Category: Specialised and Niche

Mumbai: On a bright sunny day of 25 April, Indiantelevision.com’s event, The Content Hub, which took place at The Lalit, Mumbai saw the presence of many experts in the content space.

The second panel was moderated by Ernst & Young partner media & entertainment advisory services Ashish Pherwani on the topic The Future of Content. The panelists were Zee Studios CEO Shariq Patel, aha CEO Ajit k Thakur, Lyca Productions CEO Aashish Singh, Viacom18 Media Private Ltd. COO Ajit Andhare, Guilty By Association partner Amar Butala.

The panel began with the question raised by Pherwani about the demand of content in the coming future to which Patel said, “I think the demand for content will, you know, has been increasing as we saw a huge acceleration, thanks to the fiction pandemic, president’s demand continues, it’s a question of how much we can supply at the right cost and the right price points, I think that’s where it’s all of us are, you know, spending more time on our mobile screens or at home or connected TVs, or  at cinemas, so the content demand is there.”

Thakur added on to it and said, “The thing is that there is a certain kind of content that you will be able to watch. Cinema viewing is huge. I know I go to watch the cinema with my family during the weekend or whenever it works. And the kind of cinema what kind of shot content you’re talking about is something that you could watch while you’re driving. You could be on a local train. So that will continue to be consumed. So the bottom line is that content will always be in demand.”

Singh agreed on this and added, “For the first time in India, content is not only competing with content but also with other physiological needs, and which is why we are all running apart and what’s on deficit. So there is clearly a new equilibrium that we need to find a really huge surface to which we don’t have time to cover yet.”

Andhare shared, “One thing we’ve learned from the Western market is that we could sum up stories that might not be convenient, otherwise. So I actually feel that it is great to be able to use these words to put them on platforms.”

In the end, Butala concluded and said, “The kind of content consumed would be different when a 15 year old becomes 25. So entertainment is not going anywhere. I think in the next five to seven years, the kind of content that a 15 year old kid would consume is the challenge that we all should face. Presently, I think if we get more writers, and if we get them in the right place, I think the demand for content is not going away.”

Mumbai: On a bright sunny day of 25 April, Indiantelevision.com’s event, The Content Hub, which took place at The Lalit, Mumbai saw the presence of many experts in the content space.

The third panel which was moderated by Hogarth CEO Kartik Nagarajan was on the topic Storytellying with brands. The panelists comprised of Starbucks director – marketing category loyalty digital at Tata Deepa Krishnan, ICICI Securities head marketing Deepak Saluja, aha head revenue & monetization Nitin Burman, Teamology Softech and Media Services Pvt Ltd growth & strategy Lawrence Suchita.

The panel kicked off with Nagarajan questioning other panelists on their favourite brand storytelling moments to which Saluja said, “So when you’re building a conversation, especially in a category, like mutual funds, where the genesis of the category over the decades has been in terms of new product offerings, which drew the attention of consumer, this was, for the first time that a brand was really looking at it in a different lens, on the category side, from a consumer side and from a grand setup. So we brought this learning into a narrative about how a father who’s been a budding cricket player, playing actively in Ranji Trophy had always dreamt of going to London and watching the matches live at lords, and how that entire dream is fueled or fulfilled by his son.”

Krishnan gave her thoughts on the art of storytelling and mentioned, “The first rule to follow is be clear of what your brand vision is. And stay true to that. Right. The second rule that I follow storytelling is what I’ve learned in my career in consulting earlier, and it is called the 99 per cent principle. The marketers are so self obsessed that we think the consumers are thinking about our brand 99 per cent of the time, because you may not think about your brand 99 per cent of the time. But if you can get your brand vision and story to match the 99 per cent that is important in their lives, then you have a storytelling kind of play right?”

Burman too commented on his favourite brand moment, “So we thought our whole brand storytelling during the launch has to be where Telugu people accept aha as their own brand, and not somebody who’s come from outside of the state. So we launched our segment borderless, which means it’s Maya. And that’s what is very well accepted by the people. Because the whole communication was created by the Telugu people, for the Telugu people.”

Suchita shared on the evolution of audience consuming content and said, “The evolution has been driven more with The fact that people’s interests have changed towards reading, I think India has always read, always read more. But now it sees more. So somewhere, when you actually come across the content, we see it is very emotional and secondly the content is very personal. And this kind of changes the whole storytelling experience.”

Mumbai: On a bright sunny day of 25 April, Indiantelevision.com’s event, The Content Hub, which took place at The Lalit, Mumbai saw the presence of many experts in the content space.

The fourth panel, which was moderated by Variety film trade journalist Naman Ramachandran on the topic – Creating Content: New Genres, New Stories & New Players. The panelists comprised of Jio Studios head originals Tejkarran Singh Bajaj, Applause Entertainment Ltd senior creative director Priya Jhavar, Banijay Asia business and content executive VP Mrinalini Jain, Victor Tango Entertainment founder director Vaibhav Modi, filmmaker and author Piyush Jha, Pocket Aces Dice Media studio head Vidyuth Bhandary.

The discussion kicked off with Ramachandran questioning the panel about short and long format contents, know-hows and trends of episodic shows and similar such stuff.

Bajaj said, “We’re tapping into regional literature, because that’s where really good writing is happening and we are taking the film writers slash long form writers to write in long format. Binge watching or episodic, it’s a completely different game. You just can’t put five stops in between the story and make it into five episodes. So yes, we need to learn from literature but we also have to give wings to the regional writers to ensure that they write long format.”

Adding on to it, Bhandary said,” We did an extremely heartwarming show called Ghar Waapsi on Hotstar. It was based out of Indore. So the whole thing is that you need to get your writers from there, you need to get your crew from there. We’re doing a South Indian show called Chikoo. Again, the entire crew, writing actors, everyone’s from there. So you have to make it authentic and luckily with Bombay, a lot of people from outside states are available here, or will have to bring them out here. Agreed with you, we have to get them authentic.”

Answering the question about dealing with the innovative practice of asking for a completely new unpublished story, Jha said, “You’re right, in the past few years, there has been a kind of an approach of just acquiring the book and getting it adapted. But we tried to break that and we believe that authors, long form, they’ve got an expertise out there. And we try to just kind of mold their work to the screen where those breaks, etc, then, but I think they are also trying to get a new kind of form of show, which can push the envelope.”

Speaking about new forms and innovation, Modi said, “You can’t change everything, but definitely have a clearly defined set of beliefs. We like to believe that if you have a voice as a storyteller, might as well make that voice count and address a few things that need addressing. The west has already started adapting something called cli-fi as a genre. So that’s one thing, finding your voice and addressing some things that need to be addressed. So, mental health, and a lot of other issues that need to be spoken about. The other thing is how we like to look at ourselves, we’ve always been trained or told that fiction or entertainment is a mirror to who we are.”

Answering the question on approaching completely new ideas from people who are completely new themselves, Jhavar said, “At applause, we are actually honestly listening to stories and pitches from everybody. We’re non discriminatory in that sense. We have so many Indias in India, we have the reach, the value and the reach of material is always going to stand out. I’m not entirely in agreement that we don’t have good writers. I think we do.”

Speaking about innovation, Jain said, “ We’re always looking to innovate. We’re always looking for any sort of innovation we have, because we feel, we have the ability to do non scripted stuff, the ability to do documents, the ability to do scripted, any thing that we’ve remotely like, as a story or a concept, I will say, we try to see if there is if we can make it in either of the three ways available to us, but always looking for anything that is interesting and innovative.”