Majhera village, my native place, situated 30 kms far from Nainital and an hour’s uphill walk from the nearest motor road, religiously witnesses the act of the newspaper vendor delivering my father’s favourite Hindi daily at 7 o’ clock sharp every morning. This whole practice dates back to my childhood days when the newspaper used to take an entire day and was sometimes even delivered next day with stale news in my village. However, in last one decade, irrespective of the size or distance of the place, the reach and the penetration of newspapers in small villages and small towns of India have grown tremendously.

While, in cities newspapers are the source of knowledge and information, in small villages and towns, it is stuff for the day-long gossip at tiny tea-shops or panchayats. And it seems, perhaps, newspaper publishers have recognised this evolving reading habit of consumers. That is one of the reasons why 2010 saw most newspapers launching hyper local editions to give an extra dose of local happenings.
Moreover, after the period of global slowdown, 2010 was a year of re-ignition for the Indian newspaper industry. Big brands moved ahead with their long-awaited plans and many small newspaper publishers witnessed expansion. exchange4media takes a look at whether language newspapers lived up to their promise in the year gone.

Branding the Regional
The post slow down period, beginning December 2009, saw Hindi and regional newspaper companies establishing themselves as big brands. Hindustan Media Ventures Ltd came up with its IPO in 2010, and prior to this, in December 2009, Dainik Bhaskar Corporation too jumped into the capital market and saw the scrip being oversubscribed. As I am filing this report, Lokmat group is also planning to come up with an IPO.

Apart from this, most of the big language newspaper brands entered small territories to cater to the small group of consumers. This move also witnessed top three or sometimes four brands involved in intense competition and strategic price wars. That, eventually, had benefitted the readers and advertisers.

In the year gone by, presence of Hindi newspaper brands on Twitter and Facebook platforms became more robust, moreover, some brands strengthened their digital presence as well. Apart from these initiatives, Hindi and regional newspapers also carried out lots of reader engagement activities which further helped in brand recognition. Some of the big brands also experimented with the 3D technology for their advertising partners.

… Yet Small Businesses
While big brands enjoyed the last season, small newspapers were in trouble in some parts of the country. Middle of the year 2010 had seen small newspaper brands of Jammu and Kashmir lamenting over losing business because of the curfew situation in the state. Many newspapers did not function for several days which consequently hit the subscription as well as ad revenues of the publications. North-Eastern states also saw some strife during the year- Some times because of tussle between government and journalists and sometimes threats from militants, due to which, quite a few times newspapers could not hit the newsstands.

In other states like Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, people were seen foraying into newspapers businesses. However, due to the lack of a clear revenue model, they are likely to survive on DAVP or governments ads. Yet, the challenge for the small newspaper groups to woo the local and small advertisers remains the same.

What awaits 2011?
India is growing with around 8.5 per cent GDP rate, literacy rate seems to be increasing, rate of industrialisation has gone up, retail business is flourishing even in small towns and most importantly big brands are entering small Indian markets – these will be the some of the biggest driving forces for the newspaper industry to expand their business in 2011. Adding to this, we can witness few major developments in the year around the various state elections. Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala, are the three big newspaper markets will witness elections in 2011 and newspaper owners are expected to take full like advantage of this opportunity. Many newspaper brands that were suffering from recession-phobia are also expected to go for brand expansions.

Meanwhile, readers were definitely benefitted by the expansion of the newspaper industry in the previous decade. But from the business prospective, for newspaper owners challenges still remain same. It seems that dependency on advertisement/advertorial revenue cannot get over in the near future; which means the edit sanctity will always be under peril. However, the recently concluded Bihar elections has a silver lining in the paid news case. Yet as few states will witness elections this year, the ghost of paid news can again haunt the industry in 2011. ‘Measurement’ for small newspapers is still a far-fetched idea and there is no authentic numbers to monitor their performance. With answers of some of these questions, I hope year 2011 will inaugurate the new decade for language newspaper industry on a positive note.
 

 “Would you pay for essential news?” It’s a basic economics question and there are lessons to be learned from The Wall Street Journal in this area.

Too many newspapers entered the digital age making a self-fulfilling prophecy. Giving away their news online, those newspapers experienced the natural economic result of so obvious a pricing disparity. Customers stopped paying for the same news (or less) in print they could read at no cost online. Why pay for what’s available free?

Pay for online content
The Journal was much derided for a course that was different, if more economically sound. Its online edition, WSJ.com, was born in the belief that value isn’t determined by channel of delivery. If readers valued the news in print, Dow Jones said, they would value it also on the Internet. In other words, they’d pay.
They paid. It’s no accident that the Journal’s paid circulation has been growing in print at the same time it’s been growing online. The Journal’s global paid circulation today is 2.2 million. More than a million subscribers pay for the Journal’s global editions on the Web and on digital devices.

Meanwhile, other newspapers are watching print circulation sink while they persist in pricing their Web content at zero. The laws of economics are working. Consumers offered a lower cost substitute – in this case, no cost – are opting for the substitute instead.

In the case of the Journal, the laws of economics are working too. In an economic transaction, consumers will pay a price commensurate with the value they expect. In other words, they’re willing to buy the Journal in the US, Asia and Europe, because they’re satisfied with the value – the news and insight – received in return.
Part of the value proposition for today’s readers derives, in fact, from the very vastness and openness of the Web.

On the Web, readers are wrestling with too much volume and too little veracity. No wonder opinion polls show uncertainty and distrust. One recent industry study revealed 61per cent of those surveyed thought half or more of what they read online isn’t reliable. We shouldn’t be surprised that few would want to pay for that.
It’s a different proposition altogether when you pair digital with credible content. The Journal has demonstrated that readers will pay for something they trust, something of value – even if it is online. The evidence points to a flight to quality – and credibility – for the future.

Dow Jones and the Journal have recognised another area where many newspapers and other experts misunderstood the Web and the change it initiated. True enough that the Internet accelerated the globalisation of business and ushered in global digital platforms for information. Yet those profound trends didn’t obviate the local requirements of the global audience.

Local in the global context
So, Dow Jones sees its business – news and information – as local in the global context. We learned a long time ago that doing business in Asia required a local presence and local expertise. Since Dow Jones Newswires began covering Asia in earnest in 1967 or the Journal Asia starting publishing in 1976, we understood the need to embed our journalists in the local culture. It’s why in the past two years we have increased our news gathering force in the region by more than 20 per cent. The global trend didn’t destroy the local imperative. What we discovered as the Internet evolved was complimentary demand for local. As consumers and businesses demand global, they demand local too. Local news, local information, local products remain as important as ever.

The Journal Asia redesigned its Chinese-language website four years ago. It currently has more than a million registered users and counts more than 25 million page views a month. A Japanese language edition of WSJ.com was launched last year and blogs are now regularly published in Korean and Hindi. Factiva, Dow Jones’ online tool for business intelligence and awareness, isn’t just a global content set; it includes content in more than 20 languages. The reader chooses.

Mobile further extends the reach of our brand in the digital world. The Wall Street Journal Asia released a Chinese-language application for iPhone recently, aimed at consumers who want to take the immediacy, insight and authority of The Wall Street Journal Asia with them wherever they go. In the same way, we’ve just launched a Chinese version of Scene Asia, our lifestyle site offering readers observations and insights on what to do and where to go in Asia. The Asia edition of The Wall Street Journal’s iPad app has been promptly adopted by local users in the few weeks since launch.

Value is what it’s about. Information is too important to make the zero-price point the determining factor.

The Internet made information more accessible. It didn’t change the fundamentals of economic behaviour. We need information as much as ever. Providing news and information that is trusted is still a valuable service for readers. There’s always been a price for that. There always will be.

(Christine Brendle is Publisher of The Wall Street Journal Asia and Managing Director, Dow Jones & Co, Asia Pacific.)

(Article coordination by Akash Raha.) 
 

Current usage trends indicate that consumers are straddling between devices (mobile, PC) accessing mail, searching, social media, gaming and applications. A third of Internet users in India – over 20 million people – are accessing some social media site or the other. Going by 6 degrees of separation, this means a message can be passed across this entire set without using any media whatsoever. But this does not mean that any message whatsoever can reach out to all of them. The message has to have relevance and virability to trickle down through these groups. Brands that build interesting propositions can engage users without incurring media cost. This is close to PR, but entirely different because you don’t need a journalist or a publication or a channel to buy in to your story. Consumers are the media and the audience – a dream come true for any brand custodian.

The case of Jimmy Choo shoes
Jimmy Choo, a world-renowned footwear brand, organised a real-time treasure hunt around London via Foursquare. One pair of Jimmy Choo trainers checked in at various locations and those who followed the campaign and were lucky enough to arrive at a venue before the trainers left, got to pick a pair in the style and size of their choosing. In just under three weeks, over 4,000 people got trainers.

- The competition details were viewed on Facebook 285,000 times.
- 1 in 17 of all users of Foursquare in London was following the Jimmy Choo trainer hunt online.
- Apart from 250 blogs, the hunt was covered by Reuters, The Evening Standard, Vogue, etc.
- Daily trainer sales in-store went up 33 per cent.

All at zero media cost.

The brand, consumer ‘social’ experience and the point of sale (offline) have been brilliantly integrated in the promotion.

Just imagine if the entire exercise was instead attempted at driving traffic to jimmychooshoelovers.com (imaginary), a standalone brand sponsored social media site. Building the site, generating traffic on the site, managing relevant content and sustaining the site after the initial euphoria would have been a Herculean waste of precious marketing money.

Therefore, the case for brands trying to utilise social media for promoting their brands far outweighs using paid media and creating destination sites with social media functionality. Why recreate the groups when they already exist elsewhere. Try and engage them. Brand sites will continue to exist, but not as destination sites, but as one of the key touch points in a distributed experience that makes consumers engage closely with brands.

However, it will be unwise to say digital paid media will become redundant. For many categories such as financial services, etc., online paid media is the most effective touchpoint for awareness, enquiry and lead generation. Reach provided by digital paid media is still very effective and makes economic sense for marketers to continue to invest in the same. But then, social media on such destination sites for such campaigns might not be relevant. What will be the need for social media overdrive in a routine personal loan lead generation campaign?

Marketers, therefore, need not focus their energies on creating destination sites with rich social media features, but finding right conversation topics and experiences (online plus offline) that would engage their consumers, thereby creating brand demand. Creating the experience online plus offline will be critical.

The social media scene in India has recently heated up a lot, which can be seen from the number of brands using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. However, despite this, most of the brands have not leveraged the medium enough, for most of them ‘going Social’ still means having a Facebook and Orkut page, where they give out product information and run contests, being present on some blog and forum, etc.

Marketers should resist the temptation of creating a social media page/ app just because it hardly costs anything. Like some mobile brands have created promotions such as “enter and get 10ps for every incoming call” – (916 fans on Facebook and 400 Twitter followers). Another mobile brand says “buy a mobile – enter the IMEI number and you will get a chance to attend IIFA” (600 fans on Facebook). Such promotions lack a conversation opportunity, entertainment quotient and completely rely on incentives that do not excite users to spread the good word in the social media space.

The Zoozoo campaign and Jaagore.com campaign are some local examples of effective social media usage. Expect to see the action on social media space heating up in 2011, where brands will integrate social media and mobile localised search functionalities.

[CVS Sharma (Venke) is Director, Arc Worldwide India.]

Anup Jain, Director Marketing – Pizza Hut, Yum Restaurants International, Indian Sub-continent

Let’s face it. We hear a lot about it these days. Let’s also face it. Many of us think of it as something we must have on the radar rather than we need to actively participate in, to drive our brands. Let me spend some time today unraveling and potentially evangelising the use of social media by whoever is reading this piece, because I believe it could be the turning point in media, creative development and PR – all combined into one.

Let me start by stating the obvious – there are four key things every marketer gets paid to drive – awareness, trial, repeat or loyalty and equity. And, to get us interested, social media must solve for either one or two or all objectives better than what we are using right now, right?

What is social media?
Wikipedia defines this as an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This means that Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Orkut, YouTube, Flickr, blogs and others comprise this definition.

Why are consumers aggregating in huge numbers on such social networks?
All these networks are helping consumers connect with either their friends or colleagues or people holding similar interests, at the cost of using Internet! Facebook in India has anywhere between 14MM and 17MM users, Orkut 19MM, Twitter at 2.3MM. Thus, it is clear that this rush will continue until the last person in the world is connected, since most people around him will put enough pressure to do so!

So, what does it mean?
Let’s do some simple calculations. We can safely assume nearly everyone on Facebook in India is SEC A. This means that out of an urban population of 300MM, of which SEC A is 12 per cent (NRS) = 36MM, nearly 42 per cent of SEC A are on Facebook today! To reach a 42 per cent reach on SEC A, our media agency will give us a comprehensive plan consisting of TV, press, radio and Internet that will eat up the entire annual budget of most brands in a few months.
Whereas, to be present continuously and advertise on Facebook, all it will take is a fraction of that cost. The other part worth noting is that almost 70 per cent of this audience is in the 13-24 age group, meaning if you get them now, they will be yours for life. The next logical question is how.

How can I use social media? What is the first step?
The most wonderful thing about social networks is that they allow you to begin a group or fan community. Check out www.facebook.com/starbucks or www.facebook.com/blackberryindia or www.facebook.com/pizzahutcelebrations. Once you have done that, it is time to advertise to bring in people to become fans and then engage with your fans by way of exciting contests, useful and fun applications and of course, inform them about privilege offers or give them sneak previews about what’s coming up. Be prepared for some candid and heart-wrenching feedback and get ready to answer it real time, because patience on such networks runs thin.

Starbucks has a fan community in excess of 20 million consumers now, and if everyone in the 300 million US could drink a cup of coffee, this page allows them to reach out to 15 per cent fans at the click of a button! So, this is media, advertising, customer service and PR all combined into one.

Now, the same thing is going to happen in India very soon as 40 per cent of SEC A is already on Facebook and is joining communities started by brands which have recognised the impact this medium could have on its sales and imagery. At Pizza Hut, we ourselves are targeting an 8 per cent share of FB users in India aiming to reach 1MM within a couple of months, being already at 0.7MM at current. So, it is important to participate now and get to a critical mass before your nearest competitor. I would say that number is a million as things stand today.

What can I expect as return on my investment?
Your own TV channel – 24x7, 365 days a year with thousands of eager viewers uninterrupted by any surrounding noises (read competition). At Pizza Hut, we released our new TVC for an initiative to 600,000 fans in one shot even before we went on TV. This is the best tool in the coming times to retain your fans and get more fans through word of mouth vis-à-vis advertising that consumers often discount and it gets equalised anyway. This is emotional equity built over time, just like that with a friend or a colleague.

Most brands get almost 50 per cent of their continued sales due to loyal users who swear by the brand. This medium allows your loyal users to recommend you faster to their friends than ever before. Thus, it helps you solve for awareness, trial, repeat with equity being intact – which marketer wouldn’t want that?

At Pizza Hut, we have experienced three times higher redemption on vouchers sent to fans rather than those sent via mass SMSes, emailers, mall advertising, etc.

What can I expect as costs?
Expect to spend at least Rs 15 lakh per year as retainer for your account. Expect another such amount for applications, advertising and contest giveaways to reach that critical mass. Then, the fun begins as you start to drive awareness for your new initiatives, give away privilege news and vouchers to drive larger purchases and higher frequency.

Okay, but who’s gonna do it for me?
Clearly, this is not a space where your traditional agency can help you, who are either good at designing outdoors or posters for kirana shops or your PR agency, which is good at chasing journalists and organising press conferences or your customer service cell, which takes 24 hours before it responds to any query. Also, it is too small a pie for your media agency to handle, because 2 per cent of your online budget is not worth their time, so they haven’t yet invested behind people who understand more than online banners.

In comes the new breed of digital agencies like Hungama Digital or Interface or others who have special skills to handle your fan pages and tweets – content writers who know how to say good morning in your brand’s tonality or know how to respond real time to customer queries, application developers who understand how FB/ Twitter work and the kind of plugins they need to implant to get virality going.

Lastly, where is it all headed?
My personal prediction is that this medium will do two things:
• Endanger traditional second rung media like radio, press and outdoor;
• Challenge our traditional agencies to think ‘ social’ if they aren’t to lose some spends from our budgets in favour of the new digital agency.

(Anup Jain is Director - Marketing – Pizza Hut, Yum Restaurants International, Indian Sub-Continent.)

The last decade for this industry witnessed the birth of ‘Media Independents’, and now I believe we are in the adolescent stage with a lot more maturity with 10 years of collective knowledge. We have learnt to treat this as a business and NOT as a department.

There are no major milestones, which we as an industry collectively pushed forward, and I see that emerging in the coming years. However, I see the explosion of communication channels continuing to rise on the back of declining effectiveness of any one single medium, which will prompt the agencies to diversify their skill sets and look beyond traditional media and invest in specialist services.

The business structure of the media agencies will go through a structural change, with accountability sitting at the centre of remuneration and, therefore, we will be moving away from the traditional commission model for large part of the industry. I believe this is good for the industry.

Clients will continue to question the marketing investments through multiple stakeholders, and herein lies the presence of third party auditors, and we agencies must learn to live with them. It will no longer be the longevity of a client relationship, but what share of your clients’ business one handles will become an interesting point of discussion.

I personally believe the “toothpaste is out of the tube’ as regards the relationship with creative agencies, but there will be a lot more strong forces of collaboration for the collective growth that will drive the business. I also believe there will be lot more debates on who owns the data and who interprets the data.

All in all, the next 10 years will be driven on the back of collaboration and a much stronger investment on insights, where we move forward from living on just industry based research reports to customised category specific knowledge.

(R Gowthaman is Leader, Mindshare - South Asia.)

Each year, when asked to contribute to exchange4media’s Rewind, I am hopelessly confused on the brief... never quite sure if I am asked to comment on the year gone by (as the topic suggests) or the year coming up (as the ‘all inclusive brief’ suggests); so, one year I did a review, and the next year I did a way forward. This year, it’s all nice and simple: we are embarking upon a new year and a new decade, so I can review the year and forward-speak the decade!
Having entered the industry in 1988, I have a first-hand experience of the two decades that followed and a ‘through the eyes of my bosses’ understanding of a (prior) third. I believe that puts me in a seasoned enough position to comment on the new one!

There is one very comforting fact about the decades, they are all extremely consistent... consistent in the surprises each year within will throw up! No trend or formula seems to hold for more than a couple of years, keeping us always alert and refreshed. Through the 90s, we thought we were the privileged lot who experienced the biggest changes TV would ever see! And then came the naughts, where television continued to reinvent and surprise us, refusing to go out of style... both in content and delivery. Each year, as we update our ‘media scene’ presentations, we keep adding new updates to the medium! In fact, a fairly robust barometer of a medium’s durability and dynamism is the number of updates that section goes through each quarter in our Power Point decks!

And while traditional TV evolved all through the last decade, somewhere mid-term, digital and the collective ‘new media’ re-emerged. This time round to stay! The new media passed their acid test with honours (the 2009 slowdown). And as we exit the decade, we shall drop ‘new’ from this medium.

I could continue talking about the rest of the mediums; however, for me, the defining story of the decade was not the mediums, but the brands and categories. What set the past decade apart from the 90s was the ‘sectors’ of change; they drove our media plans in completely different directions, away from the FMCG world. The past decade saw a sort of divide of two schools of media mix – one for the FMCG (and like-minded) world, and another for the sunrise tech sectors. And we thought we had mastered our craft... we now knew how to deal with the traditional and with the new; we were no longer afraid to embrace new media just as long it stayed in the realm of new sectors! We nailed it... or so we thought for a short while there. It is only in the recent years that we have seen a true fusing of the worlds.

And that’s what we will take into the New Year and new decade. The media practitioners of today will balance their expertise of the old way with the exposure of the new and build a media perspective that is borderless of old or new media and old or new sectors.

Each year, a new or existing media dimension evolves. Each decade then leaves behind a legacy of skill sets to the next generation of media practitioners; the 90s brought about a dimension to television (satellite) that left us with a legacy of media negotiators – a breed till then unknown to our industry. From this decade, we are taking with us a new breed of (tech-oriented) media practitioners for whom the new media world is no longer new!

In the coming years, the audio-visual and digital mediums are headed toward a cross platform convergence; on the one hand, the digital enhanced television offering new opportunities for engaging viewers, on the other hand, audio-visual opportunities moving out of the TV box into wider digital platforms. We saw the television space evolve in the 90s and the digital space stabilise through the naughts. The next years will embrace this cross-platform convergence of both these mediums and take it to interesting new heights, because we have entered the decade with a breed of practitioners able, capable and willing to make the difference.

And as we get ready to face the immediate challenges of 2011, we look forward to the consistency of the decade’s surprises!

(Jasmin Sohrabji is CEO, Omnicom Media Group.)

exchange4media Group in association with TAM Media Research brings the growth in the total number of news channels from 2000 to 2010 as part of the Rewind 2010 special coverage. The data also takes a look at the share of the news genre in the total TV viewing pie and the advertising growth of the news genre.

Total number of news channels since 2000:

Regional news channels saw the maximum growth in numbers in the 10-year period – from just three in 2000 to 82 in 2010. Hindi News channels grew from three in 2000 to 10 in 2005 and 18 in 2010. English news channels, on the other hand, grew nominally from two in 2000 to six in 2005 to nine in 2010.

Share of news genre in the total TV viewing pie:

Regional news genre accounted for a 3.53 per cent share of the total TV viewing pie in 2010 (January-November), from a 1.49 per cent share in 2005 and a mere 0.25 per cent share in 2000. Hindi news genre followed with a share of 3.44 per cent in 2010 (January-November), down from a share of 4.17 per cent in 2005. English news genre garnered a share of 0.33 per cent in 2010 (January-November), a marginal dip from 0.34 per cent in 2005.

Advertising growth of news genre:

English news genre accounted for a 172 per cent growth in advertising in 2010 (January-November) over 2005. Hindi news followed with a 163 per cent growth in the same period.