Dialogue
When the international newspapers switched to compact format there was still some time. If now, someone wants to carry a newspaper, one can do it on an iPad, rather than physically. I don't know how much time the Indian players have to switch, but I think they are late on this front. I don't think there is anymore time left for broadsheets to switch to compact...
I hate to be a part of the rat race because even if you win it, you will still be a rat. We want to grow ourselves into an organisation that will proudly be having made more brands and will be linked up with successful stories. That will be the biggest achievement for us. Also, in the next five years, we also want to establish An-yahh!! as the world’s first art brand and set up the chain of retail stores across India, starting with North India.
The most significant change that has taken place is growing importance of technology. Mobile revolution has further been revolutionised with convergence of technology and itself has become a medium of advertising. New media tools, production equipment and machinery, new age thinking, youth with great aspirations and gumption, countless TV channels, etc. That things have changed would be putting it mildly; the most appropriate word would be ‘revolutionised’.
We don’t want to be a 15-year old channel and we want to be a 35-minus channel and that is coming across very clearly. We have ‘Indian Idol’ and ‘Boogie Woogie’ in the middle of the day, so we have more youngsters tuning in. We don’t exclude anybody. We will not do an ‘Emotional Atyachaar’, which mothers will not watch. In a single TV country, what a fantastic proposition to have a family coming to, but with a younger skew in terms of the kind of the structure of our shows, the way we market our shows, which differ.
<p align=justify>I firmly believe that the era of segmented and targeted newspaper is going to come to the Indian markets soon. As of today, newspapers run on a ‘one shoe fits all’ strategy… In the next 5-10 years, we are getting into an era of segmented newspapers. Look at England… We have the Times and The Guardian right at the top of the SEC, but the numbers are very small. The bottom of the pyramid is The Sun, the tabloid with a ‘nude’ on page three. It’s a labourer’s newspaper, but it is the largest circulated newspaper in England. Then there is the Daily Mail, which is the middle class newspaper in England. Above that you have The Telegraph. The SECs are very clearly demarcated. I suspect this is what is going to happen in this country, too, whereby, each newspaper will cater to a selected audience.
<p align=justify> “We all took salary haircuts. The entire team rallied behind me. It was a collective chest that took the bullet. I am eternally grateful to them for that.”<br><br> <p align=justify> “We are a punctuation mark in many stellar corporate statements. That is such a blessing.”
<p align=justify>People are beginning to realise that branding is more of a science than art, and our products are focused to aid that branding is a science. Clients’ perspective to his business has changed and they want to get the brand blueprinting or the brand vision map ready before getting in the market. We are beginning to see a lot of traction. This method of ecosystem branding, where we are positioning ourselves like the hub and the PR, advertising agency, design firms as the spokes, is new to the industry and is gaining ground. Today, clients believe that one marketing manager cannot be the hub alone and would like to use Vertibrand as the extended hub, and I think as a model this is gaining a lot of currency.
<p align=justify>I think mobile, if you look at the distribution of availability and consumer usage, is all about being mass. It is not a new medium. It is an incredibly personal and highly relevant medium. It may be the number one medium, but as an advertising medium, it is still very much in its budding stage… In India, mobile phone penetration is very high, however, the number of smart phones is still very low. It is up to the industry to take note and say, sure there are smart phones, but the majority doesn’t use them, so what do we do about that?
<p align=justify>It’s been a roller coaster ride and we don’t plan to get off! 2009 was quite challenging as many clients cut back on their marketing budgets. Despite the slowdown, we were able to acquire and grow many new key accounts in the FMCG and telecom verticals. We have been actively rolling out new campaigns in the last few months, with many more on the anvil. For us, 2010 looks really exciting. All our services are in demand and are growing.
<p align=justify>We see a huge opportunity in BTL as it is an extremely fragmented business and isn’t consolidated easily, and nobody has a scale in this business. We are in a nascent stage, but we have started focusing on this business significantly in the last six months. In the next 2-5 years, we want to have at least 20-30 per cent of market share. This is a fragmented industry as very few people have invested in it. The only player that is showing some consolidation is the WPP Group.
<p align=justify>Clients need to do what they need to do. What happens often is that the next pretty girl is whispering sweet nothings in the clients’ ears and the client is intrigued by the possibility, and would trigger a pitch to explore it. It is absolutely true that the clients know what the capability of the incumbent is. Some clients today believe that even if they are perfectly satisfied with their agency, they have a statutory obligation to review the media… It used to be that unless something went terribly wrong, the client didn’t initiate a review. Today, clients initiate reviews whether something is wrong or not. Very often they significantly underestimate the trauma to the entire system on both sides.
<p align=justify>Right now most of the media agencies have the same business model, and also the media service brands are facing a perception problem, wherein they have not grown in the last 10 years in terms of how they have been perceived. Media teams need to bring back on-ground learning to their strategic thinking. There is need to make the thinking process more relevant and with an ear to the ground.
Digital is the fastest and most efficient way to activate conversation. If you want to be present in every minute in the lives of the consumers, then digital is the way to do that. Digital is so overwhelmingly present right now that it is difficult for somebody to reject that. Having said this, television, too, it is going to have a great year in 2010 and 2011. I do see the trend continuing and I see that the embracement is far more widespread now than it was a year ago.
At the end of the day, it is the people who do the work to help in growing the organisation. We are moving into the business of building brands. Unless you keep on raising the bar every single day for yourself, you get sluggish and you get happy with what you do. I am excited about the next challenge. So many brands, and so little time. Genius doesn’t happen everyday, but even if you do it once a month, it is worth it.
The uncertainty of the past two years is certainly behind us. The world is looking up, and India has led this revival in more ways than one. The industry is looking at the near future with great hopes and aspiration as the size of the pie is going to grow exponentially in the next two years. The kind of advertising big bucks that went into IPL telecast is a clear indication of the good things to come. The industry is gearing up to meet the challenges and we too want to grab a large share of the growing pie.
While we are behind WPP, we do have full intention of moving ahead with speed. Our creative agencies have a good set of clients and the media agencies have been growing rapidly. So, in the next five years we will see the Publicis Group companies growing, but it will be a while before we catch up with WPP. To some extent, I agree that we have not been as media focused as we could have been, but we would like to change that very soon. The biggest client in India is with WPP for creative as well as media, so that tends to give them a lot of attention. We, however, intend to catch up soon.
The industry is being oversupplied with too many agencies doing the same thing. So, we have to find a point of difference. There is no point of discount rates and failing to deliver. My ambition is to build a very prosperous company for long term growth. And we are not going to get that by just offering the same services with the existing competition at cheaper rates. Certainly, many of these new market entrants would do that as their short term strategies to buy some market share.
We want Media Direction to be among the top five players within three years. India is a very competitive market, therefore, to accomplish our goals we have to be better than the competition. Being as good won’t be good enough. We will get the right people and the right structure to move forward. Growing in this market is account by account and day by day.
There is still room for good creative talent to move from traditional to digital space, there is still significant room for creative and technology to marry each other and come with a solution which is really cutting edge. There is also room for brighter, younger talent to come here, because the time is right. Somewhere towards November-December-January, things have corrected themselves, so now is the time if you really want to play on this growth graph and go further.
<p align=justify>The smart planner has narrow-casted his plans. Another good thing that had happened in the industry was the downturn, as everyone started looking at things in a more critical way and at their spends too… We have been able to increase the ad rates even in the slowdown. The way things are going, you can only expect to see better platforms, better service and better distribution structure.
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