While answering the delegates' questions he also stated to some extent the marketers' themselves are to be blamed for the diminishing returns on media investments. He stated, "The brand managers are focusing on short-term returns to pad up their quarterly revenue instead of adopting long-term brand strategies".

Ishan Raina was of the opinion that advertisements today require more creativity and experimentation in order to fit into the requirements of the clients. Raina stated that tightened budgets and more competition are the main reasons for it. He also stated that due to limited budgets, clients find it difficult to get maximum value out of it. "Most of the clients are confused as to how to get optimum value out of the budget," said he. Raina also felt the need for more professionalism and courage on the part of both agencies and clients to experiment and come out with new solutions. According to Raina, globally clients are pushing up for more creativity. A 'good ad' can get the clients high recall by less media exposure, according to him. "In the next few years we will witness the same in India," he informed. Ad agencies, according to him, have to increasingly look at providing 'media and marketing solutions'. He stated, "Ad agencies themselves need to define how they are going to be in business and how can they make a difference."

Poulomi Dhawan, who has been on both sides of the fence agreed that advertising does work and said that there was a growing need for specialists. "The sheer cost of advertising makes it important to plan well," she said. According to Dhawan, agencies need to leverage the data and figures available which would make them more focussed and help them in giving their clients better service. She also felt the need for better audience forecasting.

She appealed to the media fraternity to try and understand clients better. She put forth the view that advertising spend just for an improved quarter results does not work for the brand in the long run. "Advertisements have to be thematic which helps in brand building," she said. She also advocated that clients need to be involved in all the processes. Besides, "there is a definite need to fight clutter," she said.

Dhawan also felt the need for more interaction between agencies, media partners and clients. "All of us want to make profits for which more interaction and thinking is required." This, she said, is necessary in view of the fact that "media savvy clients are asking for more".

"Clients are getting return from the creative side," felt Rohinton Maloo. According to Maloo due to increasing competition the pressure to perform well is constantly on the increase be it the brand or media agencies. Due to the changing market dynamics, he felt that there has been increasing tendency to ask for more. "We as media partners need to be more accountable," said Maloo. He, however, felt that RoI might not be judged only by how the brand performs in the market place as there are several other factors involved. He stressed on the need of defining other parameters to judge RoI that a client is getting from his media investments.

Elkana Ezekiel felt that today's brand managers know more about media than some years back. "I would ask more questions about the media which the agencies need to provide us," he informed. Ezekiel felt the need for the creative and the accounting side to work more closely to serve the client. "There is a need for creativity and media innovations to cut the clutter," said Ezekiel.

Ezekiel, however, agreed that it was not all ad agencies fault. He believed that due to increasing pressure to perform well Marketing Managers and CEO's are resorting to marketing practices that do not seem to add value to the brand. "It is very easy resorting to marketing practices which would spruce up the quarterly balance sheet," said Ezekiel. Non-the-less, he felt the need to fix more responsibility on the agencies as he said, "It is only the client who invests money but the agencies must also share the financial risks."

Kevin Eyers was also of the opinion that there should be a better partnership between the media and the client. Said he, "We need to ask the clients what do they exactly want. It is very crucial for developing partnerships."

The panelists, almost all of them, were of the opinion that RoI the clients are getting has dwindled in the last few years. Too much clutter in the media space, tightened budgets, increased competition and the agencies' unwillingness to experiment and innovate were identified as some of the reasons. As for the solutions, an eye on the long-term goals, better coordination between the agencies and the clients, transparency and improving the quality of the creative as well as media innovations that would cut the clutter were stressed upon.

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