Category Archives: India

IPL 4 and why it failed

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IPL 4 started sometimes in March, CSK have won, Dhoni’s luck held and the carnival came to an end sometimes in May.  Over 120 brands were involved in this year’s IPL, chasing a dwindling audience. For the first time stadiums had unsold seats in T20 matches.  For the first time when the TV ratings started to slip, they kept on slipping. Something went seriously wrong with this years’ IPL.

True the quality of cricket was not up to scratch, true that the matches lacked fizzle, but the formula was the same. The same carnivals feel, the same cheer leading squads, the same loud IPL bugle, and yet the fizz went out.

This time though there was one additional factor that was missing in last three IPLs. This year there was Twitter, and the IPL was promoting twitter in a big way. The commentators were tweeting, the players were tweeting, and mercifully the viewers’ too were tweeting. Twitter possibly is the best way to know, what may have gone wrong. I pulled out the following as what was trending on Twitter through out the IPL 4

Trend 1: The biggest trend was on team branding and team fandom. The most obvious players moved out their respective teams and donned new colours were a big challenge for the viewers. People actively commented on the difficulty they faced in following their favourite players. Even the new captains were a big issue. The team owners too did not do much to increase their fan base. This year the engagement of the city with their teams was at a low. This is a prime reason why many seats were empty in stadium

Trend 2: Lalit Modi was certainly missed by the twitterati. There were questions on scheduling the matches, there were questions on ability to create and sustain hype, and certainly the pizzazz was missing from this years’ IPL. Schedule of This years’ IPL came under very harsh scrutiny by the twitterati. Lalit Modi was generally hailed as the true hero of IPL!

Trend 3: The second most comments were on the fairness of matches. This trend though is a little complex to analyze, as losing teams fans could always question the results. Yet there was a pattern to a large number of matches. The supposedly weaker team won from the supposedly larger team. The fact the RCB and CSK will make to finals and CSK will win was doing rounds on Twitter for a long time

Trend 4: The quality of cricket that was dished out was an issue. Though some of the new players had sporadic following, driven by how they played. Paul Valthaty, Rahul Sharma, Bharat Chipli, Badrinath were some players who gained sustainable fan following. And despite the rise of a few new stars, the quality of game was always criticized. If the league has to have a future, it needs to work hard on improving the quality of the game

Trend 5: If there was one player who dominated the Tweet world, that it was Chris Gayle. RCB post tells that he hit an astonishing 100 fours and sixes in the tournament. Since the time he came, his murderous assault on bowlers, and his miserly spell in bowling was always the toast of twitter world. Clearly the WI loss was IPL gain

Trend 6: Individual teams had very poor fan following, and that is a clear indicator of low engagement of teams with twitter population. Mumbai Indians has just 185 followers, Delhi has 4000, and the new comer Pune has 3000. KKR wins this hands down with over 44000 followers. CSK has 13000, and RCB 18000 followers. Looks like the average twitterati is not keen to connect with the official team pages

The Twitter analysis has clear pointers. If the brand has to thrive, it has to organize the event better, has to improve the quality of game, and above all be transparent.

The novelty is now over, and the thrill has been missing. IPL5 has survival issues at stake

 

For the sake of news

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Q) Should the sanctity of News be sacrificed at the altar of profits? At the end of the day, the channels have to be profitable?

Conversely if the news channels truly focus on giving you a path breaking news experience they would have audience flocking to them. Once audience comes in advertising is bound to follow. There are too many content calls that get taken basis brands that can be attracted to that content. This needs to stop, and more and more focus should be on creating consumer engagement

Q) Should News about Entertainment and Reality Shows be a part of Prime Time News content? What if this is the case today?

The news channels have to decide which business they are in. If the viewer wants to watch soaps and gossip about soaps, they have a variety of channels and facebook and you tube and net forums. The last place an average viewer wants to catch soaps are news channels. I know the channels will quote that these programmes are successful, but have the channels ever evaluated the impact of such programmes on its brand equity? Does this not dilute its ability to deliver authenticity and believability? There is a serious crisis of trust that most news channels are facing, and they seem to fuel the flippant side of brand, rather than the authentic side Q) Earlier, news channels and their people were popular enough to pull TRPs riding on the hardcore news content. Now they say they had to change because of the audience choice. What exactly is responsible for the current scenario? The news channels themselves are responsible. It’s the news channels that decided to dilute their ability to deliver news in an engaging manner, and invest in programming. They looked at easy way out, and do programming that costs next to nothing and try and get advertising revenue. Unfortunately it is hurting them and brands that are being advertised on them. They are sitting on a tinderbox that will explode, and in the process force them to reinvest in news.

Q) Besides self introspection by the channels, what factor can bring the news back?

Nothing, but self introspection. They need to take a longer view of the business they are in, and build muscle in that arena. No channel ever faced a crisis if it did what it is supposed to do in engaging ways, and in a manner that made it an icon. Deliver news in the most authentic way, with most engaging tone, and you will have audience flocking to you

Q) As an industry observer, do you think that the current scenario is really helping the channels to earn as per their potential with the fact that the difference in the market share of two channels is almost negligible?

The channels are making it difficult for themselves by becoming like a commodity. CNN is not same as BBC. There is a brand tonality, and a brand personality that is reflected even when they report on same thing, with same news feed. Unfortunately that is not true of most Indian news channels. The fact is that most of these channels are new, they don’t have the baggage of heritage, they can be lean mean and hungry, they can add a dimension to news that has been missing, they can reflect the viewpoint of a young and restless nation, sadly none of this is visible with the news channels today

Q) Advertisers look at the TRPs and content both before spending. Do you see any way out for the channels and the audience? Is there any ray of hope?

I think there is a space for a true news channel that reflects the reality of the audience that is today. I personally believe that the channels need to step out of self imposed boundaries, be serious about their craft, put a value of seriousness on themselves, or may be launch a show called ‘news ke muzrim”. Till then they will live with this persecution complex and feel that audience is not interested in real news. Sad news for news channels is that they have got it all wrong. As always the issue is will they listen?

Done for Zee News for the sake of news initiative http://www.bestmediainfo.com/testimonial.html

We have the cup, do we have the buzz?

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As Dhoni swung the ball high over the bowlers head and twirled his bat after hitting the shot, India achieved its 28 year long dream of recapturing the cricket world cup. The nation erupted in joy, and the party lasted the whole night. The party actually is still on, and IPL 4 may just bask in the post effect glory.

With India setting up a semifinal clash with Pakistan, and then setting up a final clash with Sri Lanka the advertising fraternity was presented with a tailor made opportunity. Here was an event that was galvanizing the whole nation, was promising sky high viewership and could be remembered by the nation for many years to come. The opportunity was grabbed by the eager advertisers, but did it work for them?

But first, what has baffled me is the TRP data. Take the semifinal clash between India and Pakistan. The interest was so high that the nation declared it as a holiday. Offices closed half day, giant screens were put up in market places, offices which did not shut down, organized mass viewing. India had come to a grinding halt. Streets were deserted; even the electronic shops beamed only the match on the TV sets. You could hear the roar on streets when Sehwag was murdering Gul, you could hear the roar when Tendulkar reached his 50, and you could even hear the silence when Yuvraj bagged the dubious glolden duck!

Everyone knew that the nation was glued, except the rating agencies. The match had a TVR of 22. They would like us to believe that this rating broke all records, and had set Tendulkarish high benchmark that will not be breached in a hurry.

Seriously 22! So what were the other 78 watching? Soaps? Dexter? Movies? If this is what the Indo Pak match delivered as TRP, than either there is something wrong with us as a nation, or something is wrong with the measurement system. My hunch is that it is more the latter than the former.

We did go on to win the World Cup, and expectedly the TRP didn’t cross the Indo Pak level, but the whole nation came out to party, and they partied through the night.

May be going into future we need to apply a factor of 4 to every TRP that the rating agencies release. There is no other way to explain the levels that the agencies are telling us.

The channels too leveraged the rush very well, with rates crossing 2Mn for every 10 sec. Brands willingly shelled out 6Mn for a spot. In a cricket match about 200 ads are telecast. The sheer commerce of it is staggering.

The brands though need to look beyond commerce. Did the commercial create the desired impact? Did it persuade the buyers to change their behavior? Not many brands may have succeeded in that endeavour. Possibly the most successful brand would be Nike, who managed to make their campaign into a sort of anthem. Bleed Blue became the clarion call, and it united the cricket lovers across the world. It did end up trumping the Change the Game campaign. May be a Sony, may be a Revital, but beyond that the ads remained mere intrusion that the viewer had to suffer through, rather than watch and enjoy.

India has won the world cup, and in the process has demonstrated that rules of engagement need to change. The old measurement system needs overhaul, and chasing most expensive ad slots may not guarantee impact

 

What can Children teach us about advertising awards?

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Let me make thing clear at the outset, I love awards. I have absolutely nothing against awards. I do have issues with awards that are neither transparent nor authentic. Both represents a form of public swindling that borders what can be called as cheating. This is something that children don’t do. They fight hard, and fight above board.

Advertising awards are supposed to do three things. One, it is supposed to enhance the prestige of the brand. Two, it is supposed to showcase the ability of the agency. Three, crafting path breaking ads becomes a way of life for brands that win. They are doing exact opposite. The awards are dominated by money power, more entries more awards and they are dominated by ‘created for awards’ ads.

There is a simple piece of statistics that we all need to look at. In 2009 at Goa Fest over 200 awards were given out. Of this about 70 were won by brands that were less than 5% of market share in their category. In 2010, of the 214 awards given out, 66 were won by brands that were less than 5% of their category. Now here are some interesting facts. There is no overlap between these brands in 2009 and 2010. Which means brands that won in 2009 did not win in 2010. None of these 120 brands that won crossed the 5% mark. They remained fringe brands that the tracking agencies find hard to track.

Even more startling is the fact that 85% awards are won by just 4 agencies, year on year. This is because 85% of entries come from these agencies. Somehow it is not celebration of best of best, it is a celebration of who entered more to win more.

We need to consider this with some interest. Creating award winning campaigns did not push the brand to greater success. Creating path breaking ads did not become mainstream culture for these brands. The creation of winning campaign thus only helped the agencies that created it. It would seem that there are many big brands that won awards, and did very well in market place. These are largely true, but were the ads part of mainstream campaigns is debatable.

Today there are major issues with award functions. May be there is very little right with advertising awards. The judging of shows has been compromised systemically year on year. Genuine ads often don’t make it, created specially win it.  Because they are created for awards, efficacy is never in consideration. It seems advertising award shows have become bigger business than celebrating advertising.

We as an industry are faced with key questions. Is there a way of improving? Can we improve the award shows, or completely reform them?

To find the answers I looked at school children. The joys of winning awards are hard wired into us from school. They remain the best template for being evaluated and being declared a winner. The system is simple, transparent and proven. More importantly they are egalitarian, they promote participation, and  the whole school believes in them. It suffers from none of the issues that are facing advertising awards today.

Here are a set of reforms that our award shows need to undergo, and the lessons are drawn from school children

First, be open to evaluation from a completely independent jury. The school awards are not judged by classmates. Winning an award in school does not mean hankering for extra marks in math exam. As an industry if we want to be rewarded for differentiated thinking, it should be from a panel of judges that we respect and value. Get the critiques, filmmakers, musicians, even clients into the jury

Second, we need to be genuine about ourselves and our work. The school children do not get their outside school friends to come and play in school team. Nor do they resort to lies or tricks to earn extra points. They are open, honest and transparent. We as an industry are caught in the circle of lies. We keep telling lies and only we believe they are the truth.  Schools don’t have what is called as process breach.

Third, the schools make it clear how the system of evaluation would work. How much of objectivity and how much of creativity matters are made clear from start. They stick to time lines and rules. Advertising awards and participating entrants need to play by rules.

If we have to award created for award ads, then let’s keep them free of brands, let’s celebrate the craft, independent of brands. The specially created ads any way don’t matter, at least we would be serious about what we award.

These are not radical suggestions. These are easily implementable. Yet somehow I think it won’t happen. We as communication professionals are change agents. We make consumers to change established behavioral patterns. Yet we are the most rigid and inflexible people.

I do hope, we can learn from our kids.

Story of our times

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India has always had two kinds of heroes, those who rule and those who are performers. These two are the royalty and performers. In any kingdom the King has always wanted to be in touch with reality of his kingdom. The performers have always been the pride of the kingdom.
In the ancient times the royalty went a great distance to be connected with their kingdom. The Open Durbars were their way of listening to the public. They were really the original crowdsourcers.
The performers were the people who caught the public’s eye and were always treated with awe and respect
This is how it used to be even in modern times. We have put two sets of people on the pedestal, the politicians and the performers. The performers include film stars and sports stars. It’s the performers who furthered the brand equity of the nation.
Earlier the politicians really lead a public life, where they mingled with the public and reflected their sense of moment. They were interested in what the public was doing, feeling and speaking. The politicians were really public figures and lead a public life
The second set of people is the performers. They have always leaded a private life. This helped them in creating the right myth and it increased their brand value. The myth was the critical for them to stay in limelight.
This whole dynamic has changed in recent times. The politicians have increasingly become the reclusive people and the performers have become the connected public figures.
The performers have really used the social mediums to become public figures. It is now very easy for the general public to interact with their heroes and role models. Twitter and Facebook have brought them out of the silver screen to our mobiles. The fans no longer need to wait outside the homes of the stars to get a glimpse of them. They are around, always.
The politicians on the other hand have become the isolated islands. They rarely want to connect with public and even more rarely do they reflect the sentiment of public. And a few who have wanted to connect and reflect popular opinion have been pushed to the fringe. They do appear in media only to ensure that the public does not forget them.
This is a strange paradox where those who should be connected are not, and those who can do without the connection are!
Are there any implications on the world of branding? Clearly there is a connection. Brands too are about creating a myth around them, by generating authentic stories around them.
For a longtime the brands have played the reclusive game. They have allowed people to peep into their world but in a very limited sense. Even when they signed up with a ‘performer’ they have not opened themselves up completely. This has started to change now. The rising consumer power is forcing the brands to open up and truly become public. They are now forced to create communities, give up control and really become friends with consumers. They are discovering that it pays to be open about the brand myth, make their audience an insider and be open. They are willingly giving up practices that used to infuriate their audience and bringing more and more and more truth in brand communication. I agree that this trend is not really a dominant theme, and many brands are still in reclusive mode. It’s only a matter of time before they catch on.
Earlier the politicians used to Crowdsource to increase their appeal, now the brands are doing the same.
Wonder why the politicians are not learning?

http://www.bestmediainfo.com/2010/08/story-of-our-times-naresh-gupta/

Sports is bigger then Movie Industry

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The challenges that face sports as a brand are very different from any other product. Suppose you bought a product and didn’t like the quality, you can get it fixed, or exchanged. Now if you bought a ticket to a sporting event and didn’t like the quality of sport being played, there is no refund that you will get. And if the result is not to your liking, than all you can do is suffer. There are no guarantees, no consumer courts, and at the end of it, nothing to show. And therefore marketing is a very difficult concept to grasp for sports

Yet sport is a multibillion dollar industry. There are no authentic figures, but it is upwards of $200Bn globally. This makes it much larger than say movie industry or music industry, larger than possibly both combined. In developed markets sport contributes between 2-3% of GDP of the country. By implication than sport can only be next to tourism as an industry.

What makes this an extremely challenging service to market is people’s enthusiasm for sports. People follow sports as a religion, and the sport stars as gods. And despite a Tiger Woods or Ashley Cole, there are more role models than fallen angels. It has long been believed that generally men follow sports with much greater involvement than women. I am not sure if that is necessarily true. There are two kinds of sports followers, one who is rigorous team sports enthusiasts and who follow team sports. These are people who drive the following of cricket and football and hockey. Then there is the relaxed individual sports followers who love golf, and shooting and snooker and chess. In both the sport there is no reason for women to not get involved. It’s less of a sport and more of a cultural thing. As the culture evolves, women power will grow in sport fandom.

Sport has existed in culture for generations. From eons back rulers used sport both as a tool to test human endurance and to create a feeling of superiority between kingdoms. Somewhere along the way sport started to merge with entertainment. This too is a fairly old trend. Now in modern age, its entertainment that has become the prime driver behind sport. And with people having a far greater involvement with sport, brands have leveraged them to create engagement with their consumers. This merger of human endeavour, with need for entertainment has made sports sponsorship a very sophisticated service. And with media getting fragmented sports sponsorship is possibly the best bet marketer has to aggregate eyeballs.

So what are the challenges that the marketers will face in coming years?

One big issue that sports marketers need to address is kids dwindling interest in sports. This will have a large implication on future of sports marketing. It is in marketer’s interest to work at grassroots level and keep kids engaged from an early age

The other big issue that sports marketers need to invest in is measurement of effort. This will go a long way in keeping the brands interested in sports

Sports marketers also need to expand their ambit. In India cricket dwarfs every other sport is partly also because brand marketers only market cricket. If the sports marketing pie has to be increased than sports marketers will have to ensure they expand their basket

And finally in future consumers will question the kind of brands they see involved in sports. Alcohol, tobacco and fast food brands will be seen with increased skepticism and they might find their investment not giving them optimum return

In these days of fragmented media and widening consumer power, there is no better way of creating enduring consumer engagement than through sports

(part of this article was published in Business and Economy Magazine’s March 10 Issue)


Integrated Communications: the new reality

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Change may the only constant, but change is most hated by everyone.

Look at every new idea, and the people refused to accept the innovation.

Video didn’t kill radio, calculator didn’t make a whole generation dumb, computers didn’t make us lazy, remotes didn’t turn viewers into constantly surfing junkies

They actually did exactly the opposite. Video made radio smarter. Calculators opened up new possibilities. Computers made a whole generation smarter. Remotes forced the TV programmes to become more entertaining and less preachy

What’s my point?

We may as well see this happening with this entire theory of integrated marketing and communication.

The whole practice of Integrated Marketing is based on the belief that consumers are fragmented, and no single medium can reach them with optimum efficiency. Hence we need to surround them with as many mediums and make them see our brand in the right light. In the morning when they wake up, they must see us on newspapers, thought he day they must see us from billboards and radio. In the evening we must blast them with constant ads on TV. These days’ consumers also watch TV in morning, and hear news on TV throughout the day, so our message must be there too. Rise of mobile and internet means new mediums to should be added to the mix. So not just conventional mediums, but also new mediums. Surround the consumer with as much noise as we can, make sure that that the brand is always around them.

And we do it very simply by taking the TV idea and taking it across every medium. So one visual, one colour or one music note and the brand can communicate with its audience consistently, constantly. We can also measure not only the intensity of our message, but also the effectiveness of our message.

There is a big issue with this approach though. This approach believes that consumers are individual islands and the brands can control the interaction. Almost like what Simon and Garfunkel said in their super hit song “words of prophet are written on the subway wall, and people bowed to their Neon God”

The consumers are no longer fragmented; they have started to become collective, become one and are finding their voice. And not through the old world of unions and forums, but through the new age world of online forums, blogs, communities, Facebooks and Mouthshuts.

And the consumers are shunning authority. We no longer live in a world where people instinctively trust authority. As much social research shows, we’d rather trust our own instincts and the information we learn from our friends. For the brands, it’s better to be talked about by consumers than to try to out-shout the crowd.

These are fundamental changes that will make every theory of Integrated marketing stand on its head

The new world than is not about dominating, but is about engagement. It can sound chaotic and scary, but it needn’t be either

So what is it that the brands need to do to engage consumers?

Make the consumers look good: its not about giving the shine to brand, but to the consumer. The Coke Mentos videos on youtube made the consumers into heros for the brand

Give the consumers a platform: learn from them, see how they interact with the brand and make them central to your brand. This is radically different from the existing thought of being idea central. The idea has to take a back seat.

Let them have fun with the brand: let them customize it, use it the way they want to use it, and allow them to tell the world that they have found their own way of using it.

Speak to them in their language: for a very long time, brands have spoken to consumers in their own vocabulary. In the decontrolled world brands will need to speak with consumers in consumers’ own language

What it means is that the old rules of Integrated Marketing have to undergo a change. The centrality of TV is no longer enough. The consumer is finding a voice, and their own voice, and the brands will have to put them in centre. It is no longer about surrounding the consumer, it is about engaging the consumer

May be there are no rules in the new reality

Published in 4Ps of Marketing, January 15, 2010 issue