Remember Boman Irani in Page 3? Middle-aged, of serious demeanour, spectacles low on the nose – even a radical Madhur Bhandarkar went for the stereotype while depicting an Editor. Breaking some preconceived notions is the reality in today’s media market place. So all those who think one has to be ‘old and wise’ to take informed decisions; that you have to have gray hair to be mature -- think again. A whole new breed of young editors is doing the age-old job in an all-new way. Young, spunky, energetic, chilled out, they are all set to lay down some new rules, bringing with them a fresh perspective and approach.

The trend is not surprising but increasingly logical. The reader and the viewer are getting younger and trained editorial staffs are proving to be expensive if not elusive. Said one (not so young) media veteran, on condition of anonymity: “If we have an Editor who has 30 years of experience in a certain domain, he will need an Assistant Editor or a Deputy Editor to manage things hands on. Besides being the figurehead and being there for advice if when needed, there is not much we can draw upon from his experience --unless you are talking politics or economics. Today, spokespersons are getting younger, even in politics. The editorial teams are also getting younger. When we need to draw on experience, we look up to those in consulting roles on a freelance basis. The drive and ambition in the young is what works for them; though I would like to test their levels of integrity and responsibility before giving them a free hand.”

A Growing Breed

Take for instance the Editor of the Maxim India. No, he doesn’t come across as the devilish dude one would expect to see after having read the magazine. He’s just another rocker on his way to becoming a rock star. Before that, he’s doing his thing at Maxim India, adding spice to the Indian male’s life. When we met Anup Kutty, Maxim’s youngest editor worldwide and Maxim India’s Editor, he told us that the meeting reminded him of his monthly edit meets – his team sits sipping beer at a pub in Delhi, planning. We like the idea. Now that’s something you can expect from a team that handles editorial for Maxim, and a team that’s in it’s 20’s. What do you expect when the editor is 28 years old?

His move into anything related to media too happened at a pub. “I was drinking at this bar. I didn’t have the dough to pay for it. There was this guy next to me who realized that I didn’t and he offered me a job. That’s how I got into advertising and that’s where I started off with the play of visuals and words -- and I love that game. Editing Maxim isn’t work. It’s something I love doing. It’s fun,” said Kutty.

(Full story in Impact) more...

“We have to push for the change”: Paritosh Joshi

The pink papers screamed that Star was to lose HLL’s Rs.100 crore deal. And then they announced that things had been resolved. Now we see Levers brands back on the Star India network. Spokespeople went on record stating that the issue had been resolved amicably ‘as of now’. When you realize that this wasn’t the first time this happened, you realize that this is perhaps not the last. After the numerous reports that followed Peter Mukherjea’s and Sameer Nair’s exit from Star, this one was the most exciting. It involved HLL, among the country’s biggest advertisers on Television, and the country’s numero uno Hindi GEC, Star Plus.

As the entire advertising industry brainstorms by the beach on moving from Rs. 15,000 crore to Rs. 50,000 crore, the Television industry is fighting its own battles. As newer players come in, across genres, this battle can only get more interesting.

For Paritosh Joshi, President - Ad Sales and Distribution, Star India, the first step to raising revenues is by communicating the true value being delivered by a burgeoning Television industry; and shifting from the standalone CPRP mantra. In conversation with Gokul Krishnamurthy:

Falling ratings, rising CPRPs -- Is this entire thing about moving to CPTs born of having your backs to the wall?

When I came into this business, just about two years ago, one of the things that I noticed, and struggled to understand was that our pricing to the customer, was rather modest – if you looked at it in the context of the audience that we were generating.

We didn’t seem to be getting price increases. Our prices were largely flat. The continuous battle that we seemed to have was even holding prices at any given level. If it was 100 rupees, it was a daily struggle to hold it at a 100 rupees. The sales people would come and tell me that the ratings were dropping and because ratings were dropping the CPRPs were going up. I was new to the business and I didn’t know what to make of it and I thought, ‘They must be absolutely right. So therefore it must be a struggle to move prices up’.

At that point in time, I did not understand the dynamics of the huge growth in Television homes, in general, and C&S homes in particular. We started making sense of this thing about a year back; and figured that we didn’t have much choice but to push back. I started to push back within my own system and started to push back within my own people – that they had to measure the falling ratings in the context of what was really happening in the overall TV game in India. And two things were happening. One was that there were a huge number of players in various genres. News was prominent but there were several others as well that were emerging and trying to get the attention of the audience. The second thing was that the C&S universe was being pushed back at the rate of somewhere between six and eight million new cable homes every year.
Now the fi rst dramatic impact of these cable homes came in the South -- much higher incomes, much higher TV penetration. And the South had a very, very well developed regional content scene pretty early. While in the other parts of the country we still basically had only Hindi GE, in the South each language had its own channels and each language had its own genres.
The other three regions have been starting to catch up in the last four or five years. If you see the movement between NRS ’05 and NRS ’06, you notice that this point onwards, the South is largely fully penetrated and now the growth that we will see will be from the other three regions. We see huge surges in several states. And these (UP, MP, Bengal and several more) are our markets. So our deliveries are growing at a pretty dramatic pace.

What I tried to explain to my own guys is that we need to understand that what is happening in TV is segmentation. It was bound to happen. The word that got into the popular vocabulary was fragmentation, which I object to very strongly. When you have a multiple range of toothpastes, do you say that the toothpaste market is fragmented? No. You are saying that the consumer has evolved.

 

(Full report in Impact) more…

Oops! Someone JUST DID IT again!!!

Team Impact

‘Srijan Advertising bags two silvers in Summit Creative Awards, U.S.A.’

The headline of the press release (reproduced above) made us immensely happy, though we had never heard of the agency or the award show. A fair bit of search later, we figured that the agency was based in Indore. We requested them to send us the press release that was posted on a certain advertising site; and also the creatives (we love creatives, you see) that won at this festival.

And what do we see? We see a creative with a striking resemblance to the one that got lensman Sharad Haksar’s 1pointsize a nomination at Cannes a couple of years ago. We couldn’t have forgotten, because we had carried it on our cover page back then.

Then we picked up the phone and spoke with a certain gentleman called Pranav Harihar Sharma, who is Group Creative Director, Srijan Group, Indore (India). We asked him where he had sourced the images. He informed us that this was a photographer’s work that they had used for the creative. We asked him if they had sought the permission of the photographer before using the image. Mr. Sharma stated that since it was pro bono work, they had used the image and they had informed organizers of the festival to include Haksar’s name as the photographer in the certificates.

“I could speak with him if Mr. Haksar wants to clarify anything. We will definitely ensure that he gets the credit. Even the newspaper that released the advertisement was not paid anything. It was completely for a social cause and the visual matched the message of child labour,” was the seemingly earnest reply.

Now, we are in no position to comment on whether or not the gentleman meant what he said. So we called up Sharad Haksar in Chennai. Here goes the response: “I am completely appalled at the use of our work without permission. I have never heard of Summit Creative or of the agency. While no one from this agency has spoken with us yet, we are contemplating future course of action. I am not saying that this will start off a trend of sorts, but I am sure such incidents should be avoided. What surprises me even more than the fact that an agency could do something like this is that an award festival could present them a Silver.”

Full report in Impact) more…