DOWN SOUTH

The South still continues its struggle to get national recognition

When I grew up in Madras, as it used to be called in those days, one often heard a saying, which translated meant, “The North is prospering, the South is declining”, which is perhaps an indication of how the South viewed itself in relation to the rest of India. In advertising, certainly Mumbai was and continues to be the main centre, while Delhi has overtaken the other contenders in its quest for honours. So, how was the year 2009 for advertising agencies, brands and marketers? 2009 was an eminently forgettable year as the world tried to come out of the aftermath of the debacle of the previous year. Although, India did not go through the trauma that the West experienced, the fact that the advertising agencies are all globally owned and aligned meant that India, too, towed the line, albeit reluctantly, as recruitment and raises were forgotten. The South was no different and still many multinational agencies are not even replacing their personnel.

Retail advertising

The South in general, and Chennai in particular, has spawned a whole breed of advertisers, whether it is RMKV or Pothys or Chennai Silks, all of which are largely a product of high decibel filmi-style advertising. The recession or slowdown was not too much in evidence as the Aadi sale and New Year sales continued. In the smaller towns, people did not bother unduly and continued to spend. Sometimes not reading the pink papers or not seeing business channels seems to have its advantages too! So much for Chennai, what about the other centres? Bangalore had its own version of organised retail in the Future Group’s Central, which continued to advertise, hold events and drove traffic in. Bangalore, too, is the city of brands and the Titans – the Britannias, the Kingfishers, the TTK Prestiges and the Allen Sollys – continued to advertise. Hyderabad has never been a great advertising centre and the Satyam saga seemed to leave the whole city dispirited and recovery is still happening. Technology was certainly one vertical that was badly hit by the global recession. The only advertising that technology companies do in any case is recruitment advertising, and that took a back seat this year as companies actually laid off people, forgot recruitment, and were busy telling the media of how they were only asking non-performers to leave! Public relations assumed greater importance, never mind the fact that agencies were working on reduced retainers, much against their wishes, even as they made hypocritical statements of how they were partnering their clients. The newspapers suddenly become thinner and almost anorexic as employment supplements were no longer as indispensable as they used to be!

What about creativity?

The year gone by has been a forgettable year for creativity, barring the ZooZoos campaign and the odd campaign for brands like Idea Cellular. If that was the national scenario, then it is easy to visualise the dearth of creativity in the South. Many of the Advertising Clubs had difficulty in holding awards functions even, given the fact that many of the biggies are refusing to enter Ad Club Awards functions. The Madras Ad Club created a category like the Tamil Awards, highlighting the importance of the local language in creating advertising. In fact, if anything, the trend that is strengthening is the importance of the local language and the ‘Madrasi’ as the rest of India used to call South Indians, needs to be spoken to in his language, if he is to open his wallet!

The way ahead

The South has been and continues to be a poor cousin of its better dressed, more sophisticated Western counterpart. It is hardly featured in national media stories of the industry. The campaigns of the South are barely understood, much less featured by the national media even if some of the campaigns created in Tamil at least are quite noticeable. In fact, a number of regional brands have made their presence felt to even get share from national giants like Levers. The South needs to lift itself up by the bootstraps to get national recognition; it certainly did not take India by storm last year.

Here is hoping that 2010 will be much more dramatic!

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO of brand-comm and the author of ‘Googly. Branding on Indian turf’.)