Tag: The Anchor

By Rahat Beri, Chief Operating Officer, Percept Profile

 

I think digital media is a game changer and will continue to be, not only in the PR industry but in overall Marketing & Communication space.

 

With the communications convergence and technology innovation, PR is pushed forward at a faster pace than ever before. Everybody knows how social media is impacting today’s communications landscape. It is at the heart of companies’ public relations and marketing initiatives. Increasingly firms are leveraging social media to get an edge, generate Media Coverage and improve brand sentiments. Indian Businesses are embracing this new-age medium. Marketers and brands are increasing the advertising spend on digital platforms to reach out to all relevant brand stakeholders.

 

I strongly feel the success in Public Relations lies in integrating social media into a larger PR strategy. Social media is becoming a vital, fully integrated part of PR. It will be essential to understand the digital marketing space effects. I foresee the dramatic growth of digital communications within the PR Industry in the coming years. PR just isn’t about business-to-journalist anymore, it’s about consumers, friends, fans, followers – everyone! It’s a two-way communication and engagement now. It’s all about the relationships and flow of information. Search and social media optimization are keys for the future.

 

Digital media and the social channels provides instantaneous communication power, this allows PR pros to stay ahead of the curve and provide more value to sales and marketing efforts like never before. Social media will continue to define PR. Measurement and strategic communications will be other top areas where more effort will be seen in the near future. The speed at which information, good or bad, travels in the online world today, strongly indicate towards the importance of monitoring and engaging with consumers greater than ever before.

 

Social media has changed the way we communicate. Whether you’re tweet-crazy, technophobe or addicted to Facebook, everyone will agree that Twitter makes newsworthy stories into headlines much before journalists sit down to pen them for traditional media. Everyone from Amitabh Bachchan to Shashi Tharoor to Anand Mahindra are able to update an avid fan base of followers at the click of a button. Today widely available user-generated content not only benefited brands immensely but introduces a level of consumer engagement that was impossible earlier.

 

But let me caution, social media is not a one-size-fits-all solution. A social media campaign might work for a majority of demographics but might not yield the desired results unless combined with other media channels as part of a cohesive and integrated communications plan.

 

I think, in the coming years public relations and social media will continue to become more intertwined as marketing and communication channels. Public relations agencies must adapt to social media trends and must learn the power of social networking to stay competitive.

 

By Vijay Subramaniam, Executive Director, Kids Network, DisneyUTV

 

Kids today have gone from being just ‘influencers’ to playing the role of ‘active consultants’ to parents on most household purchase decisions, be it automobiles or real estate to content that is being watched on television.

 

Kids speak and parents listen without prejudice, mirroring a significant opportunity for kids-led family entertainment.

 

Disney is committed to building a family entertainment brand in India and is consciously focused on showcasing memorable stories and wonderful characters that are locally relevant, wrapped with engaging experiences, all of which appeal to the entire family through strong emotional connections.

 

Disney Channel has kept the creative momentum going to effectively tap the opportunity in this space. Our efforts have been led by record-breaking successes in the locally produced fiction space with family comedies in the kids’ genre, original animation and Disney movies. Shows such as Best of Luck Nikki and Suite Life of Karan and Kabir have performed incredibly well for us – immediately and dramatically improving performance of Disney Channel and reinforcing the vision that we have had of kids-led family entertainment in India. Disney Channel is the only channel in the kids’ space thus far to have touched the 200 GRP mark propelled by these successes.

 

Today, along with creative content, it’s extremely essential to take television out of the box and create simple yet unforgettable engagements for consumers, which take their favourite narratives forward to build a memorable experience, emotional connections for everyone in the family including kids, parents and grandparents. And this is precisely what has been at the heart of our brand philosophy. Our most recent campaign, Disney Channel’s Jet Set Go, is an example. The campaign saw an unprecedented 6 million entries from all parts of the country, took a plane full of kids and their families to Disneyland, giving them a lifetime full of magical memories, and culminated with a first-of-its kind billboard in the sky – the first ever Disney branded aircraft in the country.

 

By Nitin Mantri, CEO, Avian Media

 

Somebody asked me the other day will you have a PR business in the next 10 years? My answer was no – definitely not one similar to what we have today.

 

Reinvention is the name of the game in a cut-throat, competitive world. The PR industry, often dismissed as a business of fluff, realizes this survival mantra more than any sector. There are roughly around 8,000 PR agencies in this country. Imagine the number of press releases sent to newspaper offices. No wonder most end up in trash bins. Newspapers can’t be blamed for not getting excited about our client’s activities, but we have to ensure that the key messages reach the target audience. So, high time we change the way the industry works.

 

Imagine for a moment a world where PR professionals can circumvent traditional media altogether – take the clients’ messages directly to the consumer and engage with them without third-party endorsements. In today’s world you can’t just shout at people about your brand, you have to engage with them cleverly. Why can’t we create our own videos and text-based digital content on behalf of clients and connect with consumers on social media platforms? We don’t need to depend on advertising or television companies for that.

 

PR agencies are already utilising social media platforms and the interactivity they offer consumers. The time has come to go full throttle. Danny Rogers, editor of PR Week, aptly summed up the situation when he said, “The age of advertising is dead – when you built these big expensive campaigns and expected people to buy your product. In order to engage with large groups of consumers you have to create a different type of content. There’s this idea that PR is the medium for the age of dialogue and social media.” Bang on! You can these days run an entire PR campaign on Facebook and Twitter.

 

Frankly, who has the time to read lengthy articles about products, launches and events. People are on the go and they get all their information from the web, which can be accessed on mobiles. PR professionals need to understand that the mobile has changed the way we consume information. There is this exciting, technological boom happening out there, with smartphones, iPads and mobile applications spoiling consumers with options. According to research firm Gartner, the worldwide sale of mobile phones declined 2.3 per cent to 419 million units in the second quarter of 2012, but smartphone sales, which accounted for 36.7 per cent of total mobile phone sales, grew 42.7 per cent in the second quarter of this year.

 

PR agencies cannot afford to ignore this tech revolution. It would be naïve to restrict ourselves to writing boring press releases, tearing our hair over story pegs to sell the client’s products or persuading journalists to attend news conferences when consumers are on a different information-gathering level. India may not have as many smartphone users as the US (over 100 million at last count), but the number is rising in urban centres. Then there are tablet users. In fact, smartphones and tablets are the current media consumption devices. A smartphone user spends more time surfing the web, visiting blog destinations and browsing social media accounts like Facebook, Twitters, Instagram, Pinterest and other mobile apps than making phone calls and sending text messages! That’s a veritable treasure trove for PR pros to not only reach out to consumers, but also engage with them through high-quality content, visually-appealing images and entertaining videos.

 

To believe that we can do without traditional media in India is utopia. Clients will need the third-party endorsement of newspapers and channels. But, the fact remains that the PR industry in India will go through the change and to cut through the clutter, social platforms will be the utilised more and more. We have to use this opportunity to raise the bar and do something different and exciting.

 

By Atul Phadnis, CEO, What’s-On-India

 

Digital TV homes in India will soon in the next few months, overtake analogue TV homes. Besides the digital TV wave via cable and DTH, we are also seeing mobile TV and OTT as new modes of TV distribution. In this environment, the one big idea that never ceases to amaze me is TV content search!

 

As channels proliferate and increase in existing and newer genres including regional, adventure sports, crime, science, education, etc, we are seeing a dramatic consumer dependence on the EPG for navigational and search purposes. The EPGs are set to evolve and become more ‘Indianised’, with increased coverage and regional focus via translations into Indian languages.

 

Newer STBs and DVRs have improved search

In newer STBs, viewers will be able to search by actors, moods, genres – leading to a richer user experience. However, the day is not far where viewers will be able to save their preferences via an individual, personalized login. Search is set to get personalized…

 

Effect of abundant choice on viewers

A host of studies that we have conducted reveal a fall in appointment viewing and an increase in unplanned or random viewing due to a bigger basket of choice per each average viewer.

 

So how will viewers find their favourite shows in the future, especially when they get more than 500 channels?

 

Search is one step from consumption

In all the observations we are seeing with viewer behaviour, one consistent insight coming through is that viewers are always searching for TV shows before viewing/consumption. Whether that search is on the EPG or a crude search via channel surfing or a very intuitive search on our apps, we as viewers like to sift through options before we settle on the programmes that we watch.

 

In the future, we expect that search will explain consumption to a great extent.

 

Game changer?

TV search will continue to play a key role in shaping viewership and channel choices in the coming days. The funny thing is these changes are happening so seamlessly – so much so that very soon, we will be asking ourselves how such a major transformation could take place in just one blink!

 

By Mandeep Malhotra, President & Head, Mudra Max

 

It’s a difficult time for the Indian economy with slowing consumer demands and rising interest rates impacting the overall growth. This has subsequently led to cuts in the advertising budgets with the OOH sector taking the hardest hit compared to any other advertising sector. The absence of aclear tool to measure ROI’s, has led to OOH being a residual recipient of the media spends. The big thing that will shape the out of home space in future is “Digitization”. Though it is at a nascent stage in India, it is evolving. The pace of switch to digital will be significant inside the airports, railways stations shopping malls and other controlled environments. The falling prices and improving quality of flat screen display mean that static posters can be replaced by snazzy digital commercials with moving pictures, sound and sometime interactive features.

 

Technology will be a key ingredient in the progress and I foresee a future where the messages will be contextual to the audience. Digitization and technology has to be increasingly used to drive the media and help innovate. We hope to see a future where billboards would be intelligent enough to guess the profile of the audience by sampling through visible data and catering to ads that are relevant to the audience for example, the “make” of the car (pattern recognition) passing by will play a key role in assessing the profile of the audience.

 

By Suresh Srinivasan, Vice President (Advt), The Hindu Group of Publications

 

One must look at the overall landscape of the media industry to understand the survival and growth strategy. Growth for the media business has come from diversifying to various multimedia offerings. The print players have gone on to have various properties in different mediums, be it television, radio or OOH among others.

 

The overall industry has been growing at a moderate pace. For the print industry, the game-changer has been the supplements. These supplements are specific in targeting people thus catering to a specific need and taste. Specific targeting also becomes possible with multiple supplements which are also very innovative.

 

While supplements are something that we have already experimented with, if one were to look at the game-changer idea for print it would be to explore possibilities of making the product more conversational. In today’s era, the internet is one of the biggest threats to the newspaper business but one can look at integrating this medium with print and leveraging it to reap benefits. One can take up local micro issues using the reach that print has and then take the discussion further online. This would also help in getting the emotional connect which is extremely necessary to make print relevant to its consumers. Another game-changer idea would be to look at ways to get the FMCG companies who have moved to television, to start spending on newspapers. Print can give the FMCGs who are traditionally big advertisers great value, but the need is to show these players how this category can benefit if they up their spends on this medium.

 

By Sajjan Kumar, VP, Imaging, Nikon India

 

The internet is the one of the biggest technological innovations mankind has ever had, which surely seems to have stirred a revolution. At the time of its inception, the inventors couldn’t fathom the sensation it would become or the major role it would play in our day-to-day lives. The internet world as we know it today has undergone far-reaching changes since its early days while becoming a critical communications infrastructure underpinning our economic performance and social welfare.

 

Starting from its modest birth, the Internet has already profoundly changed our economic and social world and will remain the same in the future. If today’s Internet is a crucial element of our economy, the future Internet will play an even more vital role in every conceivable business process. It will become the productivity tool “par excellence”.

 

Internet technology is ever-evolving. It is predicted that cloud control is key to the future of the internet, and with the growth of smartphones and tablets, mobile technology is now at the heart of personal computing. People are using the mobile web and applications to interact with friends and family through social media, as well as access, explore, buy and consume everything from content and services to information, entertainment and utilities, from anywhere at any time. In a world increasingly dominated by mobile devices, location and relevancy matter, the businesses should aim to take advantage of the unique characteristics and benefits that the mobile platform can provide.

 

The next big move will be to tap users browsing the internet through mobile devices, and using various channels within the mobile medium to garner high traction for the business. This will bring about possibilities like we have never had before.

 

By Monica Tata, General Manager, Entertainment Networks, South Asia, Turner International India Pvt. Ltd

 

I believe that the unique gamechanger for the broadcasting industry will be a robust monitoring system that is in touch with changing times and which captures the growth of our industry correctly across all genres. Currently channels are getting under-represented, and this is adversely affecting their monetization.

 

Also I believe that the broadcasters need to be paid rightfully for the value they bring to the table. The current CPRP system does not fully take into account the increase in eyeballs that has come by with increased investments in distribution of channels & content. While the kid’s category GRPs have grown by 9%, reach has grown by 17% for the same period, which means that we now reach to 34 mn kids versus 29 mn. The English movies genre on the other hand has grown from 4.90 mn to 6.06 mn thereby fueling the growth by 23% (Source: TAM Q2 2012 over Q2 2010).

 

The advertising rates increase only takes inflation and channel performance into account without completely doing justice to this increased reach of the channels which has come on the back of continuous increased investments by the broadcasters.

 

Going forward, amongst other things, a robust monitoring system and broadcasters being rightfully paid for the value they bring to the advertisers will help fuel the growth of industry.

 

By N Ramamoorthi, President & Country Head, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide

 

PR in India has often been associated with outcomes related to very select communities. Shareholders, investors, business audiences, influencers. How about adding the public at large?

 

It is natural for companies to engage with stakeholders who have a tangible influence on their business – through customer service, marketing, advertising, and local community programmes. Why should they engage with people who have no direct connection with their business?

 

Because the public is becoming involved.

The basic lesson from the (oft quoted) Anna Hazare movement – even though there was no constitutional need to do so, Parliament had to engage with a group of people who got involved.

 

As a country, we are going through a difficult period of economic change. On the one hand, significant development – new roads, schools, malls and airports. On the other, a segment of population that can see, but does not have the means to experience this development. (And I don’t just mean the bottom of the pyramid here).

 

This disparity will either lead to unrealistic expectations, or to resentment. And then at the first opportunity, to involvement. Think about the recent case in Mumbai where there was a brief movement against payment of road tolls.

 

It is not that any of these feelings are new. It is just that they are now gaining a stronger voice. Through social media and even through traditional media – look at the number of articles that use members of the public to support their story.

 

It would therefore be a great idea for companies to actively add the public to their list of stakeholders. Research their opinions – on the company and its corporate reputation, on its leadership, on its products, on the industry even. Find and associate with a cause that resonates with the public. Proactively put programmes in place to advocate the cause. Show how the company works towards achieving it.

 

This will not only ring-fence a company from potential crises, but also help its business in the long run.

Miles Young, the Worldwide Chairman and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather recently had this to say at a ThinkTank Live summit, “In the new world, the role of PR is to help socialize the enterprise”. To me, it means, give the public “emotional ownership” of your company.

 

After all that’s what PR is all about, isn’t it? Not just consumer, but Public relations.

 

By Agnello Dias, Co-founder, TapRoot India

 

In my view, the one big idea that can transform the advertising agency business in India would be to bring on a uniform fee structure. Currently the agencies work on various payment models and that has led to a situation where agencies are reduced to being seen as a service provider instead of a partner in building brands. The various compensation models, be it a retainer fee or a commission fee, also have no uniformity and change to meet the needs of the clients and the agencies. In this situation, the worst thing to happen is that we now fail to estimate the exact value of our industry, which has become impossible. With no real valuation available the industry has also lost out on its chance to emerge as a contributor in the value chain where advertising comes only much later.

 

Hence, a uniform fee structure is the need of the hour for the advertising fraternity. This will help in advertising getting its due which otherwise is being relegated to the background when it comes to clients, and seen as a quick solution provider, which should not happen. Once a fee structure is in place, it would be a positive step towards bringing back advertising to the main realm in a marketing strategy.

 

By Zafar Rais, Founder and CEO, MindShift Interactive

 

Social media has revolutionized the way a marketer thinks today. The Indian digital advertising market this year is estimated at Rs 2,851 crore and is expected to double to about Rs 4,391 crore next year as a result of which platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest are persistently evolving to help brands connect instantly with consumers. Consumers realise the power of the medium and use it to voice their opinion on brands and events around them. The awareness for using social media to promote and leverage brands has tremendously increased in the recent times, as a core part of their marketing strategies.

 

There are different ways through which one can ensure maximum outreach through various platforms on the social media front. We need to take into consideration various aspects while planning a social media campaign. While planning a social media campaign it is important to go beyond the numbers and look at what your consumers would like to engage with and share.

 

Choosing the right platform: Social media engagement does not restrict itself to the presence on Facebook, Twitter and Slideshare. A platform like Facebook is key to create the right engagement whereas Twitter works best to create maximum buzz about the brand. E-commerce portals have identified Pinterest as a key platform to ensure they reach out to the right target audience. It is essential to identify the platform that will suit the personality of the brand and the nature of engagement of the campaign. It is the core responsibility of a brand to identify the nature and personality of the consumers that you wish to engage through their campaigns. The campaign ideas and the theme need to revolve around the type of consumers that we wish to communicate with.

 

Integration of various platforms on Social Media also works best for brands to ensure a large number of consumers are targeted through their campaign. Whether it’s social media for small business or a large B2B social media marketing campaign, companies should integrate social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Slideshare to their websites. This allows prospect customers to gain insights on how a brand would engage with them and gain additional information on the latest happenings which may not be present at such a high frequency on the website.

 

Social media integration is the stuff that successful social media marketing campaigns are made of and it ensures that genuine interest is sparked by real people around a brand. Building a community of repeat customers will help a brand gain in social finance and create a credible social name among consumers in general.

 

Integration and the right mix of content ensures that genuine interest is sparked by real people around a brand and it is up to each brand to take the onus of understanding their consumers prior to marketing to them.  Building a community of repeat customers will help a brand gain in social finance and create a credible social name among consumers in general. That is what would truly give business a holistic, integrated strategy and will be born and acknowledged in the future. Awareness of the right trends with the people can be chalked basis the research and evaluation of past case studies to understand the touch points and make a campaign a great success.

 

By Jasmin Sohrabji, CEO, Omnicom Media Group

 

Not sure if I am best qualified to speak on what could be the one big idea that could be a game-changer for news television, and would rather term my thoughts on the subject as ‘back to basics’ than a game-changer! Maybe it exists and maybe it does not…but whenever I switch to a news channel, I see a very qualified anchor engaging with a bunch of people, most of whose point of view I have little or no interest in, and who are definitely not the reason I come to this news channel for! Why can’t we have what was one of the cornerstones of print journalism – The Editorial? I made an effort to read my daily newspaper every morning every single day of my life and stayed loyal to the paper. Why? Not because I need to get the daily news… that I could get anywhere. I did it because I valued the newspaper’s stance on news and its politics. I did it because the newspaper’s editorial helped me shape my own thinking. I read the news to be informed and to form my own perspectives.

 

News on TV has become a ‘come share your thoughts, everyone’ platform today and frankly, viewers would rather stay loyal to a stronger editorial from the lead editor/anchor than the ability of the news editor to bring guest panels whose point of view viewers have not bought into. Like I said at the start, maybe it’s there and maybe it’s not; but when I switch to my news channel of choice, I should stay on not for the guest panel, but for the very insightful editorial I am about to hear.