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  • ‘In-house researches are very questionable’ : Abraham Thomas – Red FM COO

    ‘In-house researches are very questionable’ : Abraham Thomas – Red FM COO

    Sitting in a make shift office with everything from ‘superhit music’ to the constant chatter of the Red FM staff around thrown in, I sit down to interview Red FM COO Abraham Thomas who mentions that the brand new FM station office will be up and ready in a few weeks. The station has every reason to celebrate – the recently declared ILT results show Red FM at number 2 in Delhi and number 3 in Mumbai.

    Indiantelevision.com’s Sujatha Sreedharan catches up with Abraham Thomas to understand the story behind those numbers and what is up the Red sleeve for the year ahead.

    Excerpts:

    The ILT 2007 Round 1 numbers threw up a surprise. Despite all the hype and hoopla around radio players, the listenership has actually seen a decline. What do you think are the reasons for this?
    Although the ILT numbers are more or less in line with our in house research, I am clearly surprised as well that despite all the high profile launches in Phase II, programming innovations and advertising concepts, listenership has dropped by 6 to 7 points in Mumbai and Delhi. I don’t know whether it’s the anomaly in sampling or data, but I would have expected it to at best stay flat. There has been a lot of effort to increase listenership, so these numbers have definitely come as a surprise.

    With radio, the basic question that arises is about ILT and its methodology. I know that people are suddenly distancing themselves from the results or abandoning the data. But my point is that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. There are shortcomings in the ILT – the MRUC has not really been proactive and has not been looking at the broadcasters’ concerns as they should.

    More than a year ago, I had raised the issue of cross checks. A couple of suggestions I had passed on included – a simple cross check whereby after the sampler is asked ‘what radio station are you tuned in to’, also ask him to give the name of a radio jockey from that station or a radio show on the station he listens too. Even if one of these questions is answered correctly, one can actually validate that data. MRUC agreed and said that these suggestions would be implemented but again they have gone back to their old ways.

    The other suggestion we had made is that the IRS use mastheads in its survey. Radio surveys can also include audio mastheads or get the users to identify a stations’ brand jingle or ask them to identify a station’s logo id. It’s not very difficult to do such a survey. So I am extremely disappointed with the lack of any user interactive activity.

    So yes, there are shortcomings but I maintain that these are early days still. I’ve always believed that the trend across the different waves tell a story. And it is these trends that we should look at.

    Are there other methodologies that we could look at? What works internationally?
    We could look at some of the international methodology. Some of the players are now advocating what is called ‘diary method’. In this method the smaller player might be at a slight advantage as the sampler who is impaneled is is forced to maintain the dairy and is therefore more conscious of the radio listened to. However, the shortfall here is that you are not capturing the information when you are listening to it. You’re filling in the data when someone comes to collect it. So it still goes back to ‘the top of the mind’ function.

    But I still believe it works because you are conscious of what you are listening to. You can also tackle the shortcoming by collecting the diaries twice a week. It will be that much closer to the point of listening and therefore the errors could get eliminated. Like I mentioned, the small players might get some benefit since they will be listed. All in all, I am saying that we have to have a more robust method.

    You spoke about players who have disowned ILT and rely on their own listenership tracks. Isn’t that an unhealthy trend?
    I am not against in house research. We do a lot of our own in house research for our programmes and to understand our market. The fact is that when radio players disown a currency like ILT, it is a short sighted approach and we are doing a lot of harm to the medium. If you want advertisers to put in more money, you have to allow them to justify this ‘more money’. For this you need a common currency. Overall in house researches and listenership tracks are very questionable. You might call it Maruti or Indica or whatever it is you call it, but bear in mind that you are doing more harm to the medium than good.

    Because of this emerging scenario, people tend to rubbish all the research. We have to collectively arrive at one common industry currency and that is the only way to grow the ad pie. In fact that is the only way all of us can survive.

    So for a two-month-old player to disown a listenership track is very shortsighted. I don’t think they are doing justice to their own medium.

    The branding story for Red FM with its ‘baajate raho’ attitude has worked for it. Is aggressive branding a need for radio players to stand out from the cluttered space?
    Has the ‘bajaate raho’ branding worked for us? Yes, of course it has. But it’s a combination of different things. I think one of our hallmarks is that we are a ‘mass player’ doing the same things as other stations but trying to do it differently.

    We’ve been consistent with our music. We’ve been consistent with our attitude – both on air and off air. Whether its our RJs or the aggressive on ground activity we get into, they are all in sync with our branding. In fact on ground activation has played a big role for us. We’ve been visible in local trains, buses, cabs, at shopping malls or traffic signals- every time you’ve seen us there is that single consistent thought on ‘local issues’ that has made us stand out. Our music is consistently super hit. We don’t play different music at different day parts. This absolute consistency with the Bajaate Raho attitude – RJs, music, advertising- on air and off air- has really been a driving point for us helping us stand out from the clutter.

    Mumbai plus Delhi – which are what the advertisers really look at at least for now- we have managed to stay at a number two (Delhi) and close to the competition at number three (Mumbai). In Delhi especially we lead the competition by at least 2 lakh (200,000) listeners. We expect to increase that lead in the next wave.
    ‘Packaging by definition means discounting’

    The branding effort by radio players is evident; but when it comes to the differentiation factor it becomes elusive? Adult Contemporary Hits (AC), Contemporary Hits Radio (CHR), super hit only ….radio players may throw this in as differentiators. But is this the only differentiation point we have?
    Firstly and strategically as a brand we look at consumer benefit on two levels. At one level we are offering them a very functional benefit – Entertainment. Music, cricket, Bollywood, music and even the local programming all of these form part of mass entertainment that we look at. In this stage we have decided to be a mass market player and therefore we have decided to stick with content which is not very different from what others are playing.

    Within music, like I mentioned, 24 hours a day we play the same music. It’s like a hot water strategy, you open the hot water tap and that’s what you get all the time. There’s no retro at night and house wife in the afternoon kind of music. We also promise that every song we play is not just a hit, it is a super hit and we arrive at that through our research.

    This is very different from our competition which no doubt plays a variety of music but it may be a hit song, or an unheard of before song or even a tomorrow’s hit. We are very clear that we play the super hits of today.

    We also believe that there is an aggressive differentiation on the emotional level- through content and packaging. That is the differentiation best exemplified by our ‘baajate raho’ line. If there is a topic that touches or concerns a common man in that city, we will play it, we will bajaao it. Clearly over the last year and a half, bajaate raho has become a local parlance. We have Bollywood coming on air and saying ‘please don’t bajaao us’, we have cricketers saying ‘you bajaaoed us today’. We have on air properties like Angry Ganesan, Kamla ka Hamla and Sharmajis ‘bajaaoing’ different issues. We have created a personality around Red FM.

    This functional and emotional benefit combined together is what sets us apart from competition. We also believe that this is a rule of three. The top three players will make most of the money. If you want to be in the top two or top three then you have to be mass market.

    If you are willing to be a niche, then you concentrate on different genres of music and programming formats. So you have to decide whether you want to position yourself as a mass player or a niche player. We clearly decided to be a mass player and we are gunning for leadership. Niches can be profitable too, provided you find your niche and market it aggressively.

    In a three to four player market, radio stations staying ‘mass’ may have seemed plausible. But in a multiple player city like Mumbai and Delhi, will it help to stay ‘mass’.
    In our case, we’ve consciously tried to build personalities within the radio with RJs like Malishka and Nitin who are likely to bajaao you if you meet them on the streets or within the studio. So our RJs, music, cricket will help us stay mass and we will try and build a personality for our station to stand out.

    There are format radios coming up that claim more music less talk or on the other hand talk radio. What’s in store for these stations?
    There are radio stations that are looking to play Hindi plus English music and for sure they will get their audience. You can go entirely English or play regional music – Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi – you can differentiate on the context of language. You can also create a differentiation in terms of the content – for example talk radio.

    It is possible that these players might struggle in the beginning to monetize their content. While the top three will run away with all the money, the rest will find it better to define their target and then it depends on how well you service your segment.

    You can be a comfortable niche and make money. I believe that within a year or two radio stations and their audiences will get more defined. People will know where to go for what kind of music. One thing is very clear. You cannot be all things to all people. The leader who came into the market first, positioned himself very consciously.

    The radio entrants now will be forced to sharply focus their audience. The flip side of focus is that you have to give away one part. You decide your turf and then you focus.
    Within the mass space – 70 to 80 percent of the ad pie will be taken away by the top three.

    With the sheer number of players entering the markets, is there a fear that the space is getting cluttered or there are chances of a consolidation happening anytime soon?
    That is not what international trends show us. There are other cities in the world which have a number of stations catering to different tastes. There is a space for more stations to come up. But one of the reasons why we are still not getting a sense of differentiation is also because it is not possible to have more than one brand in the same city. When stations are allowed that there will be greater branding as well more genres of radio operating in the space. For now, since you are allowed only one station you want to be the biggest and the best.

    Given these constraints, where do you go from here?
    We have decided to be an entertainment station and if we have decided to be in the entertainment space then we have to work around these parameters. If we want to get into news and current affairs, then those are additional avenues. If cricket commentary was to be allowed tomorrow and I want to carry it on my existing station, I would have to do that at the cost of my music. There will be incremental new players who will come in and take those slots.

    But currently we look at a void in Bollywood entertainment and we are filling up that space. But the regulatory policies are fairly good and we are happy the way we are progressing for now.

    Almost every radio player says that – very happy with the way things are…
    If you were part of the Phase I, paying those exorbitant fees, you would be very happy with the playing field today as well.

    Non traditional advertising or activation units may be the new mantra but radio players have identified its benefits pretty early on. But where does it go from here?
    If you look at the three media- print, television and radio – there is a very distinct line dividing content and advertising. In television, you might blur these lines with programme placement and contests but in radio it is a seamless medium.

    Advertisers have been asking to be included into radio content a lot more, without being too obtrusive. Advertisers then started asking us to help them with 360 degree solutions for some of their products. We had a Ford Fiesta come to us and say that we have a car parked at a mall, can you have an RJ come down and do some gig around it.

    More and more people are asking that extra bang for the buck. This is the genesis of activation. It has also helped that advertisers have complained that there is a lack of a single, credible agency to carry out its promotions nationally. This is where we step in.

    Red Activ works on two premises- we build properties on which multiple brands can be built. The 93.5 Car rally worked that way. We also do single brand activation, where we look at solutions for clients. It is a natural extension for us and our medium is used to drive footfall for the client.
    In this advertiser driven scenario, do you think having a station presence across the country would help. Would you look at scaling up?
    The activation is an idea business. It is about an idea which the brand can then ride. Radio is a medium between the idea and the operation. It is driven from the fact that I have an idea, not that I have a radio station and therefore I look at activation.

    Sure it’s an advantage if you have a station in that city so that you can leverage the local market as well.
    On the same note, some radio players believe that the success of a radio station is in leading a particular city not in its scale.
    Fact is if you want to reach your audience and advertiser in a particular city, you have to be relevant in that city; you should connect in that city. This is the basic premise on which the advertisers work. I don’t want to be a number 6 player in Pune; I want to be a number one or two in any market.

    That is the first factor. Then is the issue of packaging. If I am in twenty cities then it is easier for me to package it in all these cities collectively. I believe I am number six in 45 cities; therefore I give you a discount of 10 rupees. But what is your relevance in priority markets? It is the priority markets like Mumbai and Delhi that sets the trend.

    Packaging by definition means discounting. In our media industry, people don’t package their media collectively. They will sell television separately, radio separately and print separately.

    We believe that we have to sell premium. You can’t just fall back on sheer scale; you have to be relevant in each city.

    But please bear in mind, that at the end of the day, packaging means discounting.

    Considering that the Phase II cities are mostly non metros, are advertisers even excited about this kind of packaging?
    The non metros opening up are relevant to sectors like FMCG or telecos but the bulk of the advertising is still restricted to the top 8 metros. What happens is in the smaller markets it is the local advertising that will have a dominant role.

    So while in the larger cities, 70 percent is corporate advertising and 30 percent is local, in non metros the story will be reverse. Besides the smaller markets are markets of tomorrow, while these are markets of today. So yes, you will have to invest in the markets of tomorrow as well.

    They will create new advertisers and pull advertising away from local media.

    You’ve been called a reminder medium, a secondary medium, an incremental medium. But are you still playing second fiddle to mainstream mediums?
    Right now we get three percent of the advertising pie, while internationally that number is closer to a 6 to 8 percent. In Sri Lanka, the radio advertising amounts to almost 20 percent. Unless the share becomes about 8 to 10 percent, it is not viable for the advertiser and we understand that.

    Secondly in other countries, radio evolved and developed before television came in. In India, it is the reverse. There is a lot of television hangover that is happening. Until recently, the creative agency, the client and the planner were more worried about meeting their objectives in the primary market – television and print. In radio, they invariably did not have the time to create ads for the medium and would pass off television jingles to play on the radio station as well.

    Lastly and more critically, there is not enough information to justify the advertiser’s faith in the medium. We’ve spoken about the methodology, it encourages confusion. Unless you get a currency where advertisers can confidently say ‘yes I can put my money over here and this is the reason I want to do so’ the ad pie will not grow.

    But it is changing. Brands are being launched on radio. We’ve created a creative solutions team within our station that works for various clients – we say that don’t give us those television commercials, give us a brief and we will create an ad that is more relevant to the medium.

    But data that justifies the spend is a big concern. Most radio players however look at this as an advantage to pick and fight over each other instead of viewing it as an industry issue. They look at it and say … ‘good!let the small players bleed; we will look at how to milk this best’. There is a bit of a short term consideration. It will be a while before this matures into a more robust industry body.

    What would the road map for Red FM look like in the coming year??
    Radio is projected to grow rapidly. The growth however is more geographic at this stage. Within the city, the growth is encouraging but at a slow pace.

    In our case, we realized that a lot of our listeners are connected to our personalities, our RJs, our properties like Angry Ganesan or Kamla and therefore we have made them available to download on the mobile phone. We launched an initiative called the Red Mobile. We work with mobile2win and you can download all these properties for a price. That’s a logical extension. We are also looking at our net presence. In fact our site should be up this month. It will be interactive – celeb chats, blogs, trivia – you will find them all.

    Right now of course we are looking at cricket. We have contests, tie ups and loads of prizes. As part of this initiative we have a tie up with Sports Bar at Phoenix Mills in Mumbai. We plan to extend this to other cities as well.

    Radio is no longer a passive medium. It is now well and truly an active medium both for the listener and the advertiser. By the end of this year we will look at local advertisers and how to target them as well.

    But bottom-line – We are gunning for leadership.
  • ‘Our aim is to come up with total telecom solutions’ : Rajiv Agarwal – Essar Telecom Retail

    ‘Our aim is to come up with total telecom solutions’ : Rajiv Agarwal – Essar Telecom Retail

    The mobile retailing space is hotting up in India. Essar Telecom Retail, an Essar group company has entered mobile retailing in India with the launch of its “The MobileStore” outlets across the country. The basic aim is to be a complete telecom solutions provider.

     

    It has tied up with global media firm Virgin to provide the backend solutions like customer care. This marks Virgin’s entry into India’s burgeoning mobile sector. Virgin founder Richard Branson believes that this is an opportunity for the two parties to fundamentally change the face of mobile retailing in India.

     

    Indiantelevision.com caught up with Essar Telecom Retail CEO Rajiv Agarwal for a quick chat on the plans.

     

    Excerpts:

    Could you give me an overview of Essar’s mobile retailing initiative?
    This is a chain of retail stores that will serve as one stop shop for the needs of the mobile consumer. We are looking to fill a void that is present in the retail market. Today we have international players on the operators side, on the manufacturers side. But on the retail side we do not have an organised player. The customer is the most important element as all these people are working for him/her.

    As the number of mobile subscribers, users becomes more and more the market is becoming more complicated, which has created a void. Our aim is to come up with total telecom solutions for the customer.

    What are the different products and services being offered?
    One can buy cell phones, get repair services, do bill collection. We also have value added services like ringtones. We have media services like games, DTH connections, ipods, cameras. All are fast moving.

    What is the synergy that the group has in setting up telecom retail?
    Essar has decided to be in retailing in all their core businesses. We have been in telecom over the last 12 years. Our aim is to get closer to the customer. We have knowledge and awareness about telecom.

    As per research, what does the mobile user expect from a mobile retail chain and how is Essar going about fulfilling his/her needs?
    The mobile customer is looking for a range of products that he can touch and feel. He/she wants a store that is next to his house. He wants value for money, after sales service.

    Why did you decide against going the franchise route for your stores?
    There would have been the risk of our brand value being diluted. Also you have to manage many entrepreneurs if you walk down that road. This is a business where you cannot allow your service proposition to get diluted.

    The franchise route would have meant that there would have been no difference between us and any other mobile store.
    ‘We have media services like games, DTH connections, ipods, cameras. All are fast moving‘

    Given that Indians are an extremely price sensitive won’t it be difficult for mobile retail to make a margin and have sustained revenue?
    That is the case for any product. We have developed our business model keeping this in mind.

    What is the investment being made and how many stores are being set up?
    In the next three years we are setting up 2,500 stores at an investment of Rs 1,250 crores (Rs 12.5 billion) across 600 cities.

    Over 70 stores have already been launched in places like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad. In the next six to eight weeks we will have opened up another 100 stores. In the next six months we would be operating 700 stores.

    The stores are in three formats – large (1,000-1,500 sq ft), medium (800-1,000 sq ft) and compact (200-500 sq ft). The ratio being identified is 20:60:20 across large, medium and compact stores respectively.

    We are looking at a breakeven of three years for the business. The stores will cost between Rs 500,000 – Rs 5 million each to set up.

    What are the factors looked at to select each location?
    You look at places where customer footfalls are high. This could be in a mall or on a busy street. We will have the shop in shop concept to a certain extent going forward. Around 15-20 per cent of the stores will be in Metros.

    In terms of revenue how much comes in from where and who are the companies you have tie-ups with?
    Handsets contribute to 75 per cent of our revenues. We have tie-ups with all the major manufacturers like Nokia, Motorola, Sony. Mobile repairs are our core area. We have trained people in our stores who can look after the problem. We have straight tie-ups with the manufacturers and operators.

    We have a tie-up with Mauj Telecom for mobile games. For DTH there is Tata Sky, Dish TV. There are also opportunities for in-store advertising and merchandising.

    Could you talk about the back end solutions that have been put in place?
    We have a tie-up with Virgin. They bring retail knowledge in terms of softer skills in terms of customer relationship management. The deal is for brand licensing, technical and consultancy services.
    Virgin will provide their expertise in the areas of branding, marketing, customer care, store operations and staff training.

    We chose Virgin as that brand stands for good quality, brilliant customer service, innovation, fun and good value.

    Finally what marketing activities are being done to create awareness?
    We are airing ads during the broadcast of the cricket World Cup. A large portion of mobile users will be watching the event. We will also be doing a lot of print and outdoor activities.
  • ‘CNN is an American-owned news channel, but we are not America-centric’ : Rena Golden – CNN International senior vice president

    ‘CNN is an American-owned news channel, but we are not America-centric’ : Rena Golden – CNN International senior vice president

    A little girl from a small town in Bihar who migrated from India to the US when she was just six years old, Rena Golden is today at the very top rung of the hierarchy at global news major CNN International. As senior vice president, she visited India this week to announce the latest edition of “Eye on India”, focussed this time on the youth power of the country.

    Credited by her colleagues with amazing skills, journalistic and managerial, driving the world’s largest news broadcasting company CNN from just an all-American channel (“I joined 21 years ago when people used to call CNN Chicken Noodle News!”), to an international one reaching 2 billion viewers across 200 countries, she still retains a disarming level of simplicity.

    It is perhaps natural that an American of Indian origin would also be the head of CNN’s Diversity Committee, ensuring that community parity is maintained not just within the organisation but also in the dissemination of news.

    Golden, who studied in two universities in North Carolina, graduating in English with Honours (“My father wanted me to be a doctor, but I wanted to study English”) and started working with CNN from 1985, spoke to Indiantelevision.com’s Sujit Chakraborty on the present status and future plans of CNN.

    Excerpts:

    You have a large hand in shaping the strategic direction of CNN. What is the most significant area you are looking into at the moment?
    I think it is expansion of news beyond the television sphere. We are on the Internet, mobile phones… I think what CNN is interested in becoming is your news source, on whatever platform it may be… your phone, your Blackberry… We want to become your news information source and travel with you, wherever you are.

    CNN’s news website is a tremendous success which attracts a billion users every year. And CNN International has just launched its news service on mobile phone. We are also looking at video on demand and IPTV… we want to be platform agnostic.

    How is IPTV doing in America… there is content available on that platform here in India as well, but the problem is we do not have downloading technology or bandwidth?
    I think even now in the US market the bandwidth is still not there, but the market is growing in South Korea, in Hong Kong and in some of the Nordic countries in Europe, where we can stream the CNN news channel completely on mobile phones. We are still not there on that platform in the US, but I think the important thing is to have your foot in all the areas. CNN is known for that and one of the areas we are looking at is (improving) technology in news gathering.

    That is my second question, in fact. You also deal with the technology of news gathering?
    Yes, for instance, earlier, when we would go for coverage, say in India or the war in Iraq, we would have to travel with 30 suitcases of equipment. Now, thanks to CNN working with Sony, with Panasonic, and other organisations, we have cameras that fit in a suitcase, which you can take as your carry-on luggage.

    When we went to North Korea, we could move in easily and cover news in a much easier manner, which is often cheaper.

    What are the latest innovations and what are the next technological frontiers in news gathering and dissemination?
    Things are getting smaller and smaller… we are looking at shooting footage on a mobile phone. Only last week, we used a Nokia mobile phone and went “live” on CNN. You don’t have to book satellite space. You can just dial into the CNN offices in Hong Kong or Atlanta, and stream news live, so technology is getting smaller and mobile.

    CNN has more than once made public its ambitions to go regional and local. But at least in the context of the Indian subcontinent it has not happened. And now with the explosion in television news in the country, it looks like it never will. I can see your CNNj in Japan, then Turkish and Korean CNN, so why not in India?
    OK, what we have done in India goes beyond what we have done in some of the other regions. We have partnered with IBN and additionally, we have CNN International which covers India not just for Indians but for the rest of the world. Our partnership with CNN-IBN is less than a year old but it has emerged as the number one news channel in this country. That partnership is as strong as what we have in some other regions, say in Turkey where we have tied up with a media channel that broadcasts CNN in Turkish.

    I think there are different models for different markets and the model that we have for the Indian market… Wow! I mean we couldn’t have imagined this. There could be a partnership with some Hindi channel… I am not ruling that out, but what we need is as strong a partner as we have in CNN-IBN.

    We do not have anything to announce here (in terms of a regional channel) so far. We believe in having local partners and we would not do that in India and open a Hindi channel for instance, without a strong local partner. Local partners understand the country much better… So what you see, this partnership with CNN-IBN, is one of our proudest achievements.

    Chris Cramer had told us last year that BBC has a certain Mark Tully factor advantage in India. For the first time though, now both CNN and BBC can be said to running neck-and-neck. It’s been a long while coming but don’t you think it has come too late in the day because of the way Indian news channels have captured virtually all the mind space?
    Sixty years… not just Mark Tully… I think it is a huge association.

    I think also right from the days when we were ruled by the British there was some association, so what do you feel you are looking at here to change that?
    This is the only market where BBC leads the CNN. I think you just put your finger on that. India has a long historic association with Britain and BBC, especially BBC radio, which was here decades before CNN even came to the market. I respect the BBC, no doubt about that.

    But where CNN excels is in breaking news… that’s our DNA, the DNA of CNN-IBN. We also don’t have a British style of presentation, a British view of the world. We have journalists from 50 different nationalities covering news for us. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for BBC, but I think CNN has very successfully differentiated itself.

    Unlike a few years ago, when even a major train accident here would not be covered on BBC or CNN, there is a lot of India on these channels now. But I also feel that there are documentaries that need to be made on India. What are the kinds of documentaries you think CNN ought to do on India in the near future? Do you have a kind of road map for that?
    I am glad you brought up that question. CNN has a documentary division, and one recent documentary was on Britain’s Muslim population. We also have a couple of them from Iraq and from Africa, etc. We are also doing documentaries with foreign filmmakers. We have partnered with a filmmaker from Sierra Leon who has done five or six films on the major issues of Africa. That gives us the opportunity to get into some of the under-reported stories of the world. So we are looking at filmmakers to partner with for making documentaries.

    But having said that, the important thing to remember is that we are not a documentary organisation, not a documentary channel. Our first and foremost work is 24-hour news. We believe in context, not only what’s happened but why it has happened.

    Everyone knows now India is changing, especially in the economic and knowledge sectors. What are the specific areas of change that excite you the most and why?
    I think it is the influence that Indians are now having in the diaspora… and not just the diaspora, because many Indians are also coming back home. India’s influence outside India is a story that really excites me.

    In the US, Indians are doing a lot of things. There are Indians heading technology companies, there are a couple of Indian filmmakers in Hollywood, and of course there are those in medicine and engineering. But one area where Indians are not there in the US is politics, which I think is important for us.

    The other thing, which is the topic of this edition of Eye on India, is the Indian youth. There is no other country in the world where 50 per cent of the population in under the age of 25.
    ‘In the early days of the Iraq war, the media was not as critical as it should have been and a lot of American society regrets that‘

    Looking at the global picture, is there a region-wise break-up of how it all reports back to Atlanta? How does it work?
    Well, we have an Asian production hub in Hong Kong and a hub in Europe and the headquarters is in Atlanta, but we as an organisation are very decentralised. In India, we have 15 people in the bureau, but we cover India primarily by people who have been journalists in India. It is not just Atlanta dictating what stories are to be done, it’s journalists here saying that ‘these are the stories on the front pages of the newspapers today. We think these are the stories that need to be told about India’. It is people who are working in this country, living, breathing India that drives our India coverage (and likewise, across the globe). That is what makes CNN so unique.

    And speaking of regions, can you offer how revenues stack up in percentage terms?
    Our revenue increase over last year is 22 per cent. Which is very good, very, very strong growth.
    A lot has changed in the last 5-7 years. A global news perspective is not solely in the hands of the likes of the CNN and BBC anymore. The impact of Al Jazeera has been well documented. Now the French have also launched their own global news channel. How is CNN changing to meet the challenges of a world view that is no more ruled from a western Anglo-Saxon perspective?
    Let me put this clearly. CNN International is American owned, and we are proud of our American ownership, but CNN International is not America-centric. It would be crazy for us to be broadcasting internationally but from an American perspective. From the business point of view, that would be ridiculous.

    But I think competition always makes us stronger, because competition means we have to be always ahead. We welcome competition. We have been there for 25 years and there is vast acceptance, because CNN’s journalism is top notch. And we feel there is enough room for others as well.
    And we have been talking about ethics and so forth, so what are the checks and balances that are in place to make sure that stories are fair and accurate?
    First of all, we have the standard-practice guidebook, which, of course, all news organisations have, which all CNN journalists have to abide by. Obviously, the journalist reporting knows the story best, but that story is vetted by many people. Along the way there are many different people who touch that story and fact-check it before it actually goes on air. We are much more interested in getting a story right than getting it ‘first’. We are the Breaking News leader, but we would not be that if our objectivity failed.

    Yes, but say you hire me from India and I, for that matter no one, can be totally objective… maybe I am slightly with the BJP or the Congress or whatever, so a tinge of bias creeps in. So how do you correct that? At the desk level?
    Yes, there is always the issue of being subjective, but there are things like hard facts that cannot be changed. That is why we lay so much emphasis on attribution. If you watch the news channel you will sometimes find that one person has been quoted but the other one has not been… this happens sometimes even if the journalist wants to be objective. It’s in their DNA, but it happens, so we tell them, ‘Hey, that guy’s quotes are not there, so go get it’.

    There have been occasions when a story has been held back for a week to make sure that all the players have got the chance to comment. I can’t tell you how much CNN lives and dies by its credibility factor.
    We’ll pick up on a touchy issue, with American media in particular – “embedded” journalism. Isn’t the way the whole Iraq story has developed a severe indictment on the way the media reported on it from the very beginning? What’s the point of the truth coming out now, when all that is left is death and destruction?
    Well, I think the media had not been as critical as it should have been in the early days (of the Iraq war). Not only the media, there are many politicians and different segments of American society that regrets not having been more critical (at the outset). I think that a lot has changed.

    Because and after the massive Iraq fiasco?
    Because of the war in Iraq and other reasons, because of the political season in general, but I do think that a lot of that has changed. I do think the media has got a lot proper.

    Veering off from your day job, as it were, you are on the advisory board of the Atlanta Woman magazine. Tell us something about the magazine and your area of interest in this.
    I am no longer on the board, but this is a local magazine from Atlanta focussing on the businesswomen. I think as a person involved with international news, I am always interested in what’s happening outside my world. And as a mother, as a wife and as a citizen of Atlanta, Georgia, I also have my responsibility of giving something back to my community.

    As the head of the CNN committee on diversity, what are the crucial diversity issues you face and how do you resolve them?
    The diversity issue we face overall is to maintain the diversity of coverage, to be sensitive to diverse cultures. With American, Latin American, African, or Indian people, all working together in the newsroom, it can be tremendously exciting but there is a lot of opportunity of misunderstanding. And what we encourage is a very open communication in our newsrooms, where people can talk to each other honestly, without feeling they are being attacked. But it’s really difficult to work with such diversity of cultures. It’s a tough challenge.

    Sure, but the question is, how do you resolve that?
    We resolve that by getting people to get together and discuss issues together. And we also give people opportunity to take their issues up without putting their names. If somebody wants to talk to me about a report that he or she feels has been unfair to a particular group of people, they can send me an unsigned note.

    We also hold functions where I may not be there but my managers are there. Transparency is the most important thing.

    You are in charge of talent scouting too. What do you think of the talent pool in India in your line of work and how do you plan tapping that pool?
    Well, I’ll tell you what kind of talent we are looking at. There is a lot of talent here. For CNN International, the presenter has to be a really strong journalist, people who know how to write, and more importantly, people who can speak extempore without a script. There are times, during Breaking News stories, when people have to work for four hours at a stretch in front of the camera without a script. These are people who have to have a fairly strong recall, they have to know the history, the culture, and feel confident enough to express themselves without the written script.

    There are people who differ with me and say, ‘No, an anchor is very different from a reporter. They have to look good, have a good voice, look polished all the time… and it’s the reporter who has to be out there and do the story. No. I can’t afford to do that in CNN International.

    Our anchors are the ones who are on the field as much as possible. Because to my mind, there is no difference between an anchor and a reporter. In the case of Lebanon issue last year, for example, I had three or four anchors going from Atlanta reporting alongside CNN reporters.
  • ‘Size of ready to eat market Rs 700 m.’ : Ravi Naware – ITC Foods Division CEO

    ‘Size of ready to eat market Rs 700 m.’ : Ravi Naware – ITC Foods Division CEO

    ITC Foods, the foods division of ITC Limited has built many brands and sub brands through aggressive advertising and marketing moves. This year the foods division is expected to add about Rs 10 billion to ITC’s annual turnover. ITC has recently announced the launch of their sub brand of biscuits – Sunfeast Sachin’s Fit Kit under their flagship and umbrella brand Sunfeast to coincide with the World Cup that will be played over the next few weeks in the West Indies.

    ITC Foods Division CEO Ravi Naware shared some insights into the various aspects of the business with Indian Television Dot Com’s Tarachand Wanvari. Excerpts from the interview.

    Excerpts:

    The promotion spends in the World Cup, what would be the proportion for them vis-?-vis your annual spends? You must have a separate budget for the World Cup. Could you share the figures?

    Of course, we have budgeted a specific amount for the World Cup. The World Cup is expensive so it’s a fairly decent percentage.

    You have said that a major portion of the World Cup spends budget will be towards promotion of Sachin’s Fit Kit, could you speak some more on this?

    I think if we don’t put money behind this brand, we’ll be doing a disservice to ourselves. We have launched the brand with Sachin’s name associated with it. On its own it’s going to be high profile from the reception point of view. I don’t mean that we are doing a razzmatazz kind of a launch. Sachin’s Fit Kit and the World Cup, the whole thing matches.

    How big is the ready to eat market?

    I really don’t have a number, because I find that the ready to eat market is not very well defined. You get tinned rasgollas. Will you include them in ready to eat? Some people do, because that is ready to eat, processed, cooked and packed. The definition is not very clear on that segment. If we stick to ‘so to say’ dinner table items, but then rasgollas can also be a part of the dinner table item, we’re talking primarily about vegetable curries, paneer, chicken, birayanis, dals, this is the kind of market we construct, then we have close to 48 per cent market share. But then you go and ask someone else, they are very likely to say that claim is too high.

    By your definition, who would be number two and three in the ready to eat market?

    No 2 would be MTR Foods, next would be Kohinoor. But then there could be disputes too, because I also make halwas like gajjar ka halwa, moong dal ka halwa, we include those. Comparatively, biscuits or soft drinks have become well defined markets. So you won’t include potato chips in the biscuit segment. You don’t include fruit juices with soft drinks. Its undefined, but not a huge category.

    What about your Kitchens of India brand of ready to eat? How does it compare with Aashirvaad ready to eat?

    Both would be about equal in size. Plus, we have a fairly large export market, which add a fairly large proportion to our sales. Only Kitchens of India are exported.

    So what is the size of the ready to eat market?
    It’s approximately Rs 600-700 million, the way we look at it.
    ‘If you are building a branded business, the brand must acquire power, stature and then you can generate the consumer pool from that‘

    How are your Pastas doing?

    We’ve got some very, very loyal customers who are quite happy with the performance. We’ve launched Benne Vita. Many people know how to make good pasta sauce, but the pasta is difficult to make. Earlier one had to buy imported pasta, now they can buy our Benne Vita 400 gm pack.

    You are competing with Nestle’s Maggi in terms of noodles with your pasta? Has it reached anywhere near that stage?

    Well I suppose in terms of the mental space we are competing with Maggi. But we are small and Maggi is large. It is a different product, which by now is a fairly standard one. There are lots of unbranded noodles also available in the market, maybe a similar genre, because that’s become a very popular item. Others are also getting into it.

    Compared to the existing players, you are new, just four or five years into foods Aren’t you spreading yourself with so many products?

    In 2002, when we entered the food business, if you wanted to enter almost any food product you would have competition that had already established itself. Nestle had a fairly large range of products, they have been in India about 60 years, Parle is about 60-70 years old, Britannia has been around for almost a 100 years. Then take tea or coffee, you had Tata, HLL or instant mixes, there was MTR and Gitz.

     

    Pasta has been introduced by us for the first time in India. If you say that we compete with noodles, then noodles have been around for 25 years or more. We are late entrants which is a fact of life. And as a late entrant you don’t want to get into chocolates. Cadbury and Nestle are already there in that space. You name any category, dairy products – you have Amul and several others already there. In that sense, there was hardly any totally new “New category” where we could enter.

     

    We decided to enter into those categories where we felt that we had some inherent competitive advantage. For example, when we entered atta (wheat flour), we said that we’d leverage our entire e-choupal connection. Having entered into atta and this area, we thought that we would enter into the wheat vertical space. So we got into biscuits, we got into pastas, and there are other products ideas based on wheat which would be relevant.

     

    Through e-choupal we buy larger and larger quantities of wheat, and at that stage, there are scale economies which give us benefits, selectivity, we can choose the right kind of wheat for the right kind of product and so on. Secondly we got into confectionaries because India has 3 million cigarette selling shops. ITC was present in those shops for the last several decades. Most of these cigarette selling shops also sell candy. So we thought that we’d have that advantage in distribution.

     

    This is how we chose the broad categories that we would enter where we felt that we had some competence, some in-house capabilities.

     

    For Kitchens of India, we had all the great recipes from our hotels. So we could make a Dal Bukhara, we could make a Chicken Chettinad, we could make a Paneer dish and so on. That was how we selected the products, otherwise, for me it was impossible to find a completely new line that we could get into.

    Do you have advantages because of your e-choupal initiative?

    We do have some advantages, we are able to source wheat through e-choupal for our atta (wheat four). We are market leaders with 15 per cent market share in the branded atta segment, which is upwards of Rs 30 billion in India. The market size `is across all brands, not just the ones that advertise. This means regional brands too.

    So what about bread, that too is a wheat vertical, isn’t it?

    Bread is a very, very difficult industry. It also requires specialized distribution. Just having a distribution network is not enough. You need to have trucks that need to got out at 3 in the morning, then you go distribute the bread, on the return you collect money. There are spoilages in bread, maybe 10-12 per cent of the bread gets spoilt, the manufacturer has to take it back. It requires a completely different distribution channel and method.

     

    Pepsi and Coke were already into handling bottles and liquids, they have given out coolers to their retailers, for them it was a natural entry into drinking water. Their distribution and the storage at the retail end fitted in well with their existing setup so they could launch the Aqua Fina and the Kinleys drinking waters. We didn’t find that kind of synergy with what we had for bread. I think it’s a multi local industry or a national brand industry. Each locality has its own famous bakery.

    Over the five years that you have been here, are you satisfied with all genre’s of products, or do you feel that you could have done better somewhere?

    I am very happy and very satisfied with the progress. Of course some things move much faster, some move slower. I think in Sunfeast we have had a very good run so far. Today we’re clearly the number 3 player and there is a very apparent and a visible gap between no. 3 and no. 4. A year ago that gap wasn’t so very visible. Apart from a size of 8 per cent, I think Sunfeast as a brand has acquired a good standing, a good stature in the market and in the consumers mind. And that to me is a prerequisite for building a business. If you are building a branded business, the brand must acquire power, stature and then you can generate the consumer pool from that.
  • MTV to launch ‘Sound Check’ on 10 March

    MTV to launch ‘Sound Check’ on 10 March

    MUMBAI: To address the varying demands of young consumers in the present day, MTV is set to launch yet another ‘check point’ titled Sound Check on 10 March.

    Unlike countdown shows that the network is known for, this one adds a twist to it with a bunch of funny animated graphic characters (speakers) rather than a VJ, to offer expert comments coupled with crazy stunts.

    One character (a speaker) does the ‘snake’ dance to others tunes
    On the lines of fashion based show Style Check and gadget and gizmo focussed Tech Check, the latest addition to complete the trio will “review music albums from Bollywood and International artists for which we have devised our own unique currency,” MTV VP creative and content and GM Ashish Patil told Indiantelevision.com.

    All the speakers do the Mexican wave!

    Apart from the cliché trivia and information, these vignettes of five minutes each which will have five animated speakers, created by the in-house graphic team, will elaborately predict the fate of the selected album.

    On a five point rating scale, these guys will perform stunts to depict the success of an album by either shooting themselves in the head or teaming up to do the Mexican wave and other such bizarre behaviour.

    Stopppp…This speaker hates this song!

    Although MTV attempts to bring out its core proposition that is in sync with the youth funda – ‘Enjoy,’ Patil says that behind these comical characters are key MTV programming experts that will critically appraise the various music albums on parameters like rhythm, melody, lyrics etc. to determine what’s going to be hot!

    Tracking the changing needs of Indian youth, Patil says that extensive research points to the various touch points that youth connect with, including style and fashion, adventure, technology, cricket and even casual dating, therefore the network has attempted to bring their brand to each of these genres through an array of differentiated programming.

    Although, music is part of the core proposition of the channel, it currently supports 30 per cent of non-music content with Hero Honda Roadies, Lycra MTV Style Awards, GPL, Aila Tendulkar, Semi Girebaal and the likes…. As advocates in identifying youth trends, MTV will continue to deliver all these different genres, with wit and humour at the crux of it all!

  • ‘TV will continue to be important, but its importance will decline’ : Rahul Welde – HLL general manager – media services

    ‘TV will continue to be important, but its importance will decline’ : Rahul Welde – HLL general manager – media services

    For over 50 years FMCG major Hindustan Lever has dominated the Indian market with brands that have become a household name for many. Now it is about to turn over a new leaf to welcome its mother company Unilever. After having hogged the media space, especially television and now opening its doors to new media like internet and radio, the time seems right to question its experts on their outlook to the fast developing media landscape.

     

    In conversation with Sujatha Shreedharan and Renelle Snelleksz, HLL general manager – media services Rahul Welde, who is most uncomfortable in front of a camera, puts aside all his inhibitions once he begins speaking on his area of proficiency – media and advertising.

     

    Excerpts:

    With the HLL name change announced, the next question is how would this pan out in terms of a branding and marketing strategy?

    Since it’s just been announced, we haven’t really planned that out as yet. It will be put to vote in the AGM in May, after which it will get adopted and implemented.

    One of the biggest advertisers on television, HLL is now looking beyond the medium. What kind of media mix does HLL now look at? You have also maintained that TV is bound to decline?

    Television will continue to be important. However it will also continue to decline in importance. The reason for this primarily has to do with the way consumers are reacting to television messages. Studies indicate that there is a greater degree of ad avoidance, greater degree of clutter on television and that has resulted in lesser interest in television by consumers.

     

    Simultaneously people are spending more time outdoors, doing other things than just watching television. As a result television is facing a lot of competition from the other media.

     

    There was a time when there was no television and print had all the advertising – but that lasted only until television made an appearance. It ate big time into print advertising. Something similar will happen to television with the advent of radio, internet, mobile communication and other types of new media. Eventually they will fight for the same share of the rupee.

     

    I don’t think anything as drastic as the death of television is bound to happen anytime soon but it is staring into the face of a huge challenge even while other media grow at an exceptionally fast pace. The same applies to our understanding of media buying as well. Our focus has shifted to alternate media and is much higher than what it used to be two years ago.

     

    Also, I must say that there is also nothing like an HLL mix, as it depends on our brands. Some will focus on TV and spend nothing on print and vice versa, so the strategic thinking as to what to use comes from the brand and consumer lens. We are thus excited about the internet when it comes to youth brands, while outdoor and DD are key for brands like Wheel. From an industry perspective, I think radio will experience growth.

    With HLL always known to be television heavy, what happens in the case of mass channels and niche channels, what strategy would you follow in that case?

    Well, we do spend on niche and mass channels, but with the whole area of fragmentation of audiences with multiple channels emerging, where stickiness is a challenge and competition is high. Now what it really means for us is that segmentation and multiplication of channels provides the opportunity to peg note and talk to the consumer.

     

    Unfortunately, the costs have increased and given that the overall advertising pie is fixed. The ad pie doesn’t grow because there are more channels, but what is happening is money is shifting from the big to the small or from the leaders to the challengers.

     

    The growth of channels, we will see an increase in the number seconds, but what is often interpreted is that spends are also increasing in the same proportion. It is of course a big challenge as fragmentation makes the task of planning even more difficult, where agencies will produce software and optimizers making the process more sophisticated. This scenario is good for segmentation, bad for costs. Thus I don’t know whether to call it a ‘happy situation’ because after a point of time your returns become sub-optimal when costs are high. Then that becomes a worry.

    Given that you are the biggest advertiser on kid’s channels, what is the potential that you see in this space and how do you (as an advertiser) think it will shape up in the coming years?

    For us it is important, but the degree of importance it would be very low because you have to look at it from the brand and consumer fitment perspective. There are a few of our brands that actually talk directly to kids while a larger percentage of our brands look at the older demographic.

     

    Even then we are the largest advertisers. So you can imagine if kid’s were to become important then we would really have to up our spends. But the interesting part is that kid’s involvement in influencing the purchase decision is growing. Now does that mean that they participate in the decision to buy a laundry powder? My guess is that they don’t.

     

    Thus, it’s not really a major part of our media thinking but it’s interesting because there is a lot of stuff happening in the kid’s space.

    You’ve shown a lot of enthusiasm about radio. But it seems HLL mostly uses AIR and not private station. How do you view private FM?

    I see private FM as a very exciting space for us because suddenly with the addition of newer towns, viewers will have more choice in media. This viewer engagement will attract more advertising, so from our perspective which brand will resort to using radio will depend on the brand and consumer fit. Right now we are in the process of taking stock of radio advertising and as we see it increasing to about 300 stations, but more importantly the excitement is about the increase in towns.

     

    Now whom we are in partnership with has to be strategically thought out, but we are in talks with several partners. The good part is that there are new and established players coming into the fray. Even now we are the largest advertisers on AIR and FM, this will only mean that our footprint will become broader within the radio space.

    Media planners are hesitant about radio due to the lack of key differentiators, what are your views on that?

    Somewhere a woman/man is being wooed and while people begin to analyze this space I think we will get on to the bus much faster. We have in the past invested in the medium and will continue to do so. We will not wait to see who emerges as different, as differentiators are what you create. You don’t view TV the way you used to therefore, radio will also be consumed differently. I don’t know what media agencies generally view this space, for us what is important is what we can do to it. Currently, we are holding our excitement.

    Following Wheel Smart Shreemati and Rin Mera Star Super Star will AFP’s be given greater importance going forward?

    All our AFP’s played out very well for us, Wheel was the top rated show on Doordarshan. Although, it may appear like something we mounted and happened to do well for us, but the truth is we were working on it for three years. In 2004, the germ of the idea began, 2005 we tested it on a smaller channel and 2006 we took it to DD. Our planning and research helped us get to where it is as the top rated show.

     

    The challenge is that you have to combine the arithmetic of the brand, communication and commercial and get the trio to work. However, the effort required for AFP’s is disproportionate. It calls for a genuine collaborated effort with the channel, the clients and the production house. It gives a new lens to the planning effort and it’s the next practice.

     

    We have been cautious with in-films as we don’t really know how it pays back. It is one step higher than AFP in terms of collaborative effort, in fact it ends up being more of a ‘punt’ than TV.

    Talking about the online space could you highlight what is currently being done with online marketing after Sunsilk Gang of Girls and Axe land?

    We have got stuff in progress but not in the development stage yet. The Gang of Girls gave us better results that what we expected both from the returns and consumer engagement we got. The sheer numbers were amazing, we tracked all the measures and it appears the time spent by these girls was almost 11 to 14 minutes. We did it to get engagement rather than exposure and it was a collaborated effort with partners like Monster.com, Elle and Cosmopolitan. It went beyond just talking about hair to discussing everyday issues among friends, to have an extended conversation with the consumer. So both thematically and in terms of engagement it played out very well.

     

    Also with Axe we did Axe Unlimited Academy and will roll out something along the lines shortly. So will we have all brands participate aggressively on the net? Probably no. But definitely our youth brands will, because it’s really about redefining the role of engagement. Therefore for us the whole space of internet is going to grow very fast and it will grow through a combination of such websites and simultaneously through traditional web based advertising. The net allows a huge amount of interaction but it depends on how you exploit it.

    How does this translate into sales?

    This was a brand building effort, but of course everything that goes towards building a brand must translate into sales. But it is about driving brand preference and an alternate way of communication.

     

    A big change is likely to be seen which is currently under the surface, but the in the coming years the numbers in terms of advertising will show that.

     

    The only thing that we consider is the brand and the consumer, the media needs to fit into that, so if online would largely be urban, but this is also applied to the rural I-Shakti programme, however, net penetration is still restricted to urban India, but progressively it will spread.

     

    Even the outdoor space is very interesting, however it’s not being exploited sufficiently. Every time people travel, it’s an opportunity for advertisers. In fact, among different forms of media there are definitely some that are really likely to rock!

    Could you name three different media that you think will rock in 2007?

    I think for the next two-three years radio will rock, maybe not in 2007 because lets not forget that print is some 1,000 crores (Rs 10 billion) and radio only some 100 crores. If I were to have a prognosis I believe that radio will really double, because it’s just the sheer scale that cannot be ignored. But within this space there are also so many players, coupled with the lack of measurement at the moment will make it even more difficult, so who do you back, how do you know it works? Thus a half baked science gets applied. But the minute you put measurement, predictability and science behind it that will cause inflection, otherwise people will be cautious.

     

    What will also make a big shift, whether it will rock financially I cannot say, but the whole business of in-store on-screen advertising, suddenly you will find them all over the place and therefore it will peel off mainstream advertising and then get evaluated analytically by agencies.

     

    Even in the TV space, the whole area of Cas and DTH will keep the excitement alive. DTH is getting into rural space so that will be interesting. There is great action happening there as well, KBC 3 and others.

     

    Another thing is that regional media is also getting more and more important across all genres, whether it has been Marathi, Bengali, Oriya and traditionally Telugu, Tamil and Kannada have been strong anyways.

    We’ve talked conventional media and new media but HLL has always been a strong advocate of rural marketing? But the focus keeps shifting and after some time all talks of rural marketing die out. Can you give us an update on what has been happening on this front?

    The biggest challenge for us is that a large part of India is still media dark. What that means is that television or print does not really reach there. Then there is the problem of infrastructure and literacy. Therefore from our perspective we’ve really tried to concentrate on on ground activation- demonstration, sampling and events.

     

    While the problem of infrastructure, non motorable roads, etc. remains there is also a challenge of scalability. We’ve been active in the rural areas for a long time and progressively have increased our thrust in this area. The big change is of course in the scale. We have upped the scale in these initiatives.

     

    We’ve got two-three programmes which we have been looking at for the last few years. One of them is Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetana- a rural communication programme around Lifebuoy that has touched over 130 million consumers across Bihar, UP and Rajasthan. Similarly, there is Project Shakti. The Shakti Vani is a programme that we started keeping in mind communication with rural consumers.

     

    While Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetana is a brand specific programme, Shakti Vani cuts across all the brands to speak to the consumer. The action in rural India is all about being ‘their type.’

    Is there also a challenge of making these initiatives profitable? You have talked to us about scaling it up? Since you do talk about the challenges, how do you go about building your capabilities and expanding it?

    The issue is not so much about profit although there is a worry of cost effectiveness. So when you know that there is a cost involved in physically being there which cannot always be done. When I say scalability, the challenge is to do with two things – one is to do with researches on ground.

     

    If you want Western class communication to reach rural India, you need a full stream of resources which works down the line, is well trained and which understands what is being spoken about. The fact remains that the scope of the country is so vast and immense that no matter how much you do, it’s never going to be enough. Despite this, I don’t know any other company which does as much in rural marketing as we do.

     

    We work with one agency on our rural initiatives – Ogilvy Outreach and have built a strong network through our vendors. I think over time we have built our capabilities in this segment. As for expanding this further, yes we would look into that as well. We are expanding in almost every sphere and rural marketing will come under that focus too.
    ‘Big monies are being pumped into cricket on TV, but I don’t see the same quantum of returns‘

    If we could just talk about HLL brand and brand categories. You have largely spoken about brands in the health and personal care segment, in this respect has the push in the food division been milder?

    We do have firm positions in beverages. In fact, we just re-launched Taj across a multimedia campaign. There is excitement in foods but the scale and salience is very different. It is largely to do with the category and not so much to with the brand itself. Our tea brands are the largest in the category but if you look at these brands in advertising terms they are not as active as the personal care. Inevitably you would see Lux, Lifebouy, Sunsilk, Surf, Rin as large media and advertising brands.

    As opposed to the parent company, which has a strong presence in the food category, therefore would the recent global alignment following the inclusion of Unilever into the companies name, mean that there expertise in foods would be brought to India?

    It’s outside my remit to comment on that because that’s a matter of corporate strategy and how the food units would grow and I can only comment on advertising. But in totality the investments in this space are as hot as personal care and it’s growing as much. It is smaller in scale but as active.

    Finally, with the World Cup Cricket right around the corner, any new initiatives or plans for the season?

    (Laughs) You know every year there is great excitement over World Cup Cricket among advertisers and also channels. We share that excitement too, but we don’t want to be carried away by it. We will have certain things in place for cricket, some of our brands will have World Cup Cricket branding. But the fact of the matter is that a lot of money is pumped into cricket on television. The question to ask is where does this extra resource come from? It is but obvious that it is either pulled out from some other kitty or companies start following a cost cutting plan. So while I may be excited about it, I don’t see the same quantum of returns in World Cup, so I am cautious.

     

    So it is great that the advertisers are looking at World Cup. For us the larger worry is the movement of eyeballs from the general entertainment channels to the sports and news channels. Finally it’s a question of checks and balances. Is this rupee spent worth it? Any advertiser would ask himself that before putting up his money. Otherwise it becomes like a punter’s game.
  • Indya.com gears up for cricket World Cup

    Indya.com gears up for cricket World Cup

    MUMBAI: Played with passion! Followed with obsession!

    With the cricket World Cup scheduled to kick off in less than a month’s time indya.com, which is running the official website www.cricketworldcup.com as the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) web partner, is starting to make a push.

    The site officially launches on Monday, 26 February.

    Information available with indiantelevision.com indicates that one presenting sponsor and four associate sponsors have been signed up so far for this year’s highlight cricket event.

    It was last year that Star inked a deal with the ICC to run its sites for the Champions Trophy and next month’s World Cup. Indya.com business head Sumant Kasliwal claims that its Champions Trophy site got three million unique users. In total there were over a billion hits, a lot of which, not surprisingly came from India. One million downloads took place and there were 100,000 registered users.

    For the Champions Trophy the site got 230 million page views. Kasliwal says that for the World Cup the site is expecting a billion page views during the event. “Our application Matchcast (which is a scorecard) has been expanded upon. It will be interactive. The aim is to give the consumer a complete experience. One can get match highlights, fall of wickets package, interactive contests. There will be live chat during the game. Users can comment on the state of the game. Our video content will include highlights from the previous World Cups. Other sites (as per the ICC diktat) are not allowed to show cricket videos.”

    Kasliwal also mentions another application – the Simulator. The visitor can view a graphical representation of what is happening ball by ball. He says that from a technological point of view it is a challenge. For each over two dozen parameters are taken into account. The recording takes place on the fly.

    There will also be expert analysis of each match. Prominent names are in the process of getting signed up. There will also be interviews with players and the captains. For the captains there is a section Captainspeak. Kasliwal says that it is in the process of tying up with speakers.

    It is also doing an interactive Voice Of the World Cup initiative. The contest kicks off next month. Here a clip of India’s match versus Pakistan in the previous World Cup is featured. Sachin basically hammers Shoaib. One can visit the section and provide a commentary recording. The winner who will be chosen by the public and a team of experts gets to do commentary for the semi finals and the final for the site.

    The site will also have a picture gallery courtesy gettyimages. For fun one can participate in games. One game that will shortly be launched is called Pick The Score. This is a prediction game and one has to guess scores. There will also be a fantasy game. Here one chooses a dream team for each match and one scores depending on how well the individual players are faring.

    The site will also have quizzes, an ICC contests suite. There will also be pages dedicated to teams and players, merchandise that can be ordered. In some countries like New Zealand, Hong Kong, Korea, Germany, France the site will offer for a fee live streaming of matches. In India highlights and the other earlier mentioned features will be given for free.

    GroupM COO South Asia Vikram Sakuja says that at first the agency was not sure how the product would turn out. However he is happy that for the Champions Trophy the site got a quarter of a billion page views. “I am glad that GroupM saw this potential and got some of our brands like Lufthansa to work with this exciting media offering.”
     

  • ‘Mobiles will be the first introduction to the internet for an awful lot of people’ : Vinton G Serf – Google’s vice president and chief internet evangelist

    ‘Mobiles will be the first introduction to the internet for an awful lot of people’ : Vinton G Serf – Google’s vice president and chief internet evangelist

    Google’s Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist Vinton G Serf is regarded as one of the fathers of the internet. While in Bangalore, he shared his views, Google’s objectives and the future of the internet, with Indiantelevision.com’s Tarachand Wanvari.

     

    Excerpts:

    IPR issues – You say that Google would like to make information available everywhere globally. Recently a Belgian court passed a ruling against Google over copyright. Google has been accused of dragging its feet in bringing in technology to take care of IP rights and help fight piracy. What does Google propose to do now on this issue?

    First of all, I’d like to point out that Google does not preview the content and we don’t claim any ownership or anything like that. Our intent is to make people aware of content which is already on the network. There are issues arising when someone who pulls copyright material and someone else has put that material improperly on the network. Google is unaware of any of the copyright claims when that information shows up on the net, it was there.

     

    Our package is very much like the package that was established in the US called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

    The US DRM is not as good as the framework in the EU.

    Actually, there is some tension in here between the piracy laws and the copyright laws and there is uncertainty as to how that is going to be resolved. The European Commission is trying to figure out how to adapt their intellectual property and content protection laws to match the US DRM laws.

    Google earth has run into several problems with regards to security. Lot of concerns have been raised about sensitive locations being viewed easily. What do you propose to do about this?

    Our policy is that whenever we have an issue arising with the national authorities, we take it away. We do understand their problems, and in fact there are any number of images that have been adapted. But I do need to point out to you that the data that we are using is not ours, typically it is available for free like the Nasa Landsat. Anyone could have access to it, and so removing it from Google Earth does not necessarily solve the problem, because the imagery is there. It’s also commercially accessible, in other words if you wanted that information, particularly if someone deliberately wanted the security overhead in order to mount an attack, if they have a coherent capability to attack, they probably also may have the ability to purchase this information quite independent from Google. So the problem is more complex than taking things out of Google Earth. The problem is that a lot of the overhead imagery is widely accessible. Period.

     

    I actually do not know of the specifics of the issues here in India, I can say that for some US installations we have removed or replaced information with less resolution or in some cases actually wiped out – like the White House for example, you can’t see the roof, it’s simply been covered up digitally. So those are things where actions have been taken.

     

    We face this all the time with regards to content that is indexed in different parts of the world you’ll find governments with different views, usually the Chinese example, the one everyone brings up, but I want to mention that there are other places. For example in France and Germany, it is illegal to profit form Nazi war memorabilia, and so it is considered illegal literally to put up images of these materials. So we have to consciously remove them form the google.de and the google.fr index. We understand that and we try to work with governments.

    The way mobile penetration is going on compared to laptops and desktops, do you see the internet more as a virtual net?

    In some ways yes. I think that we’re going to see expansion in all directions 802.11, Wifi, as opposed to physical networking technology. Lots and lots of mobiles which I think will be the first introduction to the internet for an awful lot of people in the world. Their first opportunity to interact with the internet may be on a mobile device.
    ‘The ability to respond to an individual interaction, and to produce relevant advertising material in these different media is very important for us to consider‘

    As evangelist at Google, is it right for Google to acquire companies like Youtube, etc. Basically your core competency lies in developing search engines, aren’t you moving away from those core competencies?

    I disagree that we are going away from our core competencies. First of all, we acquire a lot of companies, because their technology we think is helpful. It’s true that our primary business is search and we have never lost track of that. But remember what’s driving the company right now is advertising, because advertising is how we pay for everything. And so you have to remember that the core of the business is revenue generation through target advertising. And we are very interested in all the mediums, not just the online internet, which has turned out to be wonderful for us. But that doesn’t mean that the other advertisement mediums should be ignored. They are still quite valuable.

     

    Youtube and Google video are media and so is radio. So we have been experimenting with video advertising, with audio advertising and with print advertising. Using similar kinds of techniques, the thing which is probably the most critical is the ability to produce an intervention in real time as opposed to the traditional thing where you produce a video advertisement which is a part of a television show actually prepared months or weeks ahead. The ability to respond to an individual interaction and to produce relevant advertising material in these different media is very important for us to consider.

    Could you speak on Web 2.0 and Web 3.0?

    I actually think those are two marketing terms and I sort of reject them out of hand as being overly simple. I do think however that the web as we know it with xml and html and so on has created an infrastructure layer on top of which you can now do things and so to the extent that there is a Web 2.0, maybe it uses web services and Service Oriented Architecture, it’s still very nascent, still very infantile. Long ways to go before we see it grabbing hold. I even chatted with Infosys this morning abut that and we have a similar view that it is still very much in its infancy.

     

    But, the concept is very compelling that you could standardize interaction. I hope we do it right this time. We tried once before in 1980, we called it the Webtronic Data Interchange and it didn’t work out because it was too vertical. So I sort of don’t like the terms Web 2.0 and Web 3.0., the thought behind them is standardizing of exchanges creating a layer of infrastructure that everyone can use and build on.

    How much is your India R & D center involved in solving these issues and challenges?

    In very obvious terms, we have a large number of Indian researchers and engineers at Google working very hard on many of these problems. So it’s a direct contribution at least to Google.
  • Trai faces QoS issue to ensure improved Cas rollout

    Trai faces QoS issue to ensure improved Cas rollout

    NEW DELHI: Many cable households are unhappy with repeated signal failure and Trai is now faced with the issue of what to do about enforcing Quality of Service provisions, sources tell indiantelevision.com.

    One of the major confusions in the market in the national Capital is what are the cable operators doing about the billing of chosen channels.

    At the moment, the operators are giving all the channels that can be shown in India, and they have been telling the subscribers, those who have filled up the forms indicating their choice, that at the end of the month, they would be charged for what they have indicated in the forms.

    “The COs have told us that the programming for each STB is taking time, but they would charge each household what the latter has opted for,” the official said.

    He said also that the COs are watching the scenario. “They feel that in a month or two, subscribers might want to drop some channels and want others, or just want more channels than they have opted for now. So then, they would have to do the programming all over again.”

    The official felt that the COs want the situation to stabilise before they get into programming for “watch what you pay for”.

    However, in many cases, the COs have registered the subscribers and taken the advance charges at the beginning, when they gave the STBs but have so far not returned for collecting the advance fees for February.

    “This means subscribers would suddenly be faced with having to pay for two months if the COs do not take the fees for February now,” said an official, agreeing that all this is causing more confusion than is good for the ongoing Cas rollout to regain the traction it has lost quite a bit of recently.

    One MSO is not showing contact numbers in the appropriate window when the signal goes off, and still signal loss is quite a regular phenomenon and, though less than in the beginning, there is a lot of pixelisation of images.

    The MSOs have so far not raised the issue of QoS being enforced, for reasons best known to them. But they are aware that this is one of the reasons for not just slowdown of Cas rollout, but in many cases, people wanting to return the boxes and settle for just the FTAs.

    In a report last week, indiantelevision,com had reported the worries amongst MSOs on these issues, and their informing Trai that broadcasters and they themselves need to do attractive packaging and ensure QoS, but nothing seems to have materialised so far.

  • Galli Galli goes to the ‘gallies’

    Galli Galli goes to the ‘gallies’

    NEW DELHI: From the highest level of technology, the TV, to the oldest poor-man’s ‘movie’ entertainment, the bioscope: that’s what mass education programme Galli Galli Sim Sim, will give to the slum children in its mass education programme.

    At the moment, the programme will be shown to children through TV sets carried on designed pushcarts, but the prototype for the bioscope is being readied as well.

    “We have modernised the bioscope and we shall deploy these vends when these are ready to slums as part of our programme for mass education for those millions of children who cannot access TV,” Shaswati Banerjee, executive director Sesame Workshop India (SWI), which runs the programme, tells indiantelevision.com.

    The programme, Galli Galli Sim Sim, is a hit on Doordarshan and Pogo channels, with the TG of two to six-year-olds, and the funding for the initial educational outreach was provided by a corporate social responsibility grant from Turner Entertainment Networks Asia. In an effort to reach these millions, SWI, a subsidiary of Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organization behind Galli Galli Sim Sim and other educational media for children, has kicked off a mobile viewings programme, in which during the first phase, starting 15 February, one branded pushcart with a TV set and a DVD player will reach the poorest of slums and show the programme.

    Banerjee explained that the trial phase, in which a Maruti van was used to take the programme to the slums, proved too costly and could not give the intended impact. Hence, they designed a pushcart that can be taken to any corner of a slum.

    “Initially, we reached 22,000 children over the 25-day period of the pilot project. Using the cart, we shall be able to show the programmes to much larger numbers and run the programme during the whole day,” Banerjee said.

    She added that the cart is fitted with cells that would do away with the necessity of power connection, which means it would be able to look at localities where there is no regular power supply. Over all, this changed mode of delivery will increase the number of screenings from just three a day to between eight and 10. The trial with five pushcarts will start in Sanjay Colony, Bawana and Madanpur Khadar slums of Delhi, and in five locations in Mumbai, including Dharavi, Gavandi, Borivili and two other places yet to be finalised, she added.

    January to March will be the testing period, and from April the full programme will be launched. Sometime about then, the bioscope boxes, once extremely popular as entertainment source in villages and small towns, will be introduced as well.

    Testing of the prototype replacing the TV set with the bioscope will start too.

    The baseline survey will be conducted and impact measured during the pilot project. And finally the impact-based model for delivery will be worked out, Banerjee said.

    The cost per child, the ratio that funding agencies use to measure, varies according to the models, of which there are two, she added.

    In the outreach-based model, which is the pushcart with TV set model, in which the programmes are screened and also educational material left with the NGOs handling the Balwadis, costs Rs 25 per child.

    The cost for the impact-based model, in which only educational materials are given, costs Rs 15 per child. These are the ones being tested before being scaled up and become replicable across the country.

    Galli Galli Sim Sim is the Indian version of the world-renowned children’s television series Sesame Street, and airs on Cartoon Network, Pogo and Doordarshan.

    Commenting on the successful completion of the first phase of Galli Galli Sim Sim’s outreach initiatives, Soumitra Saha vice president, regional entertainment advertising sales for Turner Entertainment Networks Asia, said: “Turner’s partnership with Sesame Workshop goes beyond television.

    “Given how many young children in India don’t have access to basic educational and developmental needs, it is highly rewarding for Turner to partner with Sesame Workshop in their carefully created and well coordinated educational outreach programme to help fill this gap.”

    Based on the work in the pilot phase, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has awarded Sesame Workshop a grant, which the organisation will use to support Sesame Workshop India to research, develop, and implement similar educational interventions in slum areas in India’s six largest cities such that there are measurable improvements in children’s learning outcomes.

    “Sesame Workshop India’s unique outreach programme reaches large numbers of children and instills them with the power of learning at a very early age, which is extremely important in a country like India where several million children drop out of school before they reach the fifth grade,” said Barun Mohanty, Director of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation in India.

    “Equally impressive is Sesame Workshop India’s commitment to measuring its impact on learning levels to ensure sustainable, positive changes in early childhood education, Mohanti added.

    “We are excited to help bring this program to India’s urban slums, as Sesame Workshop India draws upon its global expertise and lessons learned from similar communities in Egypt, South Africa and elsewhere,” Mohanti emphasised.

    The initiative is estimated to reach over 1.5 million children and caregivers over the next five years.