Interview News

We believe in integrated marketing communications. We believe that the customer is at the heart of all propositions and it is, therefore, imperative that we propose a PR programme that supports the business objectives of organisations. Norms rendering PR as distinct from marketing are no longer appropriate in this age of consumerism, in which consumers aggregate all messages in making a decision to interact with the brand or company.
exchange4media Staff Jul 8, 2010 12:00 AM

<p align=justify>The radio industry as a whole is going through a very bad phase due to music royalties, high infrastructure costs and licensing fees. There has been a long standing demand from the industry to sort out all these issues. We hope some positive changes will take shape this year. There are several issues that have hampered the radio industry’s progress in the country. Once these issues are sorted, we are planning for expansion. We will look forward to have more stations in West Bengal and the North East.
exchange4media Staff Jul 5, 2010 12:00 AM

<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.
exchange4media Staff Jul 2, 2010 12:00 AM

<p align=justify>Media owners are getting increasingly organised. Industry status for outdoor advertising and the formation of outdoor associations and tools are being recognised as common currency, and outdoor is getting its due respect in the business… We could not have asked for a better year. Awesome sounds like a mild word referring to the performance of Primesite. We intend to be holding 40 per cent custodianship of the OOH market in coming two years.
exchange4media Staff Jun 30, 2010 12:00 AM

<p align=justify>Brand Del Monte has 118 years of heritage and is a globally renowned food and beverage brand. Del Monte is synonymous with taste and quality. Being devoted to consumer needs, we create products that are in accordance with consumer taste and preferences. To differentiate ourselves from the competitors, we make sure that we offer innovative products and a ‘never before’ product experience in each of the four product categories that we operate in.
exchange4media Staff Jun 28, 2010 12:00 AM

I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg in the digital domain. The online/ digital world has lowered the barrier to entry to almost nothing. There will be plenty of sites that will come up – each with their values and messages. Some will be successful – even if they serve a niche. Having said that, let me add that to earn a living through a small site/ blogs is not easy, since online ads is the primary source of revenue, and consumption of content is still fairly low in India. The latter will develop as the quality of content improves.
exchange4media Staff Jun 28, 2010 12:00 AM

<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.
exchange4media Staff Jun 25, 2010 12:00 AM

Recession has forced PR consultancies to get their houses in order, and evolve or they will be in deep trouble. PR agencies have today ‘evolved’ by quickly bringing their teams up to speed on social media to ensure they were reaching both online and offline audiences in their consultancy. PR is no longer just about media placements – but rather, driving action from influencers directly – businesses can easily see (and rather quickly, too), if the money they pay for effective PR and marketing is working.
exchange4media Staff Jun 22, 2010 12:00 AM

<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.
exchange4media Staff Jun 18, 2010 12:00 AM

Marketers are seeking solutions beyond traditional billboards and it is becoming critical to integrate this with retail signage and visual merchandising for maximum impact. With larger share of overall media budgets, OOH is becoming centralised and is being driven by brand strategy to a far greater extent compared to the previous years, where it was decentralised and pretty much left to sales and distribution. Media owning is looking attractive and there is likely to be significant consolidation in this space.
exchange4media Staff Jun 15, 2010 12:00 AM

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.
exchange4media Staff Jun 11, 2010 12:00 AM

Currently, we don’t experiment and are too cautious. The radio industry has to experiment, we have to diversify into differentiated content. There is enough space for all, irrespective of the number of channels. The unfortunate part is that we may be nine stations in the same city, but we are targeting the same TG and playing the same songs. However, the policy has to be more enabling, more multiplicity of channels, news and current affairs from unlimited sources, so, once these issues are tackled, there is higher scope of differentiated content, of getting newer formats, etc.
exchange4media Staff Jun 8, 2010 12:00 AM

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.
exchange4media Staff Jun 4, 2010 12:00 AM

The core proposition for both radio and TV is music. In radio, we deliver music to our listeners and in TV we deliver music to the viewers. The entire game revolves around how you engage them with giving them the music. There are other music channels as well, but the deal is what more apart from music can you give to create an attitude for the channel and to create that stickiness for the channel so that people come back. As far as 9XM is concerned, the brand is recognised by both kids and the youth. The platform is set and hence, it gives me a starting point.
exchange4media Staff Jun 3, 2010 12:00 AM

India is more than ready for the science channel. Discovery Science has been receiving extremely positive response from the viewers. India is a young country and there is immense curiosity amongst the viewers for information. Knowledge is cool. The viewers want to be informed and entertained about the various advancements and technologies from around the world. As expected, we have received positive feedback from all parts of the country.
exchange4media Staff Jun 3, 2010 12:00 AM

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.
exchange4media Staff May 28, 2010 12:00 AM

Public relations used to be about communicating key messages top-down along a vertical axis from corporations to a mass consumer audience by earning editorial coverage. Now, PR is also about stimulating conversations between stakeholders on a peer-to-peer basis, where brands are co-created horizontally. PR these days really stands for ‘Public Relationships’, where we apply our traditional skills with journalists to many more communities of interest. These days, we are increasingly becoming ‘digital storytellers’.
exchange4media Staff May 26, 2010 12:00 AM

<p align=justify>Our brand mantra is to be the best airline with great services, always conscious of the needs of our customers. This philosophy is reflected in the bouquet of services that we offer in addition to affordable pricing. Our new tagline – ‘Get more when you fly’ – very effectively highlights our service objective. Our goal is to induce top of mind recall and ensure that our brand communications underline differentiators beyond just the price-points.
exchange4media Staff May 25, 2010 12:00 AM

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.
exchange4media Staff May 21, 2010 12:00 AM

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.
exchange4media Staff May 14, 2010 12:00 AM