down, make it idiot-proof, make it so simple that nobody can mess with it. So the famous example is when my agency would come and present creatives to me, I’ll say 1 second and I’ll call my liftman and I’ll say zara padhke dhikana kya hai yeh. And they will say you can’t do that. I would say, he is my listener. That was then. Today, 10 years on, the audiences have gotten far smarter with technology, and exposure. So, there needs to be levels of intrigue and layers to storytelling compared to then when you had to make it very obvious
Plus there’s competition from the digital media?
Yes
And, even the mindspace of the listener has, is kind of now divided with the other things.
Correct. So even having coffee at Barista or a Starbucks is competing with this, because in terms of time, time that what is doing. You are bang on when you say that consumption is changing. For example, if you look at all the music applications and the online radios that exist, what seems to be working there is the playlist. Very few people are actually going and saying, let me make my own playlist from the million songs that are there. So if you check all the music apps, it’s all about playlists. Playlist is radio. Here we create a playlist for the city…may be you can create 20 different playlist for different taste that people can choose. So in that sense it’s now very different. It just that the device has changed, the method of consumption has changed, it’s any time anywhere, but conceptually it’s the same.
So what one is looking at you doing is a certain kind of disruption in the way the medium is and specifically with Radio City. Do you see that happening in certain specific stations or across the board?
No, it’s more about strengthening; it’s more about finetuning. Because with more competition people will start getting slightly more focused. I mean, I have this, favorite example that in the UK the chocolate market was really fragmented, there was leader was at some 14%, 13%, 12%. So they are all close together. Chocolates were primarily seen as a category for kids and the youth. And 80% of the consumption was at them. So the chocolate were targeting the kids and youth. Till After Eight came in and launched chocolate for adults. Suddenly that entire 20% went for this, and they became number one, despite being a niche. Similarly, you know, it’s with music radio and formats. The moment you have a very clearly distinct TG kind of curved out, suddenly those numbers look healthy. So it is not that I’ll do a 12-plus, 12-to-75 kind of station that will appeal to everybody, which is what, worked then. I’ll now do different stuff. Some disruption will definitely happen.
So what are the specific things that one can expect in terms of changes at Radio City now that you here, are you settled in?
The first things we are trying to do is in terms of the advertiser. When you make an ad, the brand is the hero, right? And you are talking of things from the brand standpoint to attract advertisers. When you are trying to integrate it into content, the brand can’t be main hero, the consumer, the listener is the hero, right? And then you are trying to give information or entrainment to the listener, so that he gets both, right? Which is why we have launched AudaCity. It is a mad out-of–the box team, that is able to go out and create. They are radio specialists, people who have grown in radio. Our attempt is to create this agency inhouse which will then be able to come up with really breakthrough integrated ideas.
Are you going to hire fresh creative talent?
We’ve put together talent from different parts of our content teams. Some on-air talent, some off-air talent that have come together and who understand radio as a medium and theatre of the mind and how to kind of use sonic branding and mogos and all of that. We are also working with extended bunch of creative people outside the system but who are now affiliated and who will work on a project. So I have the ability to pull, get lot more ideas than what is restricted within my team. And in the bargainm create truly memorable brand solutions. Ten years ago, I would make a jingle and give it to the advertiser and that was great. Then I started doing standard integrations and contests and RJ mentions. Now it is saying I will create integrated brand solutions for you using the medium. So for which the team is primarily radio people.
Back to your being here… what are things you are looking at achieving?
See, we are looking at creating some really breakthrough, benchmark, prime properties. Sonic branding, musical logos, ideas that are unique for the brand and therefore we believe we will get a premium for that. So we want to therefore be known as the most creative brands team.
Have you got any clients on board already or that is..
At one level this has been an ongoing thing. We have been working with clients and doing some awardwinning stuff with them. But now we are actually making a claim. We are sticking our neck out and saying give us a brief and let us work on your ideas and we will come up with solutions that are wow, because we are radio people because we understand the theatre of mind and we know how it works.
So apart from this what else is coming up?
We have been working on finetuning and sharpening the brand across multiple cities. We are not looking like one size fits all market kind of things. So there is a region-wise, station-wise kind of plan is being worked on to refresh and sharpen the brand at that level.
If you look at RAM ratings, Bengaluru is a clear leader, but what about the rest
See, Mumbai has been consistently been up there except for… I know I hate the asterisks in every ad. But the point is that the other player is the After Eight. It’s that 45-50 plus where they kind of suddenly score because of the format of the. So currently our attempt is to be No 1 across the whole thing.