Cricket now a worrying investment

The dismal performance of the Indian cricket team has implications far beyond a drop in India’s rankings or our prospects for the ICC World Cup.
If we carry on doing as badly as this, sponsors of the World Cup are seriously affected. Let us remember, they are already committed to the spend.
And, in return for the spend, they expect audiences who will receive brand and product messages.
Some of those who receive these mesages will go out and buy the products and services advertised.
And the sum total of these buys will deliver a return on investment that sponsors have factored into their projected sales for the coming year.
And, suddenly, it looks like a large part of these projected audiences will disappear. With their disappearance, sales will disappear as well.
And sponsors are in a fix – because:
1.They are already committed to the spend
2.They still need the sales
The only solution for them is to find ADDITIONAL budgets and chase the audiences wherever they might go away to from cricket. And that’s going to affect their bottomlines.
For other advertisers who hoped to cash in on the World Cup, their problem is less daunting. They have to figure out where to buy these audiences if cricket carries on in the direction it is currently headed.
And if serious money goes away from cricket, one would worry about those who have serious investments in cricket.
Like the various channels who have bought the rights to various cricket tournaments over the next five years. There is no change in the amount of money that they will have to pay over whatever contractual period, but there could very well be a significant downward revision in the amount of money they could earn.
Like the various brands who have signed on cricketers as brand ambassadors. Some of these contracts are linked to performance on the field, some are not. But all these brands will suffer.
I’m not, normally, a prophet of doom. But to fail so miserably three matches in a row suggests that it is not just a matter of poor form of a few players; perhaps we had started believing in our own hype. Perhaps the reality is that we have a poor team today, that we have a poor talent pool today.

And, perhaps, investing in cricket is a poor decision today.



Photo courtesy: Cricinfo

Who controls the eyeballs?

Karan Johar partners NDTV in its proposed entertainment channel project. “Partners” is NDTV’s usage, not mine. In reality, Johar and NDTV have entered into an arrangement whereby Johar’s Dharma Productions gives NDTV the first right of refusal for any concepts or programmes they might come up with.
In addition, Johar will be the proposed Brand Ambassador for NDTV.
About a year ago, Rajdeep Sardesai left NDTV to join his new partners at GBN to further join TV18 and launch CNN-IBN, and later launch IBN7.
Sanjay Pugalia joined TV18 to launch Awaaz.
Sameer Nair took over as CEO of STAR TV India.
There’s a common thread running through all these developments: all the protagonists were kings of content.
And, as they should in media products, they are proving that content is indeed the king.
It’s not just in the TV space.
The past few years have witnessed bidding wars for editors and all other level of journalists in the print space.
The focus has shifted significantly away from the business heads, who, for almost a decade or so, ruled the media space – whether in print, TV, radio or the Internet.
Today, it’s the kings of content who jostle for space on Page 3, with the sales and marketing professionals considerably lower in profile.
The lessons we can draw?
If you’re investing in a new media product, get the editorial/programming team in place first. The business guys don’t hold the key to the kingdom of eyeballs.

Snappy answers to stupid QsOTD

With the Sanjay Dutt judgement due, one expected the media, especially the news TV channels, to go overboard.
But CNN-IBN’s Question of the Day (QOTD, plural QsOTD), asked by the channel after the verdict was delivered, took the cake:
“Is this the best that Sanjay Dutt could have hoped for?” the channel asked.
And thousands of poor suckers will send in their SMS opinions, and watch the graphs on the screen go up and down as if their individual votes have caused the movement.
My QOTD to CNN-IBN: How on earth can I know whether this is the best Sanjay Dutt could have hoped for?
I can have an opinion on what I had hoped for, or what I had anticipated, or what I had expected, or what Bejan Daruwala might have predicted in a newspaper I might have read.
But how the blazes can I know what Sanjay Dutt had hoped for?
How?!
Reminds me of a Mad magazine column called snappy answers to stupid questions.
So, here’s the question again, followed by a few answers of mine. Please send in your suggestions for the channel, too.

“Is this the best that Sanjay Dutt could have hoped for?”

No, he wanted a life sentence, so he’s deeply disappointed.
No, he was hoping he would hang, because Afzal is getting all the publicity.
No, he was hoping for a guilty verdict on all counts, because he prefers the jail environment to his Pali Hill residence.

Please, please send in your suggestions!

The Blackberry monsters

New Mobile-Device Purchase Makes Asshole More Versatile

There was a time when it was cool just having a mobile phone.

Then came the Nokia Communicator, and it was cool to own a BIG mobile phone.

Then came the smaller phones, the 8310(?) and models like that. And the Communicator became uncool.

Finally came the Blackberry, and discussions at airport queues, lounges and inside aircraft revolved around how awesome this was. And people like me instantly became uncool.

I can't hope to write half as well as writers at The Onion. Click on the headline for their take. I can assure you the story echoes my sentiments.

Open letter to decision makers at news channels

Dear Sirs,

I am one of many millions of Indians who watch news television channels every day. I turn on the TV as soon as I wake up to catch up on what happened in the world during the time I was asleep, and I catch the headlines before I retire each night.

I do this because the newspapers lose out to you in terms of the richness of the audiovisual dimension, because of your ability to cover the instant, because of your ability to take viewers like me to wherever the news is happening.

And in this habit I am not alone. There are, indeed, millions of Indians like me who turn to news channels for information about the state of their village, their town, their city, their state, their country and their world.

Each day, these millions help you earn your living, by watching your channel and increasing your television ratings, which result in your increasing your advertising sales, your distribution and all other sources of your income.

And somewhere, in our naiveté, we believe that you are the most significant player in the fourth estate, that you have a role in maintaining checks and balances in our country, and that the country will improve and prosper because of your efforts and commitment.

And your sense of responsibility.

Which, increasingly, is in conflict with your notion of your commercial well being.

And your cameras cover whatever is more marketable, not whatever is more important. The most recent example is when ALL of you (yes, ALL) gave short shrift to the bombing of a train in West Bengal by terrorists, and focused all your cameras and airtime on a tragic act by a young boy in Mumbai that resulted in five deaths due to his losing control of his car when under the influence of alcohol.

Inexplicably, not one of the channels even bothers to follow up on either story just a few days on. Were they ever important?

And your cameras can cause people to break the law. And they do.

Earlier tonight, some of the news channels covered an incident where hooligans damaged the house of Mohd. Kaif, one of the cricketers of the current Indian team.

I ask you only one question: would these hooligans have done what they did had your cameras not been there?

They were actors without a script, a stage, a venue, an audience. Without you, they are nothing, they have nothing.

You are the ones who own the stages on which all can perform, you are the ones who decide who can act, you are the ones who write the script, you are the ones with the power to afford them an audience.

This is a considerable power, and, used judiciously, can do the nation no end of good.
Used irresponsibly, as in the Mohd. Kaif instance, it can cause the nation no end of harm.

You are asking us to consider important only that which you consider important.

Over a period of time, I, and all other viewers of all news channels, will decide whether we are in sync with each other, or not.

And if not, we will use the only power that we have left.

And we will switch channels. And with the depressions of buttons on our remote controls, your viewers disappear, your TRPs disappear, your revenues disappear.

And then, you disappear.

Sincerely

A most aggrieved viewer

Brands Under Fire: Not just my Great Expectations

The very best of Indian minds and their take on how brands get into problems and on how to deal with problem situations. My take, here.
And S. Ramchander, one of the contributors to the exercise, writes on his experience in The Hindu Business Line.
exchange4media.com reports on it as well.
Now you know it’s not just my expectations that are great.

And a reminder. More, on CNBC TV18's Storyboard.

When I’m murdered, I’ll speak in Tamil

“KOLKATA: The Calcutta HC has held that a dying declaration recorded in a language other than the victim's mother tongue is not acceptable as evidence in a court of law. On Tuesday, a division bench of Justice P N Sinha and Justice P S Dutta of the HC, acquitted a man, who was sentenced to life for alleged murder of his wife. Earlier, a trial court had sentenced Phatik Let — a resident of Kalua village in Birbhum — to life, based on the dying declaration recorded by two doctors in English. The HC not only detected incongruity in the separate 'dying declarations' submitted by the doctors but also noted that the people do not speak in any other language but their mother tongue in their dying moments.”

From a report in The Times of India.

This is how it works. Someone stabs me, and I’m rushed to the nearest hospital by bystanders. In a little while, it is clear that I will not survive. The doctor asks me whether I could make a statement, and I do want to. I want the person who stabbed me to be punished.

So I tell him, “I was walking along the road when John Doe stabbed me with a knife.”

The doctor stops me. He asks me what my mother tongue is. Fighting hard, I try to keep alive for a few minutes more, and tell him, “Tamil.” He tells me I need to make the declaration in Tamil.

As I’m dying, I have to remember a language that I hardly speak?
And providentially at hand should be someone who can both understand AND write Tamil?
And If these two conditions are not met my murderer gets away scotfree?

And the law is not an ass?

Brands Under Fire: Lessons from a dustbin

“There is nothing quite so useless in doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” Peter Drucker, quoted by Kurien Mathews of TBWA India and Ivan Arthur (formerly of JWT, now of AICAR Business School).
Urged by K. Kurian (no relative of the aforementioned Kurien) of the Subhas Ghosal Foundation, the two decide to do some work on Advertising in Times of Adversity. Titoo Ahluwalia of the SGF joins the fray and gets the Foundation’s nod for such a study, and Kurien and Ivan get down to doing with great efficiency what is proving to be something eminently useful, and something that should have been done a long while ago.
Students of AICAR, Kurien and Ivan study four instances of transgression by brands in the Indian context: Pespi, Coke, Cadbury and Unit Trust of India. The process is long and arduous, but, as time goes on, it also gets infinitely intriguing. Kurien and Ivan, as a consequence of many conversations with advertising and marketing professionals, decide that there is much richer learning available if more people were involved.
And they think of an old idea that had been explored by this blogger, in another world and in another context: collaboratively writing a book in 48 hours. The idea is retrieved from the dustbin to which it had been consigned, and it’s scrubbed and given new body and sheen.
Kurien and Ivan now work the phones and e-mails (and so does Titoo, lest one forgets), and invite a veritable galaxy of stars to join the party. The invitation is accompanied by the collation of the work put in by the main protagonists thus far – in itself more than worth a read. This would save participants the effort of doing their own background hunting, and would form the foundation for a day of discussion and writing.
Most of those approached are delighted to be invited to be part of the exercise. Some find the dates inconvenient (this is not an Internet exercise, it’s a PHYSICAL gathering of the writers) and some are skeptical of the outcome.
By now, again as a consequence of discussions, the name of the proposed work changes to Brands Under Fire.
Last night, a busload of the participants arrived at Neral (where’s that? Ask Google Maps), and this morning, panel discussions got underway.
Here’s the list of the panelists, in alphabetical order by surname: Rama Bijapurkar, Mahnaz Curmally, Gerson da Cunha , Santosh Desai, Vijay Gokhale, Kiran Khalap, Pranesh Mishra, MG Parameswaran, Roger Pereira, Gita Piramal, Prof. S Ramchandar, Shekhar Swamy and Prof. Shiv Viswanathan.
And if the panel discussions, moderated by Kurien and Ivan, are an indication, the book will be a must read, unputdownable one.
There are bits of the discussion that you will be able to catch on CNBC TV18’s Storyboard over the next few weeks (thank you, CNBC TV18, for airing the highlights of the discussions and for picking up the tab, with a little help from Allianz). By this evening, the panelists would have completed the writing and, on the morrow, will be on a bus back to Mumbai.
Kurien & Ivan then take all the background material, collate the words of these worthies, work on the introduction and foreword and do all things required to make the collective thinking translate into an informative and entertaining publication.
If you’re wondering why I’m so effusive about how readable the book will be, here’s a sampler of issues raised during the panel discussions:
Brands will increasingly come under fire, and it is impossible to predict where the next danger might come from. There is no way to protect the brand in the event of a transgression, as the new “media”, including blogs and mobile phones, are ever vigilant and alert. Be more and more prepared for the day your brand is in the firing line.
Brands are under threat every day, and the attack could come from anywhere, within and without your control.
Changing media, especially news media: no longer the objective observer, the media is on the prowl for sensation. More importantly, media houses will do all that is required to achieve their own commercial objectives and to handle their own competitive environment.
The role of public relations in the communication mix for all brands will undergo a sea change, as will the need for corporate senior management to acquire more than a working understanding of the function of PR.
The trust that consumers have in news media: with all the over-hyping and the trivializing, does the consumer believe his newspaper or news TV channel less?
Enough said. I’m not a reporter. And I could do the panelists and the authors more harm than good if I paraphrased their pronouncements (read this to understand why I’m wary).
Watch Storyboard for more. When Kurien and Ivan are done, CNBC TV18 and exchange4media (the online partner to this cause) will announce it. Then go buy the book.

BBC story physically abused by Pond’s

When you attribute, for God’s sake quote accurately.
The first line in the body copy of an advertisement released by Pond’s on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women reads thus:
“Every 6 hours an Indian woman is physically abused.”

Since this is a factual statement, it is buttressed by the source for this figure – www.bbc.co.uk.

I stared at the body copy a few times, confused by
a) The low number – only four women a day abused in India? I thought more were abused in Bandra East on a good evening
b) The fact that the source was the BBC. Then the number must be correct!
c) The fact that the advertiser was Pond’s. They MUST have checked the number out!
d) The fact that O&M created the communication Surely, they must have checked as well!

But it kept niggling, and, finally, I went on to the BBC site referred to and searched for stories on violence against women in India.
Bingo, I found the reference. And this is how it reads:

“Every six hours somewhere in India a young married women is burnt alive, beaten to death, or driven to commit suicide."

Every six hours a woman DIES due to violence – that’s the truth. Not “an Indian woman is physically abused”, as the ad copy says.
And that’s one hell of a difference.
To Pond’s and O&M, just the one pigsandwings question:

HOW?

And to make the whole issue completely perplexing, a POND’S consumer is expected to SNAIL MAIL the "blue flap" so that Pond’s donates TWO WHOLE RUPEES?
WOW!

Why the Indian cricket team still rocks

Cape Verde Islands.
Burundi.
Chad.
Kyrgistan.

What’s common to the abovementioned countries?

They’re four of 147 countries ranked higher than India according to the just published FIFA rankings. Yup, you read that right. 147 countries ahead of my motherland.

And It’ll be a snowy day in Chennai before we see India qualify for a football World Cup.
That’s why I’m not despondent that Kallis scored more than the entire Indian team in the last one day match. We’re still in the top eight at cricket. And we move up for a few months to 2 or 3, and slide back to 6 or 7 at worst.

And that's why Indians watch soccer on TV when India is not playing, and cricket only when India is playing.

Beat that, Baichung!

The Economist and premium confusion

Thanks to my father and my schooling, I grew up respecting and trusting media products like The Statesman, BBC Radio and The Economist implicitly.
I still trust BBC (not only radio) and The Economist implicitly.
I always understand what BBC tells me.
I am sometimes confused by what The Economist tells me, mostly because I don’t have a great understanding of the economy, the stock market and money markets.
I logged on to economist.com this evening to have a dekko at the non-premium content, and was pleasantly surprised to be offered a day pass to the premium content, courtesy Deutsche Bank. Thanks, DB.
I thanked the sponsor by watching his ad, and carried on to the rare treat.
And I read two pieces relevant to India, parts of both reproduced below.

Forecast

Nov 21st 2006 From the Economist Intelligence UnitSource: Country Forecast
Excerpts from the article
The booming economy is likely to enable the Indian National Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government not only to remain in power until 2009, but also to relaunch its stalled programme of economic reforms. The government's greatest opportunity to do this will be in 2007, as much of its agenda in 2008 will be given over to preparations for the next general election, which is scheduled to take place by May 2009. Monetary policy will continue to be tightened in the first half of 2007, but will be eased gradually thereafter. Real GDP growth is forecast to remain strong in fiscal year 2006/07 (April-March) and then to moderate slightly in 2007/08 and 2008/09. Strong domestic demand will lead to a significant widening of the merchandise trade deficit over the forecast period, but surpluses on the services and transfers accounts will limit the current-account deficit to around 3% of GDP in 2007-08. Inflationary pressures will be difficult to control.
India's economy
Too hot to handle
Nov 23rd 2006 DELHI, HONG KONG AND MUMBAIFrom The Economist print edition
Why the sizzling Indian economy is more at risk than China's
Excerpts from the article
In contrast, India's economy displays an alarming number of signs that things have gone too far. Consumer-price inflation has risen to almost 7% (see chart), well above Asia's average rate of 2.5%. A recent report by Robert Prior-Wandesforde at HSBC finds many other signs of excess. For example, in a survey of 600 firms by the National Council of Applied Economics Research, an astonishing 96% of firms reported that they were operating close to or above their optimal levels of capacity utilisation—the highest number ever recorded. Firms are also experiencing a serious shortage of skilled labour and wages are rocketing. Companies' total wage costs in the six months to September were 22% higher than a year earlier, compared with an average increase of around 12% in the previous four years.

India's current account has shifted to a forecast deficit of 3% of GDP this year from a surplus of 1.5% in 2003—a classic sign of excess demand. Total bank lending has expanded by 30% over the past year, close to the fastest growth on record.
India's share and housing markets also look bubbly. Draft proposals by the central bank on November 17th to cap banks' exposure to stockmarkets and curb reckless lending only mildly dampened the optimism. Share prices are almost four times their level in early 2003. India's price/earnings ratio of 20 is well above the average of 14 for all Asian emerging markets. House prices have also gone through the roof: Chetan Ahya of Morgan Stanley reckons that prices in big cities have more than doubled in the past two years. Housing loans jumped by 54% in the year to June (the latest figures available) and loans for commercial property were up by 102%.
Indian policymakers seem reluctant to admit that economic growth has exceeded its speed limit over the past three years, let alone slow it.

And now for the dumbest pigsandwings question yet (watch this space, I’ll ask a dumber one not too far in the future).

Can someone please, please tell me: Is the Indian Economy doing well? Or, not?

Bollywood over news on the net

Why am I surprised?

I had done a dipstick on the rankings of Indian news websites and it threw up a number of learnings -- the most significant being that the vernacular sites ruled the Internet news space when it came to Indian audiences.

So I thought it would interesting to see how the "influential" Indian news sites did when compared to sports and bollywood sites. Not on ranking, but on a more qualitative aspect -- page views.

IndiaFM, which is the one stop shop for news and gossip on bollywood, is head and shoulders above the news portals ibnlive.com and ndtv.com.

It is reasonable to presume that most visitors to indiafm.com are Indians, but the same presumption may not be made for espnstar.com, but, considering the footprint of the TV channels ESPN and Star Sports, a significant chunk would be from India. With this assumption (I'll do a post on India figures of sports sites next week), espnstar gets interesting, too.

MRF: 3 men and a century

It’s a landmark that I missed. Astonishingly, it’s a landmark that MRF missed and their ad agency, Lowe, missed as well.
The tyre company signs on three cricketers as brand ambassadors. The first, Steve Waugh, has since retired, having scored 32 centuries. The second, Sachin Tendulkar, is the holder of the record for the highest number of Test centuries with 35 of them. And the third, Brian Lara, scored his 34th ton yesterday, and is now nipping at Sachin’s heels.
Now add 'em up!
32+35+34 = 101.
Óne hundred and one centuries between the three MRF brand ambassadors!

And no one noticed it.

pigsandwings questions for TV channels

On live programming, you run interactive exercises that ask viewers to send you text messages.
When these programmes are repeated, the announcements (often through anchors, sometimes through supers) calling attention to the SMS polls or contests or whatever cannot be erased from the video or the audio.

What happens to these messages?
Are they still charged at premium rates to the viewers?
Can you overlay another super asking viewers NOT to vote as the text messages would be wasted?

Hello?

Hu's watching Brad Pitt?

Hu Jintao lands in India.

Sony Pix has Brad's Pitt's Seven Years in Tibet on the night schedule.

Very cool. Not.

News Television: Too many dumb pilots

I’ve discussed this angst of mine with many senior executives from news television channels in India.
I probably did it for the first time about five years ago, and I’ve kept at it to absolutely no avail.
And by now I think I must be the dumbest of the too many dumb pilots that Richard Bach wrote about in A Gift of Wings.
For the benefit of those who haven’t read the short story or don’t remember it too well, here’s the story in a nutshell:
Pilot lands north-south, sees all other pilots landing south-north, and says to himself, “there are too many dumb pilots.” Moral of the story, protagonist was wrong, the other pilots were right.
And here’s why the time has come to declare myself the enlightened pilot who finds that, in actuality, he’s the master dumbo.
I’m a glutton for news television, and the more I watch it, the more I wonder why.
News television has proven, time and again in the past few years in India, that it is virtually the Fourth Estate by itself. Whether it’s the stings, whether it’s the Mattoo case, whether it’s catching a napping Chief Minister on camera, whether it raises the issue of the correctness of allowing Budhia to run. News television has done it all.
And news products, especially television in this age, have a decided role to play in shaping the future of the country.
And news television works in 22 –25 minute segments.
So we have 22 minutes to solve a problem that grips the nation. A problem like reservation.
So we have 22 minutes to discuss an issue that impacts the future. Like, should we trust China?
So we have 22 minutes to discuss whether India’s youth is beyond redemption.
So we have 22 minutes to debate female infanticide.

So I can make this list longer by another 100 issues in the next 22 minutes.
And I won’t.
Because I’m the dumb pilot.

Monday Morning Blues

Some verse I wrote some years ago. It could be verse, and it could be better.

they said Monday,
and I agreed
they said lunchtime
I agreed
when they said the suburbs

I lost it

give me town, any day
the vibrancy
the people
the architecture
the roads
the sheer energy

who cares for the burbs
who notices what happens there
the burbs or town
the effort’s the same
But,
town gets remembered

sure, there’s more traffic
more distance to travel
and a long way home

but it’s all worth it

I got my way

and boy
what a party it was

the bombs went off like clockwork
cars were smashed
windows were shattered at the Taj
bodies everywhere
and the tv cameras lapped it all up

beautiful photographs
of the dead and the injured
interviews, vox pops

advani and sonia came running
and the cameras rolled once more
they lost count of the dead
and kept changing the figure
and replayed the blood
and the gore
again and again

I told you
town’s better

I wrote this whenever the blasts at the Taj happened, and I tried to blank it out of my mind. And every day I read about the trial of the blast accused, and what I wrote some years ago keeps coming back to haunt me. The perspective then was that terrorists think, they plan, they strategise, not only on the weapons area, but also on the marketing and publicity area.
This was a success. If the same incident took place at Wadala or Antop Hill, it would have been forgetten in a jiffy.
And there's no greater testament that targets are chosen from a PR perspective than the (successful) attack on the World Trade Center and the (failed) attack on the Indian Parliament. There are zillions of softer targets.
But would media cover an attack on them?

1150000000000

That, my friends, is the wealth (in rupees) of Lakshmi Mittal as reported in Forbes’ list of the world’s richest individuals.
I have always struggled to understand figures beyond 8 digits, and I have presumed that there are a lot like me in the world.
So I thought I’d make it easier for myself, and for you.
Like, how many Rs. 2 crore flats on Pali Hill could he buy if all his wealth was liquid?
Ans: 57500
How many C Class Mercedes Benz cars?
Ans: 460000
How many Motorazrs?
Ans: 127777777
How many annual subscriptions to the forthcoming Indian edition of the Wall Street Journal?
Ans: 3846153846

For the benefit of those of us who have to think twice before signing on a single subscription to Forbes, here’s the complete list of India’s 40 richest people.

Highlights, in case you’re in a hurry:
There are two Ambanis.
There are three from the media: Indu Jain, Subhash Chandra and Kalanithi Maran.

There is no one on the list from Advertising. Don’t think anyone in advertising is surprised.

That’s the Sunday lesson over. I do hope you’re richer for the knowledge.

Photo of Indu Jain courtesy: India Today, via Forbes

Nobody writes about Copper Chimney

This is a messy post. Because it draws from a number of disparate incidents and conversations, and somehow attempts to link them together. I have no clue if it will turn out coherent and lucid, but I have the structure of a post in my head and have decided to carry on, regardless.
I’ll go chronologically.
About a year and a half ago, at an event organized by exchange4media, Ajay Chacko of TV18 commented on the challenges that media products faced, and on what, he felt, could differentiate one from another. It’s a statement that’s stuck in my head, and I reproduce what he said to the best of my memory. “The environment throws up a finite number of news story opportunities. What will differentiate one media product from another is the choice of stories and the treatment of the chosen stories.”
Last Wednesday, Brand Equity did a story on Omnicom that horrified me, in that the story was speculative at best and irresponsible at worst.
Earlier today (Saturday) I had a beer with someone aggrieved by the Brand Equity story (the reason I do not mention his name is to avoid suggestions of name dropping, but he will stand by my recounting of his statement).
He wasn't really aggrieved, but definitely irritated. His point was that nothing Brand Equity reported or avoided reporting would stop the growth and stability of the brand he was custodian of.
And the final disparate link is a conversation I had with Pradeep Gidwani (formerly CEO of Foster’s India) of Red Bull, Asia Pacific at Toto’s bar in Bandra, Mumbai. He was marveling at how nothing had changed in Toto’s in the last ten years.
And we got to talking about talking up brands. And we spoke of Indigo, and of Poison, and of Enigma and Club 9. And then he said to me. “Nobody writes about Copper Chimney. But it’s always full.”
And we spoke of the clubs and bars and restaurants in Mumbai that were “talked up” by the media in the last decade, and tried to think of the ones that were still alive.
Very few of the “talked up” ones, but many of the igonored-by-page-3 ones.
Toto’s and Copper Chimney do not NEED to get written about, because the products are sound. Media can talk up and talk down brands, but the final judgment will be made by a consumer.
And this is where media products will have to take a call: do they cover what they consider to be “happening” even if there is no product promise, or do they cover "boring", but intrinsically stable and strong products?
Pressures of competition cause decision makers in newspapers, news magazines and news channels to search for the differentiator in Chacko’s aforementioned finite number of story opportunities.
And bad and irresponsible and motivated choices can deliver short-term gains in readership/viewership but long-term losses in credibility.
And the decision could create either a sustainable wall that competition will not be able to breach, or a small little entry that could, tomorrow, become a floodgate.
The choice in that decision belongs to the editors.

Sadly, in many instances in Indian media houses, it also belongs to marketers.

Photo credit: Drona, whoever he may be, found on Flickr

The Importance of being Vijay Mallya

Newspapers in India make it a point to leave out names of brands in many an article, and it comes as a stunner when not one, but all the papers including the Times of India take the trouble to highlight brand names.
Vijay Mallya takes over Mumbai racing, and a press conference announces the highlights of the forthcoming season.
And all the major Mumbai papers not only give the calendar heightened attention, they list the sponsors prominently.
So why is this surprising?
One, that horse racing is a sport which has been receiving less attention and column centimeters each passing year. Two, the attention to brands is well outside the recent behavior pattern of Mumbai’s media houses, as can be seen here, and here.
But then, this is Vijay Mallya we’re talking about, not Deutsche Bank or Nimbus. And you ignore him at your peril.
What’s interesting? That Deutsche Bank as a sponsor of racing finds mention in the article, while Deutsche Bank as a brand owner couldn’t make the caption in the photograph of the launch of their own credit card.