In this first of the series starting today we look at product categories, which have been utilizing television heavily over the past year or so. The downturn in the economy over the past couple of years has affected every product category and the advertising media has felt the subsequent pinch, be it television or print.

Ever since the Indian market was opened to multi national car manufacturers, companies from around the World have made a beeline to woo the Indian customer. Along with the best products available across the globe, these companies have also brought with them time tested marketing concepts. From brand building to brand visibility, from product sampling to product demonstration, usage of mass media has always been the corner stone of marketing and these world-class companies have brought with them the best practices used worldwide to market their products in India. And this holds especially true for the high involvement category like Cars.

Television remains one the most popular means of advertising for car companies. A phenomenon peculiar to the Indian market is that cricket, like for other brands, has been one of the most utilized medium for these companies. The target audience of car manufacturers perfectly matches with the audience of the game, which is predominantly male. Increasingly though, car companies have been targeting their products at the entire families subsequent to which the use of mass entertainment channels has also been growing. For our analysis though we choose the TG 25+, males, Sec AB, Metros.

Our analysis looks at the usage of Television by various car manufacturers, the GRPs they accumulated for the said target market. The GRP numbers also provide a rough estimation of the ad spends of the companies and the way it has grown in the past year or so. First we look at the growth of advertising over the past year. We look at data for Q1 (Jan-Mar) 2001 and Q1 2002. The slowdown in the economy and relatively low pick up in sales, car manufacturers seemed to have pumped little incremental money in television than the previous year. As can be seen from the chart below, as compared with Q1 2001, Q1 2002 year saw just 1% increase in gross GRPs accumulated through the quarter across all channels.

The rapidly changing environment today has also made sure that yesterday's top companies are replaced by new ones very frequently. A case in point is Fiat Palio whose Sachin Tendulkar starring campaign this year generated much talk in the market. Hyundai though takes the cake. The company from being number 5 in 2001 moved to the number 1 slot this year when looked at GRPs accumulated. Heavy advertising for new models and new campaigns of existing models seemed to be the strategy for the Korean major. Opel and Maruti on the other hand, which were the biggest advertisers last year, seemed to have slowed down.

Hyundai Santro was the most advertised car of the year with the brand accumulating more than 50% higher GRPs than the closest competitor Opel Corsa.

As mentioned earlier the most preferred medium for all car advertisers was cricket, with DD sports being the most preferred channel as India played quite a number of series at home.

Another trend evident from the chart above is the shift of preferences from mass entertainment channels to sports. DD Sports, ESPN and Star Sports gained compared with the previous year whereas mass entertainment channels seemed to have lost out in the race.

Among the sports channels though, DD sports doesn't seem to be the most preferred choice of all brands. The biggest users of the channel were Hyundai and Opel. Other advertisers utilized mass channels as well and other sports channels like ESPN and Star Sports.

With family member roles undergoing a change, the trends of utilizing media for car manufacturers will also change over time. With women and children becoming more and more involved in the purchase decisions, ad spending trends will also surely change. A case in point here is the Opel Swing campaign this year targeted particularly at women.