Tag: Zee

By Dyanne Coelho

Zee and MSM walked away with 14 and 13 awards respectively at the PromaxBDA India awards held on Wednesday. Awards across 37 different categories were were presented with Star India coming in third with 10 awards and UTV Entertainment Television Limited and NGC Network won 8 awards each. While Zee bagged 9 Gold and 5 Silver Awards, MSM won 6 Gold and 7 Silver Awards. In all, 31 gold and 31 silver MUSE trophies and six gold and six silver ISIS trophies were awarded.

Earlier, the 12^th edition of PromaxBDA India kicked off at the Westin, Mumbai with an opening address by Conference Chair and Colors CEO Raj Nayak. “Short form storytelling has come of age,” he said, “The viewer today has evolved. It’s up to you to catch them head on.”

David Shing, Digital Prophet, AOL began the morning session on an energetic note talking about the various futuristic ideas that are revolutionizing the world. “Personal experience is the new form of entertainment,” he said. Shing highlighted the word ‘Pizzled’ which is a combination of the words pissed and puzzled to describe the feeling a person gets when the person he/she is talking to is constantly busy on the phone during a conversation. “There is an information overload today and bad ads are the uninvited guests to the party.” Shing spent the most part of his talk discussing smart objects like a ring that switches on your television when you write TV in mid-air while wearing it or the same with your fan. Smart objects like the Power Suit, doesn’t require you to carry a wallet around, you merely move the tip of your coat sleeve over the billing machine and your meal is paid for, Shing explained pointing out that we would never see influential persons like President Barack Obama walking around with a wallet. “The new generation is who we should give a shit about,” Shing said, explaining that they are the ones who will be the users of these products in the future. It is all about engaging people in the calm and the chaos, he said.

Nicole Velik of The Ideas Bodega followed, opening with a line that left everyone a little puzzled. “Creativity is everyone’s business,” she said. She went on to explain how once at her workplace, the creative team invited all the other teams; HR, Admin, finance, etc to join them in their brainstorming session, and some amazing ideas popped up. Creativity diminishes as age increases, she pointed out highlighting a few statistics, and it is most often an influential person like a teacher or a parent that kills some part of your creative self by telling you seemingly harmless things like draw within the lines, she said. “When all else fails, role-play,” she said. It helps to thoroughly understand the brand you are trying to sell. Come up with ideas that will get you fired and then pull those ideas back into reality, she advised. “It is much better to tame a wild idea, than to make a boring idea great.”

Liz Dunning of Dunning Penney Jones shared stories of branding across the globe. America doesn’t like foreigners buying into their brands and companies, she said. Europe on the other hand is facing a major invasion by China, as a multitude of Chinese manufacturers are buying into European brands. “Indians sometimes take over a foreign brand and handle it way better than the home country ever could,” she said pointing out India’s vast growth in the industry. American brands are failing because they are not ready to spend, she pointed out. You have to spend on your product and on advertising and branding to make it a success. She cited the example of Cartoon Network and its sister channel Boomerang highlighting how each has a very different approach to branding, yet when you see the advertisements for either you will know they are connected.

The post-lunch session of the day saw two panel discussions. The first one was titled, The Shift: Exploring new demographics, audiences and mind sets. Rajiv Bakshi, VP-Marketing, Discovery Networks, Asia Pacific, South Asia and Ajay Vidyasagar, Regional Director, APAC, Youtube Partnerships, Google were the participants of this discussion. It was moderated by Meenakshi Menon, Spatial Access. The session highlighted key aspects of the digital versus the television medium. The speakers shared relevant insights into each, including costing of content creation, consistency in programming, audience response, advertising, revenue streams and the growth of technology. “If you can bring consumers to have the conversations that you want them to have, then it is a job well done, whether on the internet space or on a TV set,” Menon said, concluding debate one.

The next debate concentrated on the art of making a pitch to a client. ‘Pitch Therapy: A two-way conversation about the challenges of engagement’ was the topic of discussion which saw four participants; Kartik Sharma, MD, Maxus, South Asia, Paritosh Painter, Network Creative Director, Reliance Broadcast Network, Abhijit Joshi a former Ogilvy employee and Namit Sharma a former Zee employee. During the due course of this session  moderated by Tarun Katial, CEO, Reliance Broadcast Network, pointers on what to do and what not to do during a pitch were discussed. Know what your client wants, have a conviction and transfer that conviction to your client and believe in your pitch is what was unanimously agreed upon. “You have to sell your idea in the first 20 seconds,” Painter said. Pitching an idea is just like wooing your boyfriend or girlfriend, Joshi added.