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Tag: Lynn de Souza

  • SMJ season two evokes mixed reactions

    SMJ season two evokes mixed reactions

    MUMBAI: All eyes were peeled on the first episode of season two of Aamir Khan-hosted talk show Satyamev Jayate (SMJ) when it finally aired on March 2 at 11am, putting an end to all the excitement of the past few months.

    The two-hour-long episode titled ‘Fighting Rape’ put the spotlight on an extremely pertinent social issue while discussing some really hard-hitting cases. It began with a narration of the gruesome gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern in the national capital on 16 December, 2012, going on to give shocking statistics of rape cases in the country.

    Khan revealed that according to the NCRB, there are nearly 101,041 rape cases pending trial, of which 3,563 cases have been acquitted or withdrawn and 86,032 are still pending. He spoke of the kind of medical and legal apathy that rape victims and their families usually face. Doctors tend to back off when such cases are reported, medical examinations are not conducted immediately and misleading information results in the victim being questioned more than the accused. However, he pointed out that changes have been made to the law, especially after the Nirbhaya gang rape case, and proceeded to elaborate upon the same.

    While urging viewers to change their perception toward rape victims who are otherwise looked down upon by society, Khan, in association with the Aakash Institute, encouraged the audience to ‘Vote for Change’ by giving a missed call on 1800-103-2301 and pledging support for a standard protocol for medical examination of rape survivors. Surprisingly, 12 lakh missed calls was generated in two hours.

    Indeed, the opening episode of season two of SMJ sent social media into overdrive with likes and tweets doing the rounds of the Internet, even as SMJ took fourth place on twitter.com on the day of its launch.

    And yet, both viewer and industry response was a bit of a mixed bag with some saying season two might be better while others finding it very similar to the previous outing. We spoke to some people about the episode and here’s what they said.

    A majority of media professionals thought episode 1 of season 2 did well in terms of research and so did media veteran and founder at Social Access Communications, Lynn de Souza. “The first episode was good. Bringing out all the issues pertaining to rape and how the victims are treated in court was rather touching. It brought about a lot of awareness. The show taught me a lot of things which I did not know. It is worth watching and a great learning,” she said.

    In contrast, a producer who did not wish to be named said the show was way too long. “Mixed reactions,” he said. “It was far too long. Two hours is a long time. People won’t stick to it after some point of time. However, thumbs up to Aamir and his research team for the heavy amount of research work.”

    Another media planner said there was nothing different from the earlier season. “The first episode was very similar – nothing new and dramatic. Plus time, it was almost like a feature film. Unless there is some hook, people will lose interest. It’s a very documentary style of saying things and with viewers here, they don’t stick with documentaries. But kudos to their research work. Well done, detailed in-depth analysis, surely took the crown,” he said on condition of anonymity.

    While Population First (Laadli) programme director Dr AL Sharada said, “In terms of format, I did not find anything different, it remained the same. In terms of research, it covered all aspects of judiciary reports and what common people face. I felt that Aamir should continue the same topic over a period of time.  Supposedly, he starts with gender violence and next week, he goes on to something else. The impact of whatever discussions are happening today will be completely forgotten next week when he takes up another issue.”

    She felt the show should be restricted to one hour instead of the current two hours. “It requires a little more depth, in terms of the issues being raised. For instance, in season one, in the doctors’ episode, only activists’ perspectives were taken into consideration but the ground realities of a hospital i.e. how it functions, what are the facilities available wasn’t considered. We should not just say they are not doing, we should also understand why they are not doing,” said Sharada.

    This is what celebrities tweeted on Satyamev Jayate:

    Karan Johar – #SatyamevJayate broke my heart…made me feel helpless yet inspired me to make a change..truly moving, heartfelt and rightfully arousing!

    Sunil Grover – Whn v all only spk abt a change here’s a shw vich is actually brining abt 1!Congrats @aamir_khan @StarPlus on anthr brilliant season of SMJ!

    Sanjeev Kapoor – What @aamir_khan is doing via @satyamevjayate is nothing less than a social revolution. Hats off to him!

  • ‘Era of subscription rather than advertising supported media content is approaching us fairly quickly’

    ‘Era of subscription rather than advertising supported media content is approaching us fairly quickly’

    Lintas Media Services director Lynn de Souza says the year has been good for business. But she has a word of caution: there is just too much of ads going around for viewers to stomach.

    Business wise, 2006 has been a good year for advertising with both value (up 19 per cent) and volume increases. The total number of spots aired on television has shot up by 35 per cent from 10.3 million in 2005 to 13.9 million this year. For the month of September alone there was a 51 per cent increase. Plus, there was more branded content on all media including cinema than ever before.

     

    However, was this also good for the lay consumer, the housewife in Amritsar, the executive in Bandra, and the schoolboy in Chhatisgarh?

     

    Our lives have been swept up by the media. A good one third of the average Indian’s waking hours is spent with the mass media in some form or other – all through the day. Our lifestyles, values and opinions are being shaped by what we see and hear on the mass media as never before. 2006 gave birth or renewed life to many news and children’s tv channels, global magazine titles, regional language editions of newspapers, FM radio stations. So far all of these, without exception, are advertiser supported.

     

    It has therefore become virtually impossible for the average consumer to find a free moment in space or time where he or she is not accosted by advertising – on the streets, in malls, in airplanes, on the cellphone, in coffee shops, hotels and health clubs, while surfing the internet – besides the expected fare on tv, radio, newspapers and magazines.

     

    It should come as no surprise to us therefore that he or she has begun to get rather annoyed. Our latest estimate of active ad avoidance in this country has crossed 70 per cent for every medium, among heavy upmarket media consumers. Passive ad avoidance is not far behind. Avoidance of advertising among the rural rich is even higher. I therefore doff my hat at all of us who persist with our careers in advertising. This must be the only profession in the world in which the eventual consumer does his or her best to ignore and avoid and turn away from what we have to say.

     

    Intellect, our research and technology unit, recently released ‘Engross’, a survey conducted last month among over 2000 upmarket Indians to measure ad avoidance, ad perception and media engagement. Since we expected to find high ad avoidance levels, even on the more personalized media like radio and internet, we further probed on the reasons, our suspicion being that perhaps consumers didn’t like advertising at all. Indeed, the feedback was exactly the opposite. An overwhelmingly high cross section of consumers enjoy and appreciate advertising, and find it informative and helpful.

     

    So why do they avoid something they like? Simply because there is just too much of it going around to stomach. The same ad over and over again. Too many ad breaks. Ads inside content. Ads on covers. For the smart consumer, it’s really getting to be a bad mad ad world.

     

    There is a lesson in this for both media owners and advertisers. The day is not far off when these consumers will pay extra for ad free content. The era of subscription rather than advertising supported media content is approaching us fairly quickly. As advertisers we have unfortunately been caught up in the whirlwind of downward spiralling media rates, and have helped compound the problem of over advertising. Every time we have insisted on a lower unit rate we have been given bonus time and space by the media owners, thus contributing to the overload. We have together written up a volume over value charter, and the consumer is now clearly saying to us, “I don’t like this. I don’t like being taken for granted.”

     

    I hope we will all listen to this voice in 2007. Engross gave us another important learning – for years, content has been informative and advertising has been entertaining. Now however, the consumer finds content, even on the so called information media, highly engaging and entertaining, and considers good advertising to be informative. We would therefore be quite foolish to demean the value of advertising in his or her mind through poorly judged placements.

     

    To 2007, may our business continue to grow, and may our customers enjoy it too.

  • Lintas Media Group director Lynn de Souza

    Lintas Media Group director Lynn de Souza

    Women in television and media… a handful of them but all worth their salt. Most people know them for what they do in their respective fields but there’s much more to them than just their work and the designations that come with it. A mother, a media buyer, a homemaker, a soap maker, a Gucci lover, an animal rights’ activist, a producer, a journalist, a shopoholic, an entrepreneur, an ad sales head, a CEO, an auditor… they’re all there… carving a niche for themselves and making their presence felt in boardrooms and studios, on-screen and off-screen. Whatever said and done, creativity runs in their blood. These Indian media power women have arrived and how.

    In the first of the weekly series – Ms Media – 25 Women Who Matter – we have someone who felt she was giving an exam while answering our queries for this column. Hiding behind her serious professional appearance is a lady who is extremely passionate about animals. She’s Lynn de Souza… the multi faceted media professional, author, tennis champ, a trained veterinary nurse and animal rights’ activist… we could go on!

    Lynn-opinion

    Before going on to what the lady is all about… Let’s take a dekkho at what she thinks she’s all about!

    A song by Whitney Houston best describes Lynn’s life mantra

    Well there’s a bridge and there’s a river that I still must cross
    As I’m going on my journey
    Oh, I might be lost

    And there’s a road I have to follow, a place I have to go
    Well no-one told me just how to get there
    But when I get there I’ll know
    Cuz I’m taking it

    Step By Step, Bit by Bit,
    Stone By Stone (Yeah), Brick by Brick (Oh, yeah)
    Step By Step, Day By Day, Mile by Mile (ooh, ooh, ooh)

    “I am a very intelligent person, and also more creative than most. I am also more perceptive than I would like to be. It’s a Scorpio trait and when I was born both the Sun and the Ascendent were in Scorpio. So yes, my weakness is that I do have a nice sharp sting!!! I am an impatient person; impatient with humans, but very patient with animals! In my performance appraisal, I am always told to be less direct and more tactful, but then I don’t know whether being brutally honest is a strength or a weakness! I believe I am also quite a compassionate fool.”

    Not a word more required to know her true mettle. Panache, threat, compassion and an impatience of sorts… it’s all there in those words.

    For the uninitiated, as far as the “designation” bit goes, this Goan heads Lintas Media Group as director and has been in the industry for more than two decades. Lynn is known for her outspoken nature, one who doesn’t hesitate to call a spade, a spade.

    She wishes she were 20 years younger so as to start all over again… but this time on the content side of the business as that’s where all the action is going to be. “For the television and media industry, there are optimistic, positive, exciting, challenging and great times ahead,” says Lynn.

    An alumnus of the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute, she began her career in 1982 with a brief stint at Speer before spending five years at O&M, where she did planning and buying for brands like J&J, Asian Paints, Titan Watches and Unilever. Trikaya Grey (now Grey Worldwide) got added to her resume, where she joined as media director in 1988.

    In this media business, which has become a huge scientific industry in the last few years, Lynn was an early bird entry. She’s been credited with pioneering the concept and openly championing the cause of media buying, as an independent business in India, after training stints with Mediacom at London and Dusseldorf.

    In this male dominated Indian society, women are now making their presence felt and in every walk of life. So how easy or difficult is it for a woman to be a top-notch professional? Lynn believes it’s not that difficult. “This is an equal opportunity industry, much more than most. At one time, there were more women media directors than men, and people used to wonder why!” she says.

    In an industry where there are more men than women, how does she face male dominance (if any)? “I don’t face any challenges that men don’t. As for male dominance, better you ask them how they fight female dominance! (If there is any, and I am sure there isn’t!),” Lynn quips back.

    Lynn-ventory

    So what’s on this versatile lady’s inventory at present? Firstly, she wants to see the Lintas Media brand and its sub-brands “making a positive difference to the market in all aspects – from client service, to new media use, to talent development to rebuilding client respect for the work that media agencies do and the ethics that media professionals employ.”

    Second thing on her agenda arises out of her love for animals. “I am driving expansion of the Goa SPCA’s activities within Goa beyond what we do for ownerless animals – responsible pet ownership is practically non existent in that State and that’s a new thing that we are working on,” says Lynn.

    Another pet peeve of Lynn’s is the current television ratings system. She’s made no bones about the fact in the media that the current ratings system is not up to the mark. And that with new emerging media platforms, the existing ratings system will become redundant. An active member of the Media Research User’s Council (MRUC) Lynn has formed technical and business committees to act on the suggestions made by the industry for improving the TV ratings system. “I am keen on making a real difference to the state of TV audience measurement in this country despite some fairly stiff and below-the-belt opposition in this area,” she stresses.

    When asked about that special quality of hers which brought her to the position she is today, she cheekily replies – “Breathing.”

    Lynn-tertainment

    An avid lover of animals, Lynn took in a pet rat for company when she went to Australia to study for a year.

    She has two homes, one in Mumbai and the other in Goa. In Mumbai, she lives with her parents. “My parents are in thier late seventies but pack in more energy and spirit than 20 of me!” Lynn says. Then she has her pets Gemma and Pixie. Gemma is an Afghan hound who she rescued a few years ago and Pixie is her 13 and a half year old pom.

    Her passion is her pets and her day starts and ends with them. “Apart from my pets, the other thing that makes me tick are all the birds and animals we work with and help. I don’t know how I could ever live without one of these creatures with me. Animals put our lives into perspective, they remind us that we do not own and control the earth, and never will,” she philosophises.

    What’s more, Lynn is also an author and has to her credit a work of fiction – ‘A Dog’s Life’, which was published two years ago. The book is a first person account of a mongrel and his mates, a touching story of friendship that crosses social boundaries. Now she’s working on her second book, which is scheduled for release next year.

    Phi-Lynn-thropist

    On being queried about her philanthropist efforts, she quickly replies that she’s not as much a philanthropist as she would like to be. “I wish I could do more for less fortunate people, but I think there are already too many people doing that. So I choose to give a lot to the world of nature. Indians do very little for the animals, it’s certainly not a popular cause to work for, and that’s our society’s short-sightedness,” she says.

    “Plus I always find that the people who say ‘why do you work for animals when there are so many suffering humans?’ are those who do nothing for humans either, whereas all those who work in human and social upliftment show a lot of compassion towards animals too,” she reminisces.

    On a concluding note, what this tough lady strongly believes in is that the means are always just as important, if not more, than the end. “I like to build rather than raid, to enjoy the fruits of my own efforts than feast on the efforts of others,” she says.