Tag: Jaisurya Das

By Jaisurya Das

I read with interest a recent piece on this website on the huge media war in the English News TV space.My good friend and senior journalist (CE0 – MxM India) felt it was time the sparring partners smoke the peace pipe..

 

Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to this week’s Dear MxM, India’s oldest and largest online counselling board for the fraternity!

With due respect to my friend Pradyuman, I beg to differ. Competition of this kind is necessary and only helps put both parties on high alert at all times. Without doubt this has resulted in better stories and more in-depth coverage on both channels. While content may be lacking in terms of width and approach, the fact of the matter is that they are forced to outdo each other hour by hour.

Yes, I agree that the nastiness must be toned down but the peace pipe can be detrimental at this stage. What is necessary is the elevation of the war to a more mature level with mudslinging being replaced with incisive numbers that are realistic and come with significant clarity.

This is what marketing is all about. It is certainly time for them to introspect and devise warfare that is more relevant in the current times. Marketing has come a long way and there are enough and more methods to war on the ground and more importantly in the mind of the customer or viewer in this case.

Get real and fight like marketing professionals. This is the answer. Keep the pipe well serviced but avoid smoking. It kills.

From the smoke to the fire on the ground, here are our questions for the week sent in by our readers in Bangalore, Pune and Delhi.

Sir, my sister lives in Mumbai and is working with a leading news broadcaster. After work, the employees were let off without any advisory that it’s better to stay indoors and not venture out until water levels recede. It’s these ‘intangibles’ which make for a quality media company. Or so I believe. What’s your view? And why do you think that the same organisations which sermonise to the world on how they should be more careful and compassionate don’t take care of their own people.

I agree with you. Organisations need to be more sensitive in such situations and arrange for the safe transportation of their staff. Unfortunately these virtues exist today only in a handful of organisations and leaders.

I am quite appalled when I hear these kind of stories of indifference and in cities like Mumbai where nature’s fury is at its worst in this time of year.

Organisations love sermonising and it is only in such times that the truth is out in the open. What shocks me more is the CEO’s indifference.

Shouldn’t they take charge in such a situation and ensure people are taken care of?! I do hope better sense prevails upon them some day. Amen.

I have been seeing advertisements for migration to New Zealand and admission to universities in that country. I was considering this for my daughter who is in Class 11. But my problem is that I have spent 17 years in ad sales and I don’t know whether there is any future there? What is your view, Sir?

Thanks for writing in to Dear MxM. Migration to these countries are intended to give you a comfortable lifestyle and does little beyond that in terms of career prospects.

This is what I have seen and heard from my countless friends who have migrated to NZ and AUS over the years. They live a good life, apparently stress-free and enjoy a good lifestyle. They earn enough to do that and everyone is happy.

So if it’s career growth you are seeking then this isn’t the place. And moreover people who migrate take any job that comes their way so it’s all about good living, Period.

I had asked this question four weeks back, but it wasn’t published. I am in my final year of graduation and want to do a master’s before taking up a job in an ad agency in the account management department. I would like to know about the merits and demerits of doing a general management programme versus a media or communications management programme.

Sorry about that; we had two similar questions and hence had to drop one. But here we are now 🙂

If it is indeed advertising that you have decided on for your career, then it would certainly make sense to do a focussed PG programme in communication management.

This will help you get the fundamentals in place and will save you the time of learning from scratch. Employment opportunities would be better too especially if you manage to get a good media school degree.

I would urge you to start the process and work towards getting admission in a premier media school to take this ahead. I take this opportunity to wish you all success ahead.

And it’s now time for me to leave you to the rest of your week while I negotiate the Pune roads !

Stay safe friends and take good care of yourself this monsoon ! Till we meet again, Sayonara and God Bless.

 

Jaisurya Das, maverick and media evangelist eats, sleeps and makes love to brands. His consulting interventions are aimed at making brands powerful and sustainable. He is also the Contributing Editor of MxM India and Co-Founder of pune365.com. For more on his work visit www.xanadu.co.in. The views expressed in this column are his own.

By Jaisurya Das

 

Welcome back, Ladies and Gentleman, to this all-new edition of India’s most read online counselling column for the fraternity.

While the cities in Maharashtra get set to welcome Lord Ganesha, the industry waits in prayer.. This has been a tough storm with revenues having plunged abysmally low. To add to this, the pressures of rising input and manpower cost have landed huge blows to the bottomline of most media companies.

Some suffer out of complacency, some thanks to the aftermath of reduced spending and the others thanks to the lack of a Plan B. Most companies have been caught napping with either CEOs who performed only in boardrooms and the others who travelled overseas while a story was brewing in their backyard.

It is obviously time to get real.This is no time to post selfies and stay visible on social timelines, This is the time to roll up your sleeves, take stock of the situation and work on the Plan B and C. This isn’t an easy phase and introspection is the need of the hour. Far too much time is being wasted on meetings and unproductive long discussions today, If even half this time were to be spent on actually going to the market at CEO level to ascertain the issues, things would be far better.

Yes, it is time the head honchos begin to move into the markets and study first hand rather than rely on anyone else. But this is a tall order since most CEO’s today are good only within the comfort of their plush rooms, fancy cars notwithstanding..

Get real media owners, Get your top management out there in the field. You should be heralding this.

This mayhem demands such intervention !

For the rest of you, here are our weeks questions from our readers in Bengaluru, Vijaywada and Mumbai.

 

Sir, just four months left in this calendar year. How would you say has the year been so far. If you ask me, it’s been terrible, but we are all waiting for Lord Ganesha to bring in happy times.

Indeed, Ganpati Bappa Morya !

The entire media and advertising industry is certainly hoping for better tidings in the months to come. This year has been quite a roller coaster with the month of July dealing a huge blow to revenues.

Some say it is the demonetisation, others blame the GST rollout but am not sure this is only about these factors. As we have seen life has moved on despite all the song and dance on this rollout. In my opinion this is about a very cautious approach to spends now.

All clients are careful about being overly noticed now and lying low without too much fan fare is one way they are staying unnoticed. I see reduced spending even on the retail front with less shoppers actually buying leading a lot of plush malls to fold up. Pune saw Inorbit shut their mall operations a few months back and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more such fall outs.

The only thing that seems to be dong well is food and healthcare, both of which are mushrooming. Eat away and keep those health checks going is the current motto! Incidentally, my motto as well!

 

Sir, my cousin is a budding advertising professional, but he is based in a small, Tier 3 town in Telangana. He has studied in Telugu medium, but he has made some short, 3-minute films and finds that his real calling is in advertising. But he’s worried about the language, which I have told him is not a problem. He can speak, as we say in Delhi, ‘tooti-footi’ Hindi and fair, but accented English. What should be my advice to him? Sorry for the long question.

Good creative professionals will find space, no matter what language they speak. I would urge him to scan the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad and try and work for a creative agency there. There are several and a lot of them are doing some good work.

This way, his initial corporate foray will see no language barrier and once he has the requisite experience and a good portfolio, he can move to other cities like Mumbai etc. This way he would find his growth trajectory in shape.

I take this opportunity to wish him all success in his career endeavours.

My father would always advise me that my desk should be clear of any pending work when I leave work. It shows your inefficient, he would say. But in media sales, the work just doesn’t end, because there are so many other factors and people who contribute to the decision-making. Sir, I feel a little guilt given what my father said . What is your view…. am I inefficient?

I completely agree with your father and this exactly what I have always believed in. Clutter only adds to your problems and it is thus critical that you dispense with your day’s tasks before you set off home.

More often than once, there is nothing that needs to be postponed and the reams of paper that go with these tasks are best kept away from your workspace once you are done with them.

It isn’t about inefficiency as much as good time management and this goes for media sales too. It is a fallacy that media sales requires you to keep sitting on papers and files. Your job is to get revenue and you cant afford to waste your time in office going through papers.

They are not meant to stay on your table. Get them out and move on with your fundamental objectives.

 

On this note, I take this opportunity to wish all our readers a

Very Happy And Prosperous Ganesh Chaturthi. May our Elephant God bring you and family all success ahead. Till we meet next time then, Sayonara and God Bless.

 

 

 

Jaisurya Das, maverick and media evangelist eats, sleeps and makes love to brands. His consulting interventions are aimed at making brands powerful and sustainable. He is also the Contributing Editor of MxM India and Co-Founder of pune365.com.For more on his work visit www.xanadu.co.in. The views expressed in this column are his own.

 

By Jaisurya Das

 

July has been a horrid month for media companies with advertising revenues plummeting by 25%…

Ladies and Gentleman, Welcome back to Dear MxM where we take a pragmatic look at the worlds of advertising, media and marketing week after week. Answering our fraternity’s concerns remain our priority as always.

The month of July is traditionally low on advertising spends in media but this year it was abysmally low and the industry is reeling under this impact. TV, Print, Radio all saw an unrealistic drop.

FMCG, Retail and Real Estate were practically inactive in July this year and this could in all probability be linked to the GST implementation process. Most companies were awaiting their migration and new registration details before they insured any marketing expenditure.

The silver lining I guess is the resurgence seen in the first 10 days of August with the volumes showing fairly decent growth over July. I would imagine that this will show steady improvement albeit more for radio and online considering the cut back on budgets.

Bolstering other sources of revenue is now assuming critical significance for media companies and it wont be long before we see more active content marketing and syndication being bandied around. Cover prices of newspapers and magazines will also witness sharp increase in the months to come.

Staff cuts and other cost-cutting measures etc are already here to stay. I wouldn’t be surprised if annual increments also go back to the old times where a lot of us were at the receiving end of COLA ! For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, it’s Cost Of Living Adjustment where the company gives you an increment in line with the inflation percentage during the year.

Despite the roller-coaster rides, media will remain the madness that we all thrive on…

For now, over to our readers questions for the week…

 

I am a student of computer science in an NIT. I have a great amount of interest in creativity and creating posters etc. Do you think I can make a switch from computer science to advertising?

 

But of course you can! I am a living example of this having taken a switch in my early years from hotel management to sales. Never looked back after that.

It is finally your passion and seeking a medium to allow growth.. You’re education in computer science will always come in handy and more so in the current times. So you wont be wasting all that effort either.

Creativity in advertising is highly technology led nowadays and hence you will get several opportunities to incorporate your learnings too. I suggest you do a course in graphic designing etc to get you started and then maybe intern at a good creative agency to build on your fundamentals.

Soon enough, am sure you will be well onto your creative career ! All good wishes to you my friend.

I am a former journalist and am now working with a content marketing firm. I would like to reach out via you and inform that content marketing is a lot of fun. I really don’t understand why people don’t give it the desired amount of respect.

I don’t entirely agree with you on the desired respect bit. In fact there is a lot of interest in content today and it is getting a fair amount of attention.

I was quite recently speaking to a friend who works for a VC fund who told me that there were several investments being garnered by content companies offlate.

It is just the fact that a lot of the activity that happens isn’t in the media glare but the interest levels are certainly building up. Content and content marketing is here to stay and I would imagine be worthy of large investments in the years to come.

This will also pave the way for more contemporary and effective content being made available for users and companies.

 

Sir, I was reading MxM India last fortnight and was shocked to read that in July 2017, print ad volumes dropped over 30% over June 2017, just the previous month. Is this just a blip or the new normal?

Yes, this is an unusual blip thanks to all the market forces and GST implementation. Most companies are holding on to their campaigns to get their migration to GST all in place.

While volumes are likely to be on the lower side in print and TV,  Radio and Online will definitely see renewed growth over the next few months.

Retail and real estate will certainly spend more on radio and online given their tighter budgets.

I wouldn’t be too worried about this current fall.

On that note of optimism, it is time to bid adieu for this week.. Do have a fabulous week and a thrilling weekend too !  Keep sending in those questions on editor@mxmindia.com and we will have your answers waiting for you! Till then next time then, Sayonara and God Bless !

 

Jaisurya Das, maverick and media evangelist eats, sleeps and makes love to brands. His consulting interventions are aimed at making brands powerful and sustainable. He is also the Contributing Editor of MxM India and Co-Founder of pune365.com. For more on his work visit www.xanadu.co.inThe views expressed in this column are his own.

By Jaisurya Das

I just read about the new Bill that they are seeking to pass in Maharashtra that will allow establishments with 10 or less employees to start without registration. This is a major amendment to the archaic Maharashtra Shops and Establishment Act and certainly the need of the hour.Ladies and Gentleman, welcome back to an all-new edition of Dear MxM.

In case you are wondering what this act or this amendment has to do with our fraternity, let me remind you that some of the best startups be it in advertising or alternate media are small and employ less than 10 people. This will greatly ease the pressure on young/small entrepreneurs and free them from the inspection raj that they are faced with.

More often than once, the shop act inspectors demand bribes for small deviations that they may notice. Often it is as innocuous as not displaying the list of holidays on the wall of your office, despite every employee being sent this well in advance. And the only way you can prevent a ridiculous fine is to just give them what they demand and get them out of the place.

I sincerely hope this Bill goes through and allows for small businesses to operate fear-free and focus on their objectives, rather than waste good man hours entertaining corrupt inspectors.

Often it is these impediments that slow down progress for startups and cutting the red tape isn’t always possible.

Allow young companies to grow. Do not stifle them with regulation and process. This isn’t how progress is made.

I wish they do the same with a host of other prehistoric laws that we have to deal with in our country.

 

But for now, it is time to take a look at our very interesting bouquet of questions from our readers.

 

Sir, do you think some of our television news channels are too obsessed with politics? Is politics the only thing that makes for news?

Oh, absolutely! There is nothing else that is covered any case. It’s politics or Kashmir and more politics. That is how innovative our news channels have got today 🙂

I completely take your point since there are several pain points of our citizens beyond politics and none of these get any mention or if at all, a passing one.

Somewhere, I believe they have lost the plot and believe that viewers can be fed anything 24/7.

However, I do believe that the impact of this will be seen over the next 18months and overall viewership will decline substantially. Digital is already the proffered option for news what with its immense immediacy and accessibility. It is only a matter of time now and we will most certainly see a lateral shift out of television news.

Unless of course the current crop of channels seriously relook their content complement.

 

Why is that the various agencies hiring communications professionals in the country – whether it’s in journalism, advertising or PR – do not hire trained manpower in their respective domains?

Shouldn’t only those qualified in culinary stuff be reviewing food? Or CAs doing financial advertising and journalism?

Thanks for writing in with an interesting observation but the fact of the matter is that writing in itself is a specialised domain!

While cross-domain and niche domain knowledge is important, not all domain specialists can write and vice versa. So you may be a great chef but that doesn’t make you a good content professional. Each of these domains requires skills of a varied nature and it isn’t always possible to marry them.

Having said that, there are several cases of domain specialists becoming outstanding writers, but they remain a minority. I trust I have been able to answer your concern on this !

 

Why should the media sector have any age limits for people working? After all, why is the age of 58 considered limiting, when you can work on till 65 or 70 years with ease?

Honestly I agree with you but this isn’t always practical since some of the segments / departments need high energy levels such as sales. Spending long hours on the field isn’t always easy after a particular age and all of us tend to slow down, no matter what we may think.

It is also important to understand the most neural degeneration happens post 50 and hence decision making and multi tasking may get affected or slowed. These are all reasons that we cannot shy from.

However, there are several hundreds of people who are exceedingly competent and active well above the age of 60. Organisations have to constantly change and bringing in younger resources are important. This cannot happen without existing people retiring at some point of time.  I always believe that smart media organisations must employ some of their great staff who have retired through contracts and utilise their strengths for mutual benefit.

Often companies are losing great talent by virtue of this rule and getting the best of both worlds is the answer. I do hope companies are listening!

On that note of hope, it is time I move on with the rest of the week.

 

Have a wonderful weekend ahead and do take good care of yourselves. Stay well-protected this monsoon and enjoy all the garam chai and pakoras life can give you! Till we meet again, then this is Jaisurya Das saying Sayonara and God Bless.

 

Jaisurya Das, maverick and media evangelist eats, sleeps and makes love to brands. His consulting interventions are aimed at making brands powerful and sustainable. He is also the Contributing Editor of MxM India and Co-Founder of pune365.com. For more on his work visit www.xanadu.co.in. The views expressed in this column are his own.

By Jaisurya Das

Ladies and Gentleman, welcome back to your favourite counselling board, Dear MxM! Incidentally, we are the country’s longest running counselling forum for the advertising, media and marketing fraternity.

As you can see, that makes us both old and mature, much like a good vintage wine. Mellow, smooth and a rich blend of flavours from the industry.

I have been watching over the recent trend of people to announce their hiatus from social media, almost as though the world is at the brink of extinction. Almost every one seems to be trying this nimble method of checking your social popularity,

Interestingly, these posts often go unnoticed and this results in the social abstinence being quietly abandoned and the person sheepishly returning to the forum again. So much for the announced exit.

Inclusive lives that thrive on the imagery around the social persona. It is an interesting world that we live in now. Marketers will need to understand this psyche well to be able to make firm inroads. Increasingly, only brands that can impact one’s social life will get that niche in the consumer’s mind

If it isn’t socially relevant for me, I wont buy. This will be the paradigm that future brand managers will need to bear in mind. Social relevance of their brand and how this can be carefully strategised.

Will my brand make a difference to what people will opine on my consumer. If the answer is yes, you have a winner.

Achieving this isn’t easy. In fact, it will be increasingly difficult in the future with more social media options springing up. Fathoming how people’s minds work in this huge marketplace would require intelligence of a new order.

Do we have it in us to seduce this generation?

Well for now, it is time for our readers’ questions for the week…

We keep very long hours at the workplace, leaving us with little time for any recreation or keep ourselves fit. Is there a rule for organisations on having a fitness room/gym for staff?

Am afraid there isn’t any I have heard off! Yes, some corporate houses have inhouse gyms and yoga rooms but this isn’t because it is mandatory.

If you ask me, you are better off associating your workplace with just work and not an entire lifestyle. Do remember, that the more such perks are provided, the more time you will spend at your place of work. Finish your work and just get the hell out of there. There is a world outside your office, young man!

I was reading about a certain news television network being indicted by the government for tax lapses. I have deliberately not named the network because the name isn’t relevant. Obviously, like it is with everything, there’s a right or a wrong, and either the channel is right in saying the government is trying to nail it because it airs content that is harsh on the powers that be, or the taxwallahs are right in saying the network must pay up. Will we ever know the truth?

Honestly, I doubt it. But how does it really matter? I don’t think anyone is above the law and there ought not to be such a hue and cry on an investigation. If all is above board, why make a noise at all.

I have always believed in the fact that there isn’t smoke without a fire. I am not a judge or an authority to check the veracity of all these clean chits or accusations being made, yet I do know that something is wrong somewhere.

I sincerely hope that the channel is question gets a clean chit and this is more so because it is our fraternity. But, If they are in the wrong, then I would certainly be as ashamed as the rest of us.

My brother is a journalist and I am into advertising. We both work as hard, but I find that while I used to get paid lesser than him initially, after five years, my salary is twice as him. And this is when he keeps getting performance awards in his organisation. Why this disparity between two arms of the media?

Thanks for writing in, my friend. No, this isn’t disparity. This is just one benefit of taking all the heat! And this is the case across industries. Sales is where the maximum burn out happens.

The pressures are often unparalleled and the companies just try and insulate their sales force with incentives etc.

Moreover, I do not think it wise to benchmark ones own salary with capability or potential. If you do like the environment and the job, the call is yours. Salary, learning, investment or sheer task. The decision is yours but do remember that you can’t have it all.

Thank you readers for joining us week after week on Dear MxM.. Do enjoy your weekend ahead and take good care of yourselves.

Till we meet again, Sayonara and God bless!

Jaisurya Das, maverick and media evangelist eats, sleeps and makes love to brands. His consulting interventions are aimed at making brands powerful and sustainable. He is also the Contributing Editor of MxM India and Co-Founder of pune365.com. For more on his work, visit www.xanadu.co.inThe views expressed in this column are his own.

By Jaisurya Das

I spoke to 27 people today to check on how many of them watched the news channels regularly, only to be told by 24, that TV news did not form part of their media consumption on any given day…

Ladies and Gentleman, welcome back to Dear MxM! I had this faint hunch that the TV news breed of viewers began and ended with my generation. But somebody is still watching all these channels, or so says BARC, and the channels who are screaming numbers most often.

I seriously wonder who this audience is, considering that it’s definitely not the youth of today who I thought were an important segment to be focusing on. Flirtatious buyers and consumers they are and thus far more relevant to most of the advertisers on these channels, yet they remain far removed from all this and quite happy living with their laptops and smartphones.

Digital is certainly gaining and with more programming now getting focused on this medium, this will be a space to watch as we go along. I wouldn’t be surprised if the TV channels fade into oblivion as time goes by.

No, am not playing ‘prophet of doom ‘and just addressing a worry that I have as an avid mediawatcher Print is already at the risk of going the dinosaur path and now TV News channels could also be a distinct possibility.

I am almost certain that my friends in this industry hate me for all that I keep saying, but that is entirely their problem.

I just believe that we need to get far more relevant for the audience of today and that breed is certainly not you and me, who remain happy cribbing and yet tuning into TV news.

Maybe we need to conduct a humungous study across the youth in our country to study their expectations of television and more specifically news.

Is there just too much of news that has no relevance to their lives ( this is where I see the problem) or is it just not exciting enough to bother about it.

Either way, broadcasters may need to seriously start thinking. There isn’t much time to waste on meaningless ranting and gloating supremacy!

On this note, I take you straight to this week’s complement of questions from our readers in Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. Thank you for writing in!

I have been reading with interest your weekly Q&A for the last year. I have just joined a course in media and communication from an institute in Pune. I need to take a decision on selecting my specialisation between Advertising, Public Relations and Media Planning. My core interest is in business development and client servicing and each of these areas interest me. If the scope for growth is the factor, what according to you is the best option for me?

Thanks my friend. Do keep reading us!

Good to hear, welcome to the fraternity. Honestly all these sectors have a fair amount of business development and client management and hence the field is open.

However, it may be a good idea for you to focus on advertising as your career and take up a client servicing opportunity. This will offer you a decent blend of business development and account management and will thus keep you enthused.

Client servicing can also in future open opportunities in media sales and brand management hence in my opinion would be a good place to kick off your career.

Thank you for answering my questions last month. Sir, I have been reading about how Artificial Intelligence is gaining ground in marketing. How can I learn more about it?

My pleasure! Yes, there are areas in brand building where AI tools and technology is being put to use, though as of now in a very nascent form.

As of now in India, the only specialised comprehensive courses on AI are at the IIT’s in Mumbai, Kharagpur, Hyderabad and Chennai as far as I know. The Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru also has a good course, I am told.

I am not sure that they really cover the marketing interface and it’s application in brand building and management, but you could check with these centres and take a closer look at the curriculum.

Besides these, there exists the vast information that is available online including several research papers that have been published.

I think it would take a while for India to catch up with the latest in this segment but, yes, it is a fascinating area and can open infinite possibilities for brand builders. The generations of the future are bound to see this become integral to their lifestyle and brand messages will become far more exciting and involving with the use of artificial intelligence.

Companies like Google have already made rapid strides in this area and devices to power this will increasingly get more affordable too.

 

I find many typographical mistakes in newspapers so I thought there will be a vacancy for a proofreader or a similar job with newspapers. But I was told that the proofreader’s position has been eliminated by most newspapers. Wonder why? Because mistakes continue to be seen. I was told that I should try my hand at being a copy editor. Which is a waste, because I know I am better at picking typos. What is your view?

My view is don’t even bother becoming a proofreader since it is not going to get you anywhere. Those days are long gone and both mistakes and technology co-exist now. The mistakes are enormous and I completely agree with you on this observation.

I have often asked my friends in the newspaper industry as to why these aren’t prevented like the old times but have never been given a satisfactory answer!

I think it is both a combination of us relying on technology-powered spellchecks to take care of all this, combined with the lethargy and indifference of page-subs to look at these things with an eagle eye.

But I do agree that it may be a good idea to consider copy-editing which will give you ample opportunity to do all this and also dabble in some writing depending on the print brand you work on. And, yes, we can certainly do with some copy editors who are seriously good at spotting all the typos that creep in almost every day in the leading newspapers of our country !

But for now enough copy from me.. It is time for me to get back to my knitting and you, yours! Have a splendid rest of the week and a jolly good weekend. Take care of yourselves till we meet again. Sayonara and God bless !

 

Jaisurya Das, maverick and media evangelist eats, sleeps and makes love to brands. His consulting interventions are aimed at making brands powerful and sustainable. He is also the Contributing Editor of MxM India and Co-Founder of pune365.com. For more on his work, visit www.xanadu.co.in. The views expressed in this column are his own.

By Jaisurya Das

Ladies and Gentleman, Welcome back to yet another edition of Dear MxM!I seriously wonder if there is any merit in account planning in today’s context of ever morphing audiences? Am afraid I don’t think so!

To plan would be folly. To listen is the crux…

What is critical today is the deep understanding of who your potential customer is and how he thinks. What triggers his flirtatious buying behaviour and what makes him tick…

#BrandTQ as I call it is the need of the hour. What is your brands Titillation Quotient ? This is the number the audience is seeking today.

Do not waste your energy into learning prophecies of a past that has ling gone by…!

Yes, the sermons over and done with! Here’s a quick look at our readers concerns…

 

Sir, how tough is it to make it horizontal shifts in organisations. For instance, move from client service to account planning? I am gong to be graduating next year and I don’t know which stream to select at my placement stage. Please advise.

To be honest, geometry was my weak point so am not sure If even understand horizontal and vertical beyond lines being drawn quite unnecessarily for an exam…

Jokes apart, yes this shift is possible and I know of several senior account planning professionals who have their roots in client servicing. Yet, if you ask me, the account planning function today is not significant any longer.

Marketers are grappling with audiences that are morphing by the hour and planning in itself is irrelevant in such a marketplace. I urge you to focus your energies on deciphering audiences and the way the human brain functions in the current context more than anything else.

I find that in the name of equal representation, women get preferential treatment in the media, and this often leads to an unequal status for men. So men are the weaker section in the media. What is your view?

Now, that sounds like a typical MCP view to me! What preferential treatment are we talking about.

If this is about the #periodleave that organisations have adopted, then you can are looking at this through a skewed prism.

I have been in media for over three decades now and I don’t see where women are being singled out for preferential treatment.

Stop confusing human anatomy with preferential treatment for god’s sake!

I hear that the media is facing tough times because of demonetisation and now GST – in terms of advertising. Is this true? So do you think it’s the right career to be in?

Yes, media is going through a rough patch, though am not convinced that all this is because of demonetisation and GST rollout. Yes, this has impacted a few sectors like real estate but this is also working towards greater transparency.

I am no fan of any particular political party or government, but I sincerely believe that it is prudent to give reform in governance time to prove its mettle.

Critics we will always be but at some point of time one must realise that good governance comes from a lot of strife and change….

On this note of promise, let me leave you to ring in the weekend. Do take good care of yourselves and keep yourself well protected from the fury of the rain gods!  Till we meet again then, It is me, #JD saying Sayonara and God Bless You All!

 

Jaisurya Das, maverick and media evangelist eats, sleeps and makes love to brands. His consulting interventions are aimed at making brands powerful and sustainable. He is also the Contributing Editor of MxM India and Co-Founder of pune365.com. For more on his work visit www.xanadu.co.inThe views expressed in this column are his own.