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What was your breakthrough moment in the
media and advertising industry? |
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Two moments actually:
a) Joining Asian
Paints since I strongly believe that Asian Paints sources the
best in terms of talent and, therefore, I am challenged by the
fact that I work in a marketing team that has some great managers.
b) Being nominated to the Executive Council
of the ISA – To me that is recognition from the industry
fraternity for the work that I do. It has given me an opportunity
to work towards the betterment of the relationship that advertisers
have with the media and advertising fraternity. |
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What has kept you going in this industry for so many
years? |
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Passion mostly – I do believe that around the next corner
is a simple idea waiting to happen, and if I don’t discover
it, I will be relegated to being a has-been. |
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Where do you see yourself five years hence? |
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Hopefully one day running my own agency that solely provides
brand consulting on kids and kids-related brands. I have always
thought that they are the toughest audiences to retain. I believe
that as an audience, kids are experience loyal and not really
brand loyal. |
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Who are some of the people from the industry that
you think have played a role in shaping your experience here? |
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Jasmin Sohrabji - Her thinking on media was always path breaking.
NP Sathya Murthy - A great human being and mentor to push your
limits.
Sam Balsara - He is a prime example of how one can run a large
media business without having to compromise on your values or
ethics. |
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You are amongst the industry professionals who have
seen the industry in absolute boom to this present slowdown.
What were the first signs of slowdown that you noticed? |
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As in the 2001 recession, hoardings going blank were the first
signs in media. The thumb rule I would follow is that in a cluster
of premium hoardings if more than 50 per cent are blank, then
there is obviously a problem. Look at hoardings at Mahim junction
leading to the Western Express Highway and you would know what
I mean.
More importantly mobile services companies (continually expanding
category) letting go of their key hoarding locations across
Mumbai says a lot for the state of the economy.
Within the marketing fraternity, the signs were apparent to
us as early as January 2008 with a slowdown in sales of key
indicator categories like durables. |
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What are some of the steps that you are taking now
to help your agency/ organisation brave the situation? |
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Clearly a recession is always a good time to re-visit accepted
successful practices and make them work better for you. We have
given the agency a mandate to focus on the essentials, but at
the same time ensure that “impact” led media driven
ideas need to be geared towards high impact sale and not just
high impact brand building.
Secondly, while maintaining a dominant SOV as a market leader
we will be looking at upping the ante to bring the brand closer
to the consumer on ground in a tactical manner. Obviously, exploring
more media and vehicle options beyond mass media will be the
need of the hour. |
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What do you attach most importance to:
Numbers - Viewership - readership
Quality - Environment
Impact - buzz |
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Viewership and readership are finally vehicle viewership and
vehicle readership. Therefore, these are just a metrics to give
you a trend perspective. To move these numbers towards a meaningful
metric, one has to move towards rationalising on the media environment,
therefore, ensuring that one carries on delivering the brand
communication in an environment that compliments the emotions
that are there in the communication.
As far as Impact/Buzz goes, every communication has to be
buzz driven, that is, if consumers are not talking about your
communication then it’s just another ad. Buzz to me
is when consumers talk about the communication, interact with
it and respond back on the same. If this can be done in a
cost efficient manner, then why not? Then again, buzz just
for the sake of saying its “buzz” completely loses
sight of the marketing or media objective. |
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Your views on growing the advertising pie… |
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It’s bad news, good news and great news…
Bad news, because it means clutter increases and, therefore,
consumer attention gets affected.
Good news, because new media categories as they grow also provide
more opportunities for creative solutions by way of technological
enhancements or quality of environment. A case in point is the
development of the OOH space with screens being placed at malls/
multiplexes/ CHS, etc. Also, new media as it matures adds in
research and, therefore, acceptable metrics to sell the media.
Great news, because the points 1 and 2 mentioned above requires
a media professional to get out of his office and visit markets
to understand how far media planning is moving away from the
“press a button” solutions that we get from our
optimizers and data bases. The media planner will continue to
be challenged and that’s great news for me.
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What are some of the biggest changes that you have
seen in the advertising and media industry in your time spent
here? |
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Great changes –
• The level of professionalism
that has set in with more practitioners looking at a creative
solution and not just a media solution. Media professionals
are truly maturing as communication consultants
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Technology that brings consumers closer to the brands via the
vehicles that are on offer.
• Research metrics
that help us buy and sell media have significantly improved,
but they still have a long way to go
Not so great changes –
The newest generation of media planners are too “desktop”
oriented. They need to step out and meet consumers to understand
how media is consumed. Neither can NRS/IRS tell you whether
people prefer a 26-page newspaper to a 100-page tome every morning
nor can TAM tell you whether a little girl could ever have the
potential of taking away eyeballs from the Saas and Bahu serials.
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Any experience that you really would want to go back
in time and change? |
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In the first part of my career I did initially change jobs
frequently to try and acquire learning from different categories
as much as possible. Clearly, buckling down and spending a few
years at one place has its own rewards. |
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What would you say was the most proud movement for
you at work? |
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One and half years into my job at Asian Paints I was told
that my approach to media was extremely refreshing and good
for the future of the company. I guess I am still in the business
of customer service (as was when I was in an agency) where the
smile on a customer’s face tells you that he likes what
you’ve done and a twinkle in his eye tells you that he
would like you to do even better. |
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What is the motto or the guiding principle with which
you lead your team? |
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Fuel your work with a passion that make you think differently
on everything you do. In turn, get your stakeholders to think
differently and challenge you on a daily basis. |
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The GenNext Media magnate is chosen by a
committee comprising the exchange4media editorial team in consultation
with Raj Nayak. |
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Archive |
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GenNext
Media Magnate: Nitasha Narad– AVP – Marketing Communications,
Tata Teleservices, Mumbai |
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GenNext
Media Magnate: Divya Gururaj – Making a difference, not
a nest |
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