Tag: FMCG

Brands bullish this festive season but not for Navratri

MUMBAI: Marketing mavens are aware that a majority of brand spending in India takes place between August and December every year because of a range of festivals that dot this period. It begins with Raksha Bandhan and chugs ahead with Ganesh Chaturthi and gathers steam in September with Navratri, Durga Pooja and Dussehra, only to move at a superfast speed during Diwali, until the calendar year ends. Indian consumers are in a celebratory mood, flush with cash, courtesy employment bonuses.

The past 10 months have, however, been different. The reason: the double whammy of demonetisation and the rollout of goods and services tax (GST) put the brakes on optimism. Both forced brand custodians to zip up their ad purses and postpone any spends until customers had money to splurge and the entire GST process – which commenced on 1 July 2017 – panned out.

Net result: even the months of August 2017 and early September 2017 have seen sedate brand activity. Questions are being asked whether marketers are ready to let their hair down during Navratri 2017 to get consumers back to spending on goodies ostentatiously?

Indiantelevision.com got in touch with a clutch of marketers and agency heads and the consensus was that a majority of national brands are going to go easy on both, Navratri and Dussehra, but they are going to go hell for leather during Durga Pooja and Diwali, allocating a large chunk of their ad and promotional budgets during these two periods.

Even in Gujarat, which normally goes into marketing overdrive during Navratri, there will be some amount of softness this year between 21-29 September.

“Navratri is clearly the biggest festival in Gujarat which is bigger than Diwali in terms of activations and promotions. It is a big period for Gujarati channels (national and local) as all major FMCG brands, automobile brands and local retailers want to make the most of this season but the spends will be soft this year because of GST and demonetisation,” says a media expert.

Navratri event organisers in Mumbai and Gujarat had to struggle this year to find sponsors mainly due to the fact that real estate and telecom categories, which otherwise are heavy advertisers during the nine-day festival, shied away, unlike previous years. The real estate sector was relatively cold as a majority of the developers are busy getting their houses in order to comply with the stringent requirements that new real estate regulations that have been thrust on them by RERA. Adding to developers’ relative lack of enthusiasm is the GST rollout.

Says a media buyer from a leading agency: “Navratri this year will see a lot of local and retail advertising rather than multinational players. This is a great opportunity for local and small brands to promote themselves on the venue or via various BTL activations at a reasonable cost which otherwise would be priced very high.”

Indeed, some savvy companies are stepping in to take advantage of the opportunity and spend on the various garba events that have been organised across Mumbai and Gujarat. Thousands gather on various grounds in these two states to dance to the rhythms of dandiya stars — Falguni Pathak, Parthiv Gohil, Preeti Pinky, among other. These events are normally aired on the local cable TV channels as well as on some of the handful Gujarati language channels.

Consider:

* ONE Broadband, Hinduja Group’s Flagship Company for Telecom Data Services for Consumer & Enterprise Segments will be offering unlimited 10mbs free Wi-Fi service to the devotees during Navratri season across Maharashtra and Gujarat.

* Residential, commercial and real estate company Ruparel Realty is the title sponsor for Mumbai’s Navratri Mahotsav 2017 while Colors Gujarati is the television partner for the event. Gujarati queen Falguni Pathak will be seen performing at the event for nine days.

* Ride hailing app Uber will provide lucky customers with a free gift hamper which consists of free passes for Radio Mirchi Rock n Dhol garba event in Gujarat along with two dandiya sticks.

* Online e-commerce platforms Flipkart, Amazon and Ebay have also announced their big sales to commence the festive season encouraging people to buy more products online. The sale on these platforms began yesterday and will go on for a week.

Dentsu Aegis Network chairman and CEO – South Asia Ashish Bhasin told Indiantelevision.com that there’s no reason to worry, however, as overall he sees the festive season spends this year growing 20 per cent over the last year even as the advertising budgets for the whole year will expand 10-12 per cent. What this means is that the last quarters of this year should contribute heavily, and help make up for the losses during the previous quarters.

Bhasin notes that consumer goods, automobiles and FMCG sector are going to go all-out with campaigns to seduce India’s fast-burgeoning middle class.

A media planner adds that brands are actually drawing up massive plans and there’s actually going to be a shower of spending (mainly by categories like automobiles, real estate, jewelry, electronics along with e-commerce) this festive season as most of them have got over the demonetisation and GST issues.

That should be music to most media and TV ad sales professionals who have been toiling away, struggling to meet their ad sales targets.

September 22, 2017
Truecaller claims 3X ad growth, VP cites Patanjali’s unprecedented rise

MUMBAI: Truecaller claims to have reached a new milestone as a mobile in-app publisher, achieving a record 200 million impressions in a single day.

The daily impression rate on Truecaller’s in-app advertising platform has grown by over 300 per cent in the past year. The monumental traction is a product of Truecaller’s innovation as a one-stop solution for communication, payments, and now, brand engagement. Real estate on Truecaller has appreciated to the extent that over 70% of existing advertisers have decided to continue to invest in Truecaller’s mobile advertising inventory. Truecaller’s direct-to-consumer connect has attracted new interest of brands across the spectrum of FMCG, consumer electronics, and automobiles from brands like Mondelēz, Samsung, Himalayan and Maruti among many more.

Truecaller VP sales and head of India operations Tejinder Gill said, “This shows that the mobile ad eco-system has an incredible potential in India. At Truecaller, we are constantly looking for innovative ways to add value to the lives of not only our customers, but our partners’ as well. With Patanjali, we saw a cult favorite brand that has witnessed unprecedented growth by offering a differentiated product.”

Patanjali, India’s homegrown leader in Ayurveda, leveraged Truecaller in a one-day app inventory takeover, resulting in a new benchmark for both Patanjali and Truecaller.

Patanjali’s digital agency MangoData co-founder and CEO Santosh Kumar said “What began as crafting an innovative campaign for Patanjali has surpassed our expectations in terms of both impressions delivered, which were upwards of 200 million and click-based engagement of over 430,000 in a single day. Leveraging the strong association customers have with Truecaller and supported by a 100 per cent share of voice on the platform, has helped us target the right customer with the right offering and narrative from our portfolio.”

August 24, 2017
Future Group launches premium gourmet gifting brand

MUMBAI: Future Consumer Limited the food and FMCG arm of Future Group launches a premium gourmet gifting brand – ‘Gruezi’, in partnership with ‘Chocolat Frey AG’ headquartered in Switzerland. Chocolat Frey AG is one of the world’s most premium chocolate manufacturer and is part of Migros Group. The brand name ‘Gruezi’ is inspired by the Swiss word for ‘hello’ which signifies the welcoming of new moments that will be etched in memories for life!

Gruezi offers pure Swiss chocolates crafted by a technique that has been mastered for over 200 years, with a unique blend of flavors, ranging from a crunch to mouthfuls of soft and delicious soft-fills – concepts inspired by various Swiss elements like the behemoth, the king of mountains, Matterhorn. Gruezi’s initial range of gourmet offerings include finest assortment of Swiss chocolates available in two special packs Gruezi Swiss Matterhorn Chocolates and Gruezi Assorted Centre Filled Chocolates.

Rahul Kansal says, “We are extremely excited to launch Gruezi, as it’s our first foray in the premium chocolates category. Gruezi is a gourmet gifting brand that is not limited to festivals or special celebrations. Instead, whenever the moment calls for expressing more than a casual gesture, Gruezi finds place. A perfect way to say hello to joy!”

Gruezi Swiss Matterhorn Chocolates are jagged peaks of velvety milk chocolate that sit around honey and almond nougat which make every bite worth savouring. Gruezi Assorted Centre Filled Chocolates include four indulging flavors such as Triangolo, Mandolina, Caramelita and Giandor. Both packs are priced at Rs. 450 per box and can be purchased from Foodhall, select Big Bazaar Gen Nxt, Big Bazaar and Nilgiris stores in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.

August 7, 2017
Top 10 television advertisers during first 24 weeks of 2017

BENGALURU: Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), Reckitt Benckiser (India) Ltd (RBIL) and Baba Ramdev’sPatanjaliAyurved Ltd (Patanjali) were the three top advertisers that have been present in all the 24 weekly lists of Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC). All the three players are from the FMCG genre.Overall, 27 advertisers have been present at least for one week in the BARC’s weekly lists of TOP 10 Advertiser Across Genre : All India (U+R) : 2+ Individuals.

HUL leads the pack by far with a total of 27,56,296 ad insertions during the 24 week period, followed by RBIL with 14,00,356 insertions. Patanjali with 5,68,023 insertions (just a fraction above 20 percent of HUL’s ad insertions) is third. Ad insertions by the HUL group would be much higher once the insertions by other companies associated with HUL are added.

The fourth largest advertiser during the period is confectionary giant Cadbury’s India Limited (Cadbury’s) which was present in BARC’s Top 10 advertisers lists for 23 of the first 24 weeks of 2017 – Cadbury’s had insertions of 5,26,685 during the period. HUL’s beverages associate – Brooke Bond Lipton India Limited (Brooke Bond) was fifth in the pecking order with 4,48,054 insertions during the 22 weeks that it was present in BARC’s weekly lists. It may be noted that the sum of insertions mentioned in this paper are the sum of only those numbers when they were present in BARC’s weekly lists of top 10 advertisers. The actual number of insertions will be much higher. Please refer to the figure below for a list of top 10 advertisers during the first 24 weeks of 2014, based on their presence in BARC’s weekly lists of top 10 advertisers

June 27, 2017
Telecast of Amul’s misleading frozen dessert ad suspended

MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court has directed popular FMCG brand Amul to suspend the telecast of the television commercial that showed frozen desserts in a negative light. The court has found the advertisement to be disparaging to HUL’s Kwality Walls brand having a market share of around 51 per cent.

Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) has submitted that the said commercial, along with its transcripts, depicted a child being discouraged from eating frozen dessert on the grounds that it contained vanaspati oil (which is adverse to health). Kwality, in its plaint, however, averred that its frozen desserts do not contain vanaspati, and are made using vegetable fat.

In March 2017, HUL had filed a suit before the Bombay High Court claiming that the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, which takes care of Amul’s marketing was spreading malicious information about its Kwality products. The court yesterday held that the ad showing the difference between frozen desserts and ice-cream amounted to slander.

The court, in its order, stated that Amul has been restrained from broadcasting, telecasting or otherwise howsoever communicating to the public or publishing two television commercials or any part or any other advertisement of a similar nature, denigrating or disparaging Kwality products, including frozen desserts.

HUL has also charged that the Amul TVC designed to mislead the public into believing that an entire class of products are frozen desserts, and are, therefore, unfit for consumption. According to HUL, a majority of Kwality products sold in India are classified as frozen desserts under the Food and Safety Standards Act, 2006.

While deciding the issue, Justice SJ Kathawalla delved into the difference between ice-cream and frozen desserts as per Regulation 2.1.7 of the Food Safety and Standards (Food Products Standards and Food Additives) Regulations, 2011. As per the Regulations, the distinguishing factor between the two is that ice creams must contain over 10% milk fat, whereas frozen desserts must contain over 10% total fat (i.e. milk fat and/or edible vegetable oil).

The law also distinguishes between edible vegetable oil, which the plaintiffs use in their products and hydrogenated vegetable oil, commonly referred to as Vanaspati. After seeing the ad, the court held, “The Defendants have therefore made a false representation to the consumers and also indulged in a negative campaign that no frozen dessert is pure, and only Amul ice cream is pure, as all frozen desserts contain Vanaspati, and are therefore inferior.”

The court also said that the disclaimer of the ad clarifying that “vanaspati” refers to “vegetable oil” was misleading. Moreover, the defendants had issued another ad replacing “vanaspati” with “vanaspati Tel” in the voiceover, which the court said made no difference whatsoever.

The defendants claimed that their TVCs were part of a campaign to educate the consumers about the difference, and were not targeted at denigrating the plaintiff’s products. Justice Kathawalla said: “Any campaign to educate the members of the public by placing before them the true and correct facts/ingredients used in a product should always be welcomed. However, no manufacturer can place misleading information before the consumers qua the product of his rivals, and thereby disparage/discredit/belittle such product including influencing the consumer not to buy the same in the garb of educating and/or bringing the correct facts before the members of the public…”

June 19, 2017

Huge data growth helped brands slightly, M&E confidence score 82%, finds Publicis’ Zenith

MUMBAI: Advertisers in the media & entertainment category are most confident about seeing growth in their category this year. They are closely followed by advertisers in pharmaceuticals & healthcare.

This is the key finding from Zenith’s new biannual client survey. Ahead of marketers attending Cannes Lions 2017, we wanted to find out what are the key drivers of growth and to assess how confident they are about business growth in their category.

Zenith asked clients how confident they were in the prospects for growth in their category this year. We then ranked each category on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 means everyone expects substantial decline, 100 means everyone expects substantial growth, and 50 means the average expectation is for no growth.

The results were as follows. Media & entertainment advertisers came out on top, with a score of 82.1, followed by pharmaceuticals &healthcare and alcohol. The lowest-scoring category was telecommunications, at 33.3, followed by food & drink and FMCG (non-food).

Ranking of categories by advertiser confidence in growth

Survey of 158 key Zenith clients around the world

Category	Confidence index	Category	Confidence index
1. Media & entertainment	82.1	7. Travel	61.4
2. Pharma/healthcare	70.3	8. Retail	60.0
3. Alcohol	70.0	9. FMCG (non-food)	55.7
4. Luxury	67.6	10. Financial/insurance	53.6
5. Beauty	67.2	11. Food & drink	48.4
6. Automotive/vehicles	63.6	12. Telecommunications	33.3

Key drivers of business growth

We then asked our clients to look at the drivers of business growth, ranking them according to how important they believed they were for their brand. From most important to least important, the factors were ranked as follows.

Ranking of contributing factors to business growth

Survey of 158 key Zenith clients around the world

1. Data & technology

2. Business transformation

3. New competitive positioning

4. Geographical expansion

5. Diversification

6. Automation

7. Mergers & acquisitions

The first three factors were ranked closely together, with quite a big gap between numbers 3 and 4. Adapting to the challenges of a transforming economy is clearly the main priority for advertisers.

Translating growth in data to business growth

We also asked clients how the huge increase in data has affected three areas of their business: buying efficiency, creating new insights into consumers, and generating profitable brand growth. For each area we gave them five options: data has made it more difficult, has had no effect, has slightly improved it, has greatly improved it, or has revolutionised it. And for each area there was one overwhelmingly popular response, with 50% or more of responses. These were as follows:

The huge increase in data has allowed us to make small improvements in buying efficiency.
It has allowed us to create much better insights.
It has improved brand growth slightly.

So while most clients agree that data has significantly improved their consumer insights, it has not yet transformed their buying efficiency or brand growth.

“Brands have the opportunity to harness data and technology to transform their businesses and accelerate brand growth, but are having difficulty in turning theory into practice,” said Vittorio Bonori, Zenith’s Global Brand President. “Agencies must step up and work in partnership with their clients to unlock the true potential of this revolution in communications.”

June 16, 2017

TV in India may grow 10.3%, overall AdEx by 11.5% in ’17: IPG Magna

MUMBAI: India is recovering from the aftereffects of demonetisation, and the currency deficit faced during this period has helped the country leap frog towards a lesser cash economy.

The country is set to move towards a uniform tax regime with Goods & Services Tax (GST), effective July 2017, while this fuels growth it is likely to create a fleeting disruption in the short term when the industry realigns and adapts to the new tax structure. GDP in real terms is estimated to grow +7.2% in 2017 compared to +6.8% in 2016 according to International Monetary Fund (IMF). Within the next decade India will gallop to become one of the largest consumer markets in the world according. Rising affluence, ease of doing business, urbanization and enabling infrastructure will contribute to this status.

Advertising revenue which is accounts for 0.38% of GDP (gross domestic product) is likely to grow CAGR of +12.6% to touch INR 992 bn by 2021. Within Advertising, offline is estimated to grow at a CAGR of +9.7%, while digital will grow at +25.5% CAGR in the next five years. Mobile is projected to overtake desktop by 2020. Television will still be the largest media in 2021 with a market share of 39%.

In 2017, Adex is estimated to grow +11.5% to touch INR 611bn, predicts Magna, the intelligence, investment and innovation strategies agency of IPG Mediabrands. Ad spends will be driven by sectors like social, fin-tech, and payment banks, telecom service, content distribution platforms etc., in addition to FMCG, Auto and Ecommerce.

Television, the foundation of advertising spends, continues to dominate the industry with its market share of 41% and will grow+10.3%. With BARC release of rural audience data, new revenue stream in the form of FTA channels have gained significance. Quality localized content and HD experience will help regional TV to keep their audiences hooked. Sporting leagues outside of Cricket is finding way to generate mass involvement and Television will play a larger role. Star Sports Tamil demonstrating tangible results will increase fandom for local/state level formats.

Print in India has been successful in guarding its revenues well with revenue expected to grow by +5.7% and India is one of the large markets where circulation is still growing thanks to rising literacy. The second biggest category with 36% share despite growing is losing its share to Digital year-on-year. Traditional sectors like auto, telecom and education will contribute to ad spend growth. After a gap of 3 years, the category will invigorate with the release of new IRS and help publishers realize merit based value. Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) measuring digital consumption will lend authority and help in monetization. We expect the ad spends to grow beyond the estimated +5.7% in 2017 thanks to government’s focused campaign to popularize their marquee initiatives.

Digital will grow +28%, and, within digital, mobile is driving spends with a growth rate of +65.7%. The launch of 4G triggered low price data products there by increase in usage. With improved speed Video, native and customized content has tremendous potential to grow. BARC putting out a road map on digital panel takes India one step closer to a robust measurement not only for digital but also to showcase capabilities in incremental metrics. With expanding content library, OTT viewing is no more restricted to national languages. Aggressive push by Amazon and Netflix to address the original content gap will attract larger base of audience. With mobile increasingly being the choice of access, traffic will be higher than desktop resulting in advertising propelled by mobile which is estimated to expand at CAGR of 48%. E-commerce, Telecom, Auto, BFSI, Durables are large contributors to the revenue.

Radio reach with around 150 new frequencies sold during phase III is set to deepen further and will help generate incremental revenue. We estimate radio to grow +13% and continue to grow at CAGR of 13.8% in the next 5 years. Currently the measurement is limited to 4 cities, widening this will help radio increase its share from the current 4%

OOH will grow +12% in 2017. Technology integration will increase effectiveness and helps DOOH to drive ad spends. Urbanization in the form of new Metro lines and smart cities, modernization of Indian Railways and their new advertising policy etc., will provide opportunities for a planned development of quality assets and also push the industry to innovate and move beyond billboards. Regional cinema is pushing boundaries to outdo Bollywood cinema which augurs well for the industry.

Table 1 – Media owner revenue by category in INR Cr Net

Table 2 – Traditional Vs Digital Adex growth rate

Table 3 – Mobile gaining shares over desktop

June 16, 2017
eBay’s Ravi Sekhar KV is MEC India’s chief digital officer, will report to MD T Gangadhar

MUMBAI: MEC India, a leading media agency, announced the appointment of Ravi Sekhar KV as Chief Digital Officer. Sekhar’s role at MEC will be to drive the agency’s end-to-end digital service. He will be based in Mumbai and will report to T Gangadhar, Managing Director, MEC South Asia.

Sekhar is an avid technologist and has been closely involved in the setting up of several start-ups. He recently founded selekt.in, an artificial-intelligence-powered product discovery engine. In his previous role, he headed digital, marketing technology and retention marketing at eBay India. During his stint at eBay, he led first-of-its-kind innovations such as eBay Daily, a tailored shopping experience offering FMCG and gourmet products and a third party affiliate cash back programme.

Speaking on the appointment, T. Gangadhar, MD, MEC South Asia said, “From my conversations with him, I find Ravi to be an exciting combination of passion, exuberance and expertise. Given his strong background, I have no doubt he will help scale our digital service even further. I am looking forward to working (and learning) from him.”

Sekhar also has a strong background in FMCG and telecom and has had stints with CavinKare and Nokia.

Ravi Sekhar KV said, “The industry is witnessing exciting growth. Both, traditional and online companies are acknowledging the impact of data and digital marketing on their business. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to build the relevant technology stacks. Given the scale at which MEC operates, I look forward to collaborating with our teams in India and across the global network”.

May 16, 2017
Social Samosa award-winners announced

MUMBAI: Social Samosa, one of India’s leading news aggregator on social and digital media industry, has announced the winners of its first edition of Best Social Media Brand Awards, via a Facebook Live stream event.

The first edition of the awards saw entries from more than 130 brands across 16 categories which include Automobile, Cement, B2B, Beauty, BFSI, eCommerce, Education, FMCG, Food & Beverage, Healthcare, Media, Real Estate, Retail, Tourism & Hospitality, Technology, and Telecom.

The journey of creating this formidable benchmark for the social media industry involved a pragmatic analysis of the nominated brands’ engagement on key social media platforms using Unmetric, a rigorous evaluation across parameters from our distinguished Jury Members and Social Media Voting powered by Newsfeed to adjudge the brand’s popularity among social media savvy users.

Social Samosa head Hitesh Rajwani said, “We thank all our participants and winners from the entire team at Social Samosa. We hope to scale to larger heights in our next edition.”

Dentsu Aegis Network chairman & CEO – south Asia and Posterscope chairman Ashish Bhasin said, “The quality of their work was good and the jury had a tough time choosing the winners.”

Hungama Digital Services shared CEO & CCO Carlton D’Silva, commented, “Digital Advertising being a part of our daily lives, most of the entries seemed very familiar to me but I was enlightened by the thinking behind most of the winning campaigns. I particularly liked the Ola and the Zomato Campaigns.”

Brand curator Lata Subramanian said, “I hope that these brands serve as case studies to help other marketers understand the role social media can play in building brands.”

Social Samosa had partnered with Unmetric to power the Best Social Media Brands Index, Treize Communications for media outreach and Newsfeed SmartApps for online voting.

May 2, 2017
Top television advertisers in first quarter of 2017

BENGALURU: The Music genre represented solely by Indian music company Super Cassettes Industries (Super Cassettes) was the third largest TV advertiser in terms of ad insertions during the first quarter of 2017 (weeks 1 to 13, Saturday 31 December 2016 to Friday 31 March 2017).

The biggest TV advertising genre is of course the FMCG genre followed by the confectionary genre represented also by a sole player – Cadburys India Ltd., (Cadburys). As a matter of fact, all the genres except for FMCG were represented by one advertiser only in the weekly top 10 list.

Analysis of Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) weekly data of top 10 Advertiser Across Genre: All India (U+R): 4+ Individuals, shows that 18 advertisers from six genres were present at least once (frequency) in the thirteen weekly lists of top 10 advertisers. The author has categorised advertisers into the following major genres: FMCG, Confectionary, Music, Online, Politics and F&B.

This paper must be read with a caveat: It deals only with the players present in Broadcast Audience Research Councilof India (BARC) top 10 lists of advertisers and brandsper week. The sums/percentages of other advertisers/brands other than those indicated in BARC’s top 10 lists have not been considered/mentioned in this paper during the period under consideration and those numbers could be more/higher. Combined weekly insertions represent the total number of insertions of an advertiser or a brand or a genre during the eleven week period under consideration in this paper.

Cadburys was present in the top 10 advertisers list during all the first 13 eleven weeks of 2017 with combined weekly insertions of 3,20,084.

Super Cassettes was present in BARC’s list for 10 of the first 13 weeks of 2017. FMCG companies occupied 100 of the possible 130 spots during the period. The Food & Beverages genre represented again by a sole entrant – Coca Cola India Ltd was present in the list for 3 weeks, the online genre represented by Amazon Online India Pvt Ltd (Amazon) and the politics genre represented by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were present in the list for two weeks each.

Please refer to the figure below for the combined weekly impressions of each genre list during the first quarter of 2017.

18 advertisers were present in the weekly top 10 advertisers list. Five were present in the top 10 advertisers list for all the first 13 weeks of the year. Among them, FMCG major Hindustan Lever Limited (Lever) was by far the largest advertiser that was present at the pole position during all the first 13 weeks of 2017. Lever had combined weekly insertions of 13,83,094 during the period under consideration. FMCG player Reckitt Benckiser (India) Ltd (Reckitt Benckiser) was the second largest advertiser during the first thirteen weeks of 2017 with 6,18,910 ad insertions followed by PatanjaliAyurved Limited with 3,60,911 insertions. Confectionary player Cadburys was fourth, while FMCG player was Procter and Gamble.

Please refer to the chart below.

April 12, 2017