When ads are better than soaps

The advertising industry realizes that the remote control is an even more potent destroyer of poor advertising than clients and is hence pushing the envelope more and more to ensure that we don’t switch channels. 

The Tanishq ad was memorable

For my take on advertisers, television viewing habits and programming you can read the full article at the Indian Television website.

TV ratings remain flat for IPL

Through IPL 2011, ESPNcricinfo will be tracking TV ratings using the TAM People Meter, India's leading TV ratings system. This is the second installment in the weekly series

The 2011 IPL continues to struggle to attract viewers compared to last season, with ratings down 21.99% on average for the first 26 games across six key markets. The drop was even steeper over the last ten games, with ratings falling by 27.08%. The likely culprits are cricket fatigue and a lack of familiarity with the teams, say media experts.

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Sponsors in a spot

Match-fixing allegations enervate audiences, and marketers would do well to have alternative strategies in place..

There used to be a fairly banal script idea in the Tamil films that I used to see several years ago. See if this sounds familiar: There is a doting husband and a pretty wife with dubious morals. The husband reluctantly leaves his wife to go on a foreign trip and barely has he reached the airport before the wife gets her paramour into the house. The flight is cancelled for technical reasons (long live Air India) and the husband returns home, only to find his wife in a stranger's arms in his own bed. The poor man is devastated, loses reason, sees red and kills his wife. He goes to jail, becomes a misogynist and goes around wearing a shawl in the salubrious Tamil Nadu weather singing sad songs!

Sounds familiar, even ludicrous and only serves to confirm our already poor opinion about Tamil films, right? But there is nothing ludicrous about what happened in cricket recently with the Pakistani cricket team and with all the evidence of spot fixing that has been aired on every television channel and spewed forth on every Web site and newspaper. I am sure thousands of cricket lovers, me included, would empathise with the husband in the Tamil movie and feel he was not as weird as they thought he was initially, as now I can understand what people can do when they are let down badly by the people they love. I don't blame some of the Pakistani supporters for taking to the streets as they have been let down again by their beloved cricketers and even more by their administrators who still talk about “conspiracy theories”, even if they have been pushed to reluctantly suspending the three tainted players.

Spare a thought for me

I felt particularly aggrieved as, when match after match of boring cricket was happening in the sub-continent featuring some of our own stars, I chose to watch Pakistan take on Australia and England under the cloudy skies of the English summer and revelled at the way the Pakistanis made the ball talk, not knowing that a lot of the conversation was happening with shady characters from the betting world as well. Poor, unsuspecting me! It was singularly gratifying to watch the talented 18-year-old make batsmen such as Ricky Ponting, Andrew Strauss and Kevin Pietersen look like schoolboys on their first outing. Sadly, though, it is not the image of the swinging ball beating the bat, but the repeated sight of Aamer's extended front foot well over the crease, shown time and time again on every TV channel in the country, which is going to haunt not only me but the sponsors who have put in hundreds of crores in India.

Suddenly many of the Australians too are talking about being approached while they were playing earlier against Pakistan, in London and during the Champions Trophy. Atul Wassan, who has been involved with the IPL too, spoke as though players being approached by bookies was as common as being propositioned by a sex worker in the shadier parts of any city!

What was all hunky dory suddenly seems to be as murky as hell, and the entire future of the game is being threatened. If this will not give sponsors sleepless nights, one wonders what else will. For once faith is lost and then everything comes into the realm of doubt and uncertainty. Was Mike Hussey's unforgettable innings in the World Cup semi-final against Pakistan (arguably the greatest innings ever played in the T20 big stage) for real? Was Australia's victory at Sydney truly a jail break and as dramatic as it seemed to me when I watched it first on Star Cricket? Is any cricket match involving Pakistan real at all? If a five-day test match in an alien land can be influenced, what about the shorter versions such as the Champions League, the IPL and, horror of horrors, the 50-over World Cup, which is to be held in the sub-continent early next year?

How safe are any of these? Will I watch any of these? And what about millions of others who may be sharing the same doubt as me and may not be articulating them? What is going to be our reaction when the bowler, albeit genuinely, bowls a “no-ball”? Will we exult at the ensuing “free hit” or wonder about the bowler's integrity? What happens when a fielder drops a catch? While we do know that even the best of fielders can drop a catch, will our thoughts go to the sitters dropped by Younis Khan and Kamran Akmal, who continues to be a darling of the Pakistani selectors even if he has given a new dimension to terms such as “butterfingers” and “iron gloves”? Will the ardent cricket fan continue to watch the game? I am not so sure.

It is money and more of the same

I would be the last to grudge players what is due to them, for they are the ones who bring in the crowds. I used to travel to different parts of the world to watch Gilchrist bat and Warne bowl. Similarly, I am sure that spectators from all parts of the world would come to watch Sehwag and Sachin take on the best of the world.

But it does seem horribly inequitable that the best talent that the world has seen in recent times — Mohammed Aamer (whatever his current ills) — gets paid less for bowling 60 overs in a five-day test match than Ishant Sharma got paid for bowling one ball in the IPL, never mind the fact that the ball was bowled at a ferocious 125 km per hour as that poor lad seems to have lost his pace and his rhythm!

Still, inequity does not excuse the diabolical acts of the captain and his two champion bowlers. Nor do I know if you can entirely blame the political system and the total chaos that seems to prevail in that country that dooms everything including the cricket team. But the issue of wide disparities in incomes of players certainly seems to be an issue. The larger issue is the fact that the governing body – and that means the ICC – is toothless as evidenced by the fact that the tour is still on despite widespread criticism. For the ICC and the PCB it seems to be business as usual no-ball or not.

Where is the Plan B?

A few years ago, I heard an interesting comment on the brand strategies of Indian companies. The speaker said with the straightest of faces “Most companies have a Plan B, which comes into operation when the original plan fails. In India though most companies have a ‘Plan Big B'. When all else fails use Amitabh as your brand endorser.” Well, not an exaggeration, as Amitabh, if my memory serves me right, did 67 commercials in 2004! I wonder if companies have a similar attitude to cricket as they seem to be bitten by the cricket bug despite all the chaos that one can patently see.

I wonder how the IPL will be run without the high-profile founder and as for the Champions League, despite all the hype, I still believe it is likely to be a damp squib, maybe competing with the Commonwealth Games in appeal. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating but the game of cricket is under serious threat and seems to lurch from one crisis to the other. There is a complete and total lack of leadership with most boards, and the leader of the pack is the ICC, which seems to be focused on everything except the long-term interest of the game.

I am sure the sponsors are familiar with the term caveat emptor. They must look out for themselves as the administrators do not have the will to get their house in order. The malaise is too deep-rooted and the spot fixing episode is not the first problem, nor is it likely to be the last. If I were putting my money in cricket, I would seriously have an alternative strategy in place.

Software companies did this. It is called “de-risking”. They looked at markets such as Europe and Japan when the US tanked and at least came out alive. What efforts have the companies who are wedded to cricket made to look for alternatives? I am sure the next few big events that India has interests in – the Champions League, the World Cup and the IPL – have to be watched carefully as a mess in any of these can deal the game a body blow. Indian companies should seriously look at neutral games such as the Ashes, where at least the shadow of fixing does not arise, and move on to safer pastures over a period in time. I am reasonably sure that our sponsors have a different view from my gloomy one. For once, I hope I am wrong for I love the game and what I have got from it but worry for its future.

PS: While still on the subject of Amitabh Bachchan, I have a doubt. Is it true that only cricketers should retire? What about actors? At 68, hasn't he had too long a run? I just cannot bear to watch the Champions League commercials. I only hope the games are better than the ads!

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf. He blogs at www.ramanujamsridhar.blogspot.com.)

Crisis? Stay cool!

We live in difficult times and the survivors need to have a strategy in place and, more importantly, keep their cool..

Everything is ‘breaking news' even if it does not qualify as news - forget the fact that the only thing it breaks is poor victims' hearts.

In the eye of the storm: Indian cricketer Virender Sehwag.

In the Sixties when I was a young kid, I had the onerous responsibility of reading the newspaper to my grandmother or telling her the highlights of the day as depicted in the Tamil newspaper of that day and age.

The headlines were graphic and everyday there were delightful headlines (to me, at least) with sound effects and gory details of how a person was stabbed or how another man's wife was abducted. I must confess that because of my lack of interest in politics, I would never read out the stuff to her. In fact, if I was to believe the newspaper, there was never a dull moment in a Madrasi's life!

My imagination would go bonkers at all the stuff that I was reading out to her and I would look anxiously at my grandmother, wondering what her reaction might be to all the “sax and violins” that was the order of the day. She would look at me calmly and say, “All this is bound to happen. We live in Kalyug.” Of course, this sounded quite dramatic and ominous when it was spoken in Tamil. I have neither the earthy wisdom of my grandmother nor her stoicism, yet, when I see some of the news from the world of business, politics and sports that is making the headlines today, I am reminded of her prophetic words.

Here is a sample of the news that is rocking the world. BP, a once revered company, has suddenly found its reputation rocked by the oil spill and its image completely tarnished by its harried CEO telling journalists that he “just wanted his life back”. He got it back alright as he lost his job. The charismatic and successful CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Mark Hurd, had to resign over a sexual harassment investigation.

Closer home in Karnataka, an Infosys employee was accused of murdering his wife and promptly invited suspension from the company. The State's Labour Minister beat up a common man who overtook him on the road and obstinately refused to apologise, even as the hapless Chief Minister intervened and did so.

The Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah

Up North, the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, had a finely polished shoe thrown at him. As the Commonwealth Games continues to break new records in corruption every day, it has moved from the front pages, replaced by more exciting stuff that is happening every day all around the country and the world. In cricket, Virender Sehwag was denied his century in a one-day match against Sri Lanka thanks to an overzealous bowler bowling a huge no ball (he almost tread on the batsman's toes). The bowler was given a one-match ban with everyone and his mother-in-law getting into the act and offering sanctimonious statements about the ‘spirit of the game'. The only spirit that one can associate with modern day cricket is being provided by the sponsors, but that is a different story.

Is public memory short?

When I see all the mayhem and chaos that seems to follow our lives so easily, I am reminded of that comedian of old who used to jump up and down and ask “ Yeh kya ho raha hai?”, though I wonder if there is anything even vaguely comical about all that is happening around us and is assaulting us from every possible media vehicle. It must be conceded though that life of yesteryear was hardly as complex as it has become in today's day and age.

People doing the darkest deeds were still secure in the knowledge that they would quickly get a ‘second life', which would begin soon enough as public memory continued to be short, and sooner rather than later one of their contemporaries would outdo them in villainy and, thankfully, make their current misdemeanour pale in comparison. Not today, as thanks to the Internet, everything, if not carved in stone, is at least preserved for posterity, coming back to haunt the poor perpetrator (if one can be described that way) at the unlikeliest of times.

If I needed to find out what happened to the CEO of BP in 2010 in the year 2060, I would not have to visit the dusty archives of a newspaper office but just surf the Net. Yes, today's crisis will not go away easily but, perhaps, return to haunt companies and individuals long after their deeds are done and dusted.

Picnic with the tiger

In my cub years in communication, I read with interest what the renowned columnist Maureen Dowd said: “Wooing the press is an exercise roughly akin to picnicking with a tiger. You might enjoy the meal but the tiger always eats last.” I thought that India was different and in any case the tiger was an animal that was facing extinction, so why worry about the media that was out to get you. But the rules have changed with so many newspapers, magazines and television channels vying for attention. Everything is ‘breaking news', even if it does not qualify as news, forget the fact that the only thing it breaks is poor victims' hearts.

So what do some of today's editors do? They twist news around, put words into people's mouths, sentence the accused even before the slow arm of the law has a single hearing, attribute motives where none exist and either glorify or deify people. Liberalisation has reared its ugly head as far as reporting is concerned as most people will do anything for rating points and readership (this newspaper excluded) and journalistic ethics is banked with the same ease as politicians bank their ill-gotten gains in Swiss banks.

So it is hardly surprising that crises happen readily, multiply like the Indian population of old and stay permanently in the public memory thanks to the Net. So what should individuals and corporations do? Can they escape the noose they have created for themselves and that the media has so carefully and painstakingly tightened?

Preparedness the key

Tylenol, the over-the-counter drug that Johnson & Johnson had to recall several years ago.

Even today, when people discuss crises that hits companies, there is a reference to Tylenol and to Johnson & Johnson, the company once under siege, which actually turned the crisis around, if not to come out smelling like roses, at least with its image intact as a concerned corporate citizen willing to accept the problem, face it head-on and climb the slow, arduous way to the top. I wonder how many more case studies we could talk of with regard to companies that have ridden crises with a comparable degree of success and most certainly not in the Internet age. Is there a method to this madness? What must companies do? Can they do anything at all? Yes, I strongly believe they can. Here's how.

More and more CEOs are going to be in the firing line of media and activists. They need to be prepared and, more crucially, prepare for crisis. I often think CEOs are so full of themselves that they frequently shoot their mouths off and themselves in the foot in the bargain. The CEO of BP is a case in point.

In my opinion PR agencies have a role to play and must get into the CEO chambers more often than they are in the cubicles of corporate communication managers. The question remains, however, whether PR companies are ready for this challenge. If they are not, then they must get ready to assert themselves with clients, who need to be led in crisis, but often enough are not. I do know that companies prepare for crises too and the better-run companies have programmes in place for eventualities of all sizes and shapes.

So how prepared is your company? How open is your CEO to listen and how ready is your PR company to handle the crisis? How good are their relations with the media? Can they bank their goodwill to defuse the crisis? Can companies that are at fault own up when they are wrong? Can the PR companies advise their clients to come clean? It helps to be honest. BP might have learnt a thing or two from Johnson & Johnson.

My vote goes to Abdullah

It is easy to clutch at straws but I did feel that there is light at the end of the tunnel amidst this entire crisis and some learning for us. I admired Abdullah for saying he was glad that it was not a stone that was thrown and just a shoe. He had the good sense and if I may add, patience, to call the shoe thrower for a private meeting, spent an hour with him and sent him back to his native village in his private aircraft or was it helicopter. Clearly, he had won over the aggrieved man with his charm. Now how many CEOs would have done that?

Yes, we live in difficult times and the media will ensure that the difficulties continue. The survivors will have a strategy in place and more importantly keep their cool.

So how cool are you?

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf. He blogs at www.ramanujamsridhar.blogspot.com.)

Not a memorable year for advertising

The advertising industry seems to no longer have an affinity for storytelling. As advertising moves down the value chain, inventive marketing is taking charge..

On a wintry morning in Bangalore as I sit wondering how advertising and marketing were in the year gone by, my mind wanders as it usually seems to do on wintry mornings (and just about any time). This time my undisciplined mind went to a commercial of the early Nineties for Band Aid, made by Johnson & Johnson. A kid has hurt himself playing football and his father who is a doctor (incidentally the model looks amazingly like Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director of Titan Industries) tells him of the need to use Band Aid and how the injury should not be left open and the boy repeats the messages mechanically, his mind obviously on something else. Both of them leave the frame and as we expect the commercial to end the boy comes darting back into the frame and shouts, ‘ Bhoolna math match jeet gaya!' (‘Don't forget we won the match!').

Strikingly, perhaps the most significant recall factor of 2009 for me is the fact that India is the No. 1 test team in the world and was also the one-day leader for approximately 24 hours! Of course, being the karma yogi that I am, I shall resist the temptation to talk about the BCCI and its enormous capability to botch up anything and its phenomenal foresight in scheduling a colossal number of two test matches in the next 12 months for our all-conquering team. I shall stay with the yearly review that you are so patently and ardently (!) waiting for!

The mother of all crises!

The US and the Western world would like to forget 2009 in a hurry and wish it would end soon but the happenings in September 2008 spilled over for most of the year and had far-reaching implications for many countries, including India. Let me stay with the impact on advertising during the year that is chugging to a painful close. I think the year served more than ever to remind us of the fact that the truly Indian agency is a rarity and every second agency is part of a global network. The headquarters of global agencies panicked, and how! It is fair to say that India in real terms was not as badly affected as the rest of the world. But this did not prevent extreme reactions.

Many years ago I went to Hong Kong for a DDB Needham global conference and country after country presented. The order was usually North America, UK, France, and Germany and somewhere towards the end was India. India was not in the picture. Thankfully that has changed; India is much higher in terms of importance and visibility. But I wonder how many of the agencies' heads here in India realise that or, more critically, have the courage and the will to take on their global bosses? Although it seems a bit outspoken, I wonder if many of the agency bosses in India are in the last stages of their advertising careers and do not wish to assert themselves or take the trouble to educate their network partners on how we were not as badly off as the rest of the world and why the same cost-cutting strategy should not be adopted here.
India was administered the same medicine as the rest of the world, never mind the fact that it did not have the same degree of sickness. There was a ban on recruitment, travel, training … you get the drift? Agencies for once took their eyes off the headline and focused on the bottom line.
I daresay agencies treated talent in a harsh manner, to put it mildly, and let a number of people go. It is perhaps correct to say that the industry has alienated a whole lot of talent which was unable to understand or appreciate the steps being taken. In a sense it has been beneficial as it has spawned a few start-ups of disenchanted creative people who quite rightly want to do their own thing. Of course, agency heads, like their clients in the IT industry, kept parroting that they were only asking non-performers to leave and were improving the quality of their talent. I did feel sorry for the people in the advertising business, some of whom lost their jobs, forgot about raises and were not even trained during the year as all budgets were frozen.

The media struggles too

If advertising is ailing can media be far behind? Media has become the truly lowest common denominator and television is the primary offender as media woos eyeballs and revenue. Television seems to be going the David Dhawan way and we seem to revel in the era of ‘manufactured reality'. The Raakhi Sawant show is a case in point. People, it seems, are avidly switching on to things that you love to hate.
Thankfully, cinema, which people used to castigate readily, is moving up in creativity, technique and a lot of young talent is moving into it. What about news channels and their enormous capability at branding non-events as ‘breaking news?' I guess one of the commercials for the Hindustan Times where an anguished mother has a child in hospital thanks to defective medicine while an intrusive reporter asks her obnoxious questions best sums up the pathetic state of the channels.

About newspapers, the distressing trend of ‘paid editorial' is spreading like the AIDS virus. Recently when we were speaking about possible PR coverage for one of our clients, a prominent challenger newspaper, not the leader as one would suspect, asked “Why do you want PR coverage for this client? In any case they are not advertising in our paper, surely our readers are not the target audience?” I think the newspaper industry needs to step back for just a moment and consider its very reason for being. The world has enough products and services that are marketed mindlessly, often without the slightest consideration for truth, honesty and the consumer. Must the newspaper be just another product like these or must it stand for truth and fairness?

What about creativity?

The advertising industry seems to have lost its penchant for storytelling. Of course, the Zoozoos were a beacon of light in an otherwise dark and often depressing creative environment.
Mind you, this is not to ignore some isolated campaigns which still stood out from the clutter. But this has been a lean year for creativity as perhaps it has been for Ishant Sharma who was the greatest thing that happened to Indian fast bowling not so long ago.

There were very few campaigns that made one stand up and cheer as David Ogilvy would say, or make one wistfully say, “I wish I had written that.” There was the trend of some brands such as Idea Cellular and Tata Tea trying to tap into the social consciousness of the country, particularly of youth which may have some implications in terms of future possibility.

Some of the digital agencies used the freedom of the medium to provide outstanding creatives.
If one were to sum up the mass media creative, we probably delivered a plateful of advertising that one did not want. There was too much advertising and too little engagement, as an expert said, and advertising runs the risk of killing the reason why we are watching the media.
I think this is affecting the customer adversely. Have you ever tried to watch an interesting Hindi or Tamil movie on TV on Sunday? More than ever advertising needs to remind itself that at the best of times it is an interruption. People do not switch on the TV to watch the ads or buy a newspaper to see the ads, unless, of course, they want a job or wish to sell their apartment.

The advertising of today which tries so hard to be different is actually getting commoditised. While a good trend is that people from advertising have moved to films and are directing noticeable, popular films - the most visible of them being Balki and his second film Paa – clients too must realise that unless they give their agencies elbow room, the best of them will drift away to pastures where their creativity is recognised and rewarded and that will be disastrous for the industry as a whole.

Innovation the name of the game

Obviously advertising is moving down the value chain and is becoming more low-involvement as a career, which is in fact affecting the overall perception of the industry. Tata DoCoMo revolutionised the mobile services market with its per-second billing. Where is the innovation from advertising? I know that agencies will talk about roadblocks that they have created for Volkswagen and Hindustan Unilever. My take on this is slightly different. Are agencies being self-indulgent or are customers noticing these innovations that agencies are so proud about?
And as a prospective customer I am taken aback at the advertising for the Volkswagen Beetle here in India.

Will I pay over Rs 22 lakh after seeing this ad or even ask for a test drive? Is this aspirational? What a fantastic opportunity to work on an iconic brand! Has the opportunity been seized? I wonder. I remember seeing the room that Bill Bernbach used to work from in Madison Avenue.
It was like entering a shrine, so much was the aura of creativity around the man. The key question in DDB in those days whenever a campaign was being designed was to ask themselves the question on the lines of ‘What would Bill say?'
We have no way of knowing what Bill would have to say about the creativity of Indian advertising in 2009, but something tells me that the advertising legend who created campaigns which conformed to the 3 Ss of ‘simplicity, surprise, smile' might have for once been ‘stumped' for an answer!

(The writer is the CEO of brand-comm and the author of ‘Googly: Branding on Indian Turf.')

Image Source: NorthMediaHigh

A tribute to print advertising

Our columnist makes a case for a return to the medium which, he says, allows marketers to “sell rationally”.

Vintage brand, vintage advertising.

When was the last time you saw a great print ad? I know I must scratch my head to get the answer, but given my failing memory and disappearing hairline, I may be excused. But what about you? One of my favourite pastimes is to ask people which adverti sing campaigns they remember. The answers vary from Cadbury’s (these are usually older people with diabetes who are not allowed to have chocolates), Fevicol (perhaps guys who have never fixed anything in their lives), Vodafone (definitely dog lovers married to people who cannot stand dogs), Idea Cellular (obviously guys who have never had a single idea in their lives), Tata Tea (guys who slept through election day) and Titan (perhaps because they have been gifted with so many watches in their lives).

These are seriously good television campaigns. But honestly, does anyone talk about press advertising today, much less remember it? And it is not as though we spend every waking moment in front of the idiot box. We surf the Net, spend half our working day sending forwards that no one reads, continue to read the newspaper in the loo (widely accepted as the best antidote to constipation) and browse through magazines (after all, we want to know who Salman is going around with). Yet, where are the ads that stop us? Ads with arresting headlines, visuals that paint a thousand words, body copy that is as easy to read as the topmost line in the optometrist’s chart and a tagline that is as easy to recall as the six times table (having a name like Ramanujam gives me some inherent numerical ability that sadly stops at this level of multiplication.)

Oh, the disadvantages of remembering the past!

I always wanted to be a copywriter. Maybe the advertising industry had earned some good karma, because I was never allowed anywhere near a typewriter. I returned with a vengeance and became a column writer, but that still does not explain my passion for copywriting. I was completely hooked on to ads. I lived, dreamt, ate and slept ads. And those ads were press ads. Who owned a television set in the Seventies?

I could visualise the pleasure of driving around in a Rolls Royce thanks to David Ogilvy’s much publicised lines “At sixty miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.” I still visualise the ride, as my books don’t sell a hundred million copies and I have only seen a Rolls Royce from the outside, most recently on the Bandra-Worli sea link. I was madly in love with the Volkswagen thanks to the “Think small” and the “Lemon” and the hundred other ads for the brand. Maybe one day I will buy a Volkswagen, who knows!
Who can forget the Avis “We try harder … ” ads? I was not a drinker when I saw the Cutty Sark ads that exhorted me to ‘never give up the ship’. If and when the brand is readily available in India I will follow that advice. I remember the Chivas Regal ad for Father’s Day and it still brings tears to my eyes when I read it: “Because I don’t say thank you as often as I should. Because it’s Father’s Day. Because if you don’t deserve Chivas Regal, who does?” says the ad. Clearly my children have not read the ad. In any case they studiously ignore the one day that poor, uncared-for fathers are recognised and blatantly ignore the most overt of reminders from their mother! They too will be fathers one day!

And what about the Absolut ads, arguably the greatest print campaign of all time! I can never forget the ‘Absolut DC’ ad with the bottle draped in oodles of red tape. Pity, the tape in New Delhi would have made that of Washington DC look a weak shade of pink without a shadow of doubt! Yes, those were romantic, heady days. We had some great press ads in India too with people such as Frank Simoes, Kersy Katrak, Kiran Nagarkar, Mohamed Khan, Elsie Nanji and Alok Nanda, to name just a few, who were doing great press work. Agencies such as Trikaya, Rediffusion, Enterprise, Ambience and Nexus produced print work that was comparable with the best in the world. But what happened after that?

Only TV, only TV, it’s only TV!

Even as Delhi struggles to get ready for the Commonwealth Games, it is worthwhile to remember that it was the Asiad in the same city that spawned the growth of colour televisions in the country and, therefore, TV advertising. Agencies realised the potency of this medium and geared themselves to meet the challenge. Many of the Levers brands such as Liril and Surf latched on to the medium. Other agencies, particularly Mudra (as I was familiar with its operations at that time), geared themselves to build competencies in this medium. Brands such as Vimal and Rasna walked into millions of living rooms with their creativity.

There was a point of view that talented film producers were bailing out agencies still trying to create for this medium as a lot of the early TV work was actually attributable to talented film producers who were improving the creative product enormously with their ideas and even their scripts. Be that as it may, agencies started to create for this medium and a new breed of copywriters emerged who understood and thrived in this medium. India has got enormous talent in Bollywood and Kollywood and every other ‘wood’.

The best names in films realised this was a different challenge – final products with a duration of 30 seconds as against three hours, needing its own brand of skills. This did not deter the best music composers, film and art directors from making their mark. It is pertinent to remember that A.R. Rahman started out as a jingle composer. Others such as P. C. Sreeram and Rajiv Menon from the South did outstanding work both in commercial cinema and in TV commercials. Consequently, our skills in this medium are finely-honed and over the years some outstanding work has taken place. When I visit the US and watch the TV commercials there, I am inclined to believe that the average TV commercial in India is much better conceptualised, produced and is a lot more rewarding for the viewer and there are billions. Yes, India has tremendous challenges of language, religion, customs, even dialects, but the advertising industry has conquered these in the medium of TV. But what about print?

So what is the problem?

As always, it is easier to describe the problem than to offer a solution, but problem definition is a good first step to finding a solution. The problem partly lies with the advertising agencies which have recruited, trained and rewarded a whole breed of copywriters who think, breathe and live TV scripts … and it shows. Success is built around the 30-second commercial and “integration” usually means one outstanding piece of work that is created for television and multiple adaptations of the same thought. The print version is usually a poor second cousin. Rarely is print the lead medium. Of course, the numbers justify the importance of the TV medium but print delivers brilliant numbers too, if only we recognise its value and functionality.

Print allows us to sell rationally. But do we have the skills? The old school of copywriters that I worked with was reared on Wren and Martin. (I can almost hear you asking who they are?) If they gave you a piece of writing, you could bet your bottom dollar that while you could argue about the creative approach, you could not utter a word about its correctness. They read The Hindu and The Statesman, did the crossword and could engage you intellectually. Of course, in those days ads were originally conceptualised, written and released in English and then translations followed. Today, the conceptualisation for most brands is created in Hindi. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I wonder if that too is affecting the quality of the creative product as perhaps it is easier to create for TV in Hindi than to write ads in that language.

I think the time is right for the advertising agency to realise that it’s missing a trick. Television has been and perhaps will continue to be the low-hanging fruit. But there needs to be a long-term solution. The increasing literacy levels of the country and the potency of print as a medium cannot be ignored forever. I do know that agency folk listen more to their clients than to their spouses so maybe clients should put their foot down and ask for better print advertising.

Advertising too should highlight the value of print in its awards, forums and discussions. Maybe the newspaper industry should lead the way in this initiative. The industry has its own share of veterans who understand this medium and its nuances. Maybe now is the time to ensure that their talent is recognised. It is time for people like me who have been in the industry for ages to give back to the industry that has given us so much and what better way than to train the talented and yet raw youngsters who are in this industry and have no clue of what they should be doing?
Yes, the time is right to ‘Think Print’.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of Googly: Branding on Indian Turf.)

It’s about the team, silly!

Although the atmosphere in IPL Season 2 may not be as electrifying in South Africa as it was in the pulsating grounds of India.. Star studded, yes. But can IPL-2 repeat the magic of the first edition?

I watched every match of the first edition of the Indian Premier League in the comfort of my living room, usually slouched on my favourite chair, though I did lose my place on occasion to my son who is taller and more muscular and a cricket fan as we ll. The only match I saw live was the final at the new D.Y. Patil stadium at Vashi in New Mumbai, where two teams from other parts of India were playing – the Rajasthan Royals and the Chennai Super Kings, in front of an audience that consisted essentially of Mumbaikars, though there were small contingents from Rajasthan and Chennai who were making their presence felt with the volume of their voices.

Now let me go off on a tangent. Have you seen the Vodafone commercial? The one with the girl who is in the same lift as a celebrity and wants to tell the whole world about her fantastic experience, of course at the nominal cost of 60 ps per message. Yes, I did feel a bit like her as I was sitting just a couple of rows behind Aamir Khan and Sachin Tendulkar and all the flash bulbs were on them. But I didn’t mind the lack of media attention as my own attention was on the tight game and the attendant excitement, the fireworks, the performing artists and the delirious fans who kept chanting “Watson! Watson!”, as they have done for Sachin in the same city and all over the world for years. Yes, the first edition of the IPL was an unqualified success for a variety of reasons. It broke all the myths about Indians supporting Indians only as Chennai cheered for Hussey and Hayden and Kolkata for McCullum. It featured some outstanding cricket, delivered enormous eyeballs to television audiences, got tremendous coverage in every possible medium and made Lalit Modi the most celebrated marketing personality of the year. So what’s in store in April as the IPL gets ready for its next edition? The major difference is that it will not be in the heat and dust of Rajasthan and Chennai or in front of audiences of over 50,000 and close to one lakh people in sweltering heat but in the more salubrious climes of Cape Town and Bloemfontein and in venues as exotic as the Bullring in the Wanderers.

Change of venue, loss of face

The last few weeks have been tense for Lalit Modi, the BCCI, and the franchisees that were getting tenser by the moment with each change of date and with increasing hostility from the politicians, who were concerned with their own future despite some of them being diehard cricket fans. After all a livelihood is more important than entertainment and our politicians know which side of their bread is buttered. Every political party tried to get mileage from this (non) event and the failure to hold the matches in India was branded a failure of the Indian political system and definitely an indictment of the current government, though in all fairness it would have been a Herculean task to juggle the security arrangements of the general elections of this vast, diverse country and the tight security for the 59 matches of IPL planned in different venues at the same time.

Not as electrifying

Having said that, it is interesting to note that South Africa will have its own general elections during the IPL! While South African crowds have taken to the nano version of the game as the recent matches with Australia demonstrated, one must still wait and watch the impact of only a handful of South Africans participating across eight teams. South Africans might not exhibit the same enthusiasm for cheerleaders that some Indian audiences lapped up the last time around. My suspicion is that the crowds and the atmosphere this time around will be nowhere near as electrifying as it was in the throbbing, pulsating grounds of India, as spectators jostled cheek by jowl in every conceivable seat in every venue.

Already some of the cricketers such as Shane Warne have expressed their reservations about the venue and the fact that it will be nowhere near as exciting as it has been so far. The bottom line is that it is only about television audiences and 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. are wonderful times for Indian television audiences.

This leads me to the larger question as to what franchisees will get from IPL this time and what they might possibly lose because it is happening in a distant land and not within our own country, where we clearly know what to expect in terms of crowd presence and participation.

It is common knowledge that none of the franchisees had any serious association with cricket until they forked out enormous sums of money as guarantee money and paid (disproportionately) large sums of money to some cricketers. Of course, the franchisees haven’t learnt their lesson if the current bids for Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff are any indication. Last time around it was the less fancied and cheaper players who delivered phenomenal value. But, of course, we are being wise after the event while they clearly have to put their money where their mouth is. While it is their money and they are answerable only to their investors, I do feel that this event in South Africa, while it might deliver large, captive TV audiences in India, still has one big disadvantage for the franchisees and that is the complete absence of connect with the consumer.

Based on my own perceptions I can only say that there are short-term and long-term objectives that this entire venture promised. One was, of course, commercial viability, and some of the franchisees have claimed that they have broken even in the first year itself. But I did assume there was a larger objective and that was to build a local connect.

Build following for the teams in their respective centres by having people turn up in large numbers, waving flags, sporting the team’s colours and being passionate about them. Of course, it is unrealistic to assume that the fan of the Chennai Super Kings would feel as devastated if his team were to lose as the Manchester United fan in the same situation. The reason for this is simple. Team loyalties that are not driven by regional, national or parochial considerations will take time and effort to build. Last time was only about excitement, not much else. Stars were still the key excitement. It was still about Sachin and Yuvaraj and Dhoni, not so much about the teams and that is the challenge if the franchisees are to build loyalty and passion for their teams much like the English football teams then they need to simultaneously focus on the long run of this aspect, even as they worry about the profitability in the present.

A brand called Arsenal

I was recently reading an interesting book on Arsenal, which was not so much about the football, but about the club as a brand and that led me to some of the challenges that the IPL’s franchisees are likely to face. The statement by Herbert Chapman in the book, while making interesting reading, also prepares us for the challenges ahead. He says, “A club should be like a great big family with all members of it sticking and pulling together in the same direction.” Clearly building a club is not easy or short term. The more interesting thing for me was the authors John Simmons and Matt Simmons articulation of the four brand values of Arsenal:

Courage in the face of adversity

Loyalty to each other
Positive about the future
Proud of our past

Now I am no football enthusiast and do not know how different Manchester United’s values might be. But I do know that many of the IPL franchisees were ventures with commercial priorities. They were started in a booming economy with lots of IPO generated funds. But they have started with a bang and should not end as a whimper. They must remember that their long-term success will depend on their ability to get and hold fans and their success in engaging with fans. They must also remember that the follower of the T20 format is a completely different animal, who probably prefers excitement and entertainment to class of play. Yet he could be loyal to the concept, the team and the franchisee who engages with him. Having said all that, I must concede that the matches being held in South Africa are a setback for the franchisees, because TV audiences, though valuable can never, ever replace the passionate, adoring fan in the ground.

My suggestion to the franchisees is simple. Think long-term. Articulate the vision for your brand. Remember that we have no history to fall back on. Build your brand. Focus on the fan. The revenue will follow. And please hold future tournaments in India as in the current recessionary conditions it is difficult to travel to South Africa!

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm. and the author of One Land, One Billion Minds.)

Who will win the battle of the ballot?

As politicians get down to branding, what does this mean for the average Indian voter?

Of symbols, signs and slogans: Political advertising and branding is nothing new, but what will really catch the voter’s eye?

India is a country divided by differences of language, race, caste, colour of skin, religion, sub-sects, dialects and just about anything, And yet this divided country has common interests that strangely end up creating further differences.

Indians as a race are interested in politics, cricket, films and music, not necessarily in that order, and that applies through the length and breadth of the country. And yet these interests too continue to divide. Shah Rukh vs Aamir, Tendulkar vs Dravid and now Rajasthan Royals vs Chennai Super Kings … you get the picture.

Now, in the middle of the summer, two of India’s major passions will captivate the imagination of a poverty-stricken nation starved of entertainment. Yes, Sir! The controversial second version of the IPL and the general elections will simultaneously jostle each other for eyeballs and action.

Even as we get ready for the midsummer days and ‘nights’ madness that will be upon us almost immediately, I need to confess (with considerable regret, though) that a cricket fanatic like me is not going to talk about IPL, but stay with the elections. One aspect of it that I am perhaps in a position to talk about is the political advertising that is likely to come on air, print or be plastered on every piece of available space in this vast country. I will also talk about how political parties have used branding over the years and what one might well expect in the forthcoming elections.

We smart, politicians smarter

Many of us have an exaggerated sense of our own importance and intelligence. We simultaneously have a poor opinion of politicians promptly classifying them as ‘dumbos’ who do not deserve the level of success that they seem to enjoy. After all, we have been to IIT and IIM, hold majors in marketing and can tell the world a thing or two about strategy, or so we think, even as we chafe about the quality of people who are governing us. And yet, I think we are making the mistake of slotting them, wrongly.

Let me explain. I grew up in Tamil Nadu, which is a State that understands politics. In a sense that is a misleading euphemism and a statement similar to other obvious ones like ‘Australia plays cricket’ and ‘Chennai is hot in April’. While today’s political leaders seem quite unimpressive, to us at least, they actually have a greater understanding of strategy than we realise. I am now able to see the value of what I observed as a child, several years later, so much for my intelligence and my management education!

The political leaders of my time knew the value of branding long before I knew what the term meant. Branding is about symbols, and political parties like the DMK knew this long before people like you and I did. The DMK, for instance, has the symbol of the ‘rising sun’ which it kept repeating visually and orally and kept reiterating to the politically aware State.

Similarly, branding is about colours and this is something that politicians knew then and realise the value of now, perhaps more than ever. The DMK’s strong colour sense manifested itself in the usage of red and black which extended to the designs of the dhotis and even the towels those politicians and party members wore. I also used to smile at MGR’s dress sense. He would invariably wear a black shirt and lie down on a red carpet as he sang and I would wince. But the people behind this knew something that I did not know at that time. They were not bothered too much about aesthetics or dress sense but were subtly and overtly reinstating the brands, read the party’s colours.

Yes, political parties have always realised the value of branding and continue to invest in symbols, colours and slogans. The AIADMK has its twin leaves, the BJP its lotus, and the Congress a hand and so on. Symbols become even more critical in a country that has a high level of illiteracy and we need to remember that people cast their votes on these very symbols that are there on the ballot papers.

Still on the subject of branding, I would as a child fret about why MGR’s films scripts used to be so predictable. He would not smoke or drink in films, would not chase women (women chased him), he was a friend of the poor, he would give donations to the poor both in his films and in real life, he would do every film with the same story-line. But he had an agenda. He was subtly but surely telling his voting populace that this was the real MGR. He probably was, but there is no doubting the precision of his strategy or the methodical manner in which it was executed. Tamil Nadu loved him, voted for him and still continues to vote for his party.

Political advertising in the past

Traditionally, other countries have had greater reliance on advertising and one remembers Saatchi and Saatchi’s powerful campaign for the Conservatives with the line ‘Labour isn’t working’, taking a direct swipe at the increasing unemployment under Labour rule. Even more recently, Obama, in his high-profile election campaign, ran a 30-minute infomercial on major television networks. Speak of media muscle! India too has had its share of political advertising that has been high-decibel, if a bit low on creativity, as specialised agencies have worked on them generally, who probably knew the ropes and had access to the political leadership. In a sense all that changed when Rajiv Gandhi entrusted the task of the campaign to his Doon school friends who were running Rediffusion, the advertising agency. The campaign was a standout and a clearly different one from what the average Indian voter had been exposed to. Maybe the only hint of criticism that I can offer now, several years later, is that it perhaps came with an urban bias.

The other campaign which was quite visible was BJP’s ‘India Shining’ campaign which too had its fair share of visibility and did get some acclaim when it was launched. However, everything took on a different hue once the elections were lost and the campaign was unfairly (in my opinion, at least) made the scapegoat for the party’s fiasco in the elections.

This time around, the advertising budgets for the elections are slated to be Rs 500 crore; another estimate puts it at Rs 1, 000 crore making sure the troubled advertising industry least has something to look forward to.

The power of the slogan

Advertising is often reduced to slogans or tag lines and their recall. This is perhaps most true for political advertising. Perhaps a few we can recall are Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan and Garibi Hatao. Given the vast and diverse nature of the country and the fact that many of the people who vote are below the poverty line, the value of a slogan that is memorable need hardly be emphasised. The Congress probably said “why reinvent the wheel?” and just took over the Oscar winning Jai Ho.

I think there is a basic principle in advertising and that is great advertising is just not the ‘lowest common denominator’. You just cannot afford to talk down to the consumer. The greatest ideas are simple and powerful and make a profound impact on the target audience, however limited their education might be and that is the challenge that has to be addressed in this election. Throw in also the challenges of a metropolitan audience that is Net-savvy – then we have an indication of the complexity of the task that awaits the advertising agency.

What about the voter?

While we talk about all this, we just cannot afford to forget one important reality. The urban voter seems to live in a different world, particularly the educated one. He is generally apathetic to politics, politicians and his own responsibilities when it comes to choosing the right people. So, advertising is likely to be even lower in his priorities. It matters nothing to the voter that the people who are governing him and in effect leading his destiny are criminals. It is in this context that initiatives like ‘No criminals in politics’, which is just gathering momentum, are indications that the number of people who care about the future of the country and are actually putting their money where their mouth is.

As an advertising professional, I would like to see some great advertising for the next election. But as a citizen of India, I can only hope and pray that the Indian voter will have the sense to get the right people in and that will be the greatest news that India can get amidst all the doom and gloom that seems to be surrounding us just now.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of One Land, One Billion Minds.)