 Let's welcome on stage our session chair, Vanita Keshwani, CEO of Madison Media Sigma. Please give her a big hand. A lady walking on stage being a session chair. I'm feeling proud for our gender. Or just be with me for a while. Let them set up the chairs. It's wonderful to have women who run the world. Girls, girls. Well, this is going to be very interesting. I feel. So let's welcome our panel members. Give them a big round of applause. Amit Setia, Chief Marketing Officer. Siska Grup. Anupam Bhuke, who we met. Chief Marketing Officer. Two young brands. Shpachlaos. GM Marketing. Kansai. Nero Lac Paints. Limited. Vikram Tanna, VP. Head Advertising Sales and Business Head. Regional Clusters. Discovery Communications, India. Good evening actually. And welcome all of you to our session on live events and really how do we crack the code on live event sponsorships. So before we start and I think I'd like to introduce the esteemed panel. That's Vikram from Discovery. That's Anupam from two young. You've already got him on stage recently. Amit from Siska and Piyush from Nero Lac. And ever since I've spoken to him a while ago, by the way, I've been humming Nero Lac tune. So that's what has happened. So the first part of the discussion to even before we start what is, you know, live TV content and discuss about cracking the code and give you some learnings out there in the audience. So the objective is to get some learnings out of the session in terms of how can we crack the code better, what are the kind of live event learnings we have. Before that, I'd just like to focus and ask ourselves, why are we discussing live event sponsorship and on television. And in one sentence as agency, I would say that it is simply because live events command not only disproportionate eyeballs, but obviously a huge premium usually on investments, which is why we are discussing how do we crack the code. So having said that, I'd invite Piyush first to really talk about, you know, what his view is on what is live events on TV. So before we actually start about cracking the code, we'll just spend like two minutes where we'll hear what is the gamut of live television sponsorships. Afternoon everyone. Live actually, when we were discussing, one thing which cropped up is that the classification itself is so interesting. A lot of us stop at spots, some of us take the next step, go to news, and then we start discussing, well, there was an award concert, deferred live, does it work. And then of course, you know, during the conversation, I'm sure Vikram would be able to tell us more about how the deferred live or versus the entertainment piece. But surprisingly, some unconfirmed projections put the size of this opportunity that marketers and agencies and everybody has been talking about at about 10,000 crores projected by 2021. So it's in no way a small piece. And from that perspective, there is money on the table. We all, through many of our own associations across properties, brands that we work on, live eyeballs is something which obviously catches all our imaginations. There is immediate, there is cultural context that we try and build through these associations and sponsorships. And to a certain extent, there is there is a sense of borrowed equity which comes through for brands. Brands are working towards, you know, creating specialized content. And, you know, I was very interested to, you know, hear in the previous session about how the content and the digitization versus television, how it is actually leading to so many more vistas and ideas coming through. But the net point being that there is specialized content which is coming through when it comes to live sponsorships. Some of our most successful associations or programs have actually been through live partnerships whereby our sales force, our frontline is actually leveraging these very effectively to grow sales end of the day. So it's the entire gamut of things that are there. Excellent. Thanks a lot. So what I hear him say is that broadly three top classifications that come to our mind, of course, all of us think of sports as the first live event, biggest possibly. Second is news, which is spoken live and what with elections coming, we'll focus a little bit towards the end of our panel. And of course, award shows that he spoke about that technically maybe sometimes deferred live. But interestingly, we have Vikram on our panel and it was so amazing and interesting to hear about some of the really different kind of events that do live events that they do on discovery. So let us hear the different kind of things that you all do and how does ROI work there and how difficult is it? Let's hear your view on the kind of events first to understand what you do. So largely discovery programming is focused around how we inspire, educate, entertain and inform viewers. Now, when it comes to factual entertainment, I think it's one space where live really comes alive. But we really believe in storytelling, which gives you high impact in an hour. So most of our content actually contrary to live is really packaged in an around where we shoot for two to three years and offer a consumer something which is for an hour. But having said that, we do some very interesting stuff in live, very few but very interesting. Let me actually give you an example of how we believe in inspiring human lives. We had this event which was covered live on discovery which aired across 200 countries. We had partnered with Nick, Nick Walidon, who's actually a skywire artist, right? He's a highwire this thing. He diligently on a daily basis practices back home in Florida when there is a storm, there is gutsy weather and he's doing a tight rope walk balancing himself without any safety devices. Now, this particular individual is so talented that he believes in pushing human limitations and giving endurance the next level. And we believe in actually partnering with these individuals and bringing them to the world. He wanted to set a new record at the Grand Canyon across the George. What he did interestingly is he said, let's set up live. Of course, there is a lot which happens pre-event here, right? Of course, to set it up live. And he walked for 23 minutes, set up a world record. No other human being had done it before. It was 1,500 feet high. And this is what was covered on discovery live across 200 countries and broke all records when it comes to ratings. So, yeah, we do a few of once but then we stick to our core over there. Yeah, because that's the first thing I thought when I saw his name on the panel and I said live events and Vikram, let me see what he has to say. And it was so interesting to hear what some of the live events that discovery does. So, anyway, having seen the gamut of what we are going to cover today on live events, let's straight on move on to the first big conversation point that anybody would want to have as a learning. Is that, is a GRP a GRP at all? Because television is all about buying GRPs and visibility. So, live events, most advertisers who believe in live events, sponsorships actually do not believe that a GRP is a GRP. So, let's hear, you know, Amit from Cisco to tell us, because they have been using a lot of sponsorships right from, I think they were the first to do laptop branding on news. And they've done a lot of sports sponsorships, team sponsorships, etc. So, do you have a way to measure ROI and obviously it's working for Cisco. That's why you're continuing taking up, you know, live event sponsorships. Please share some light on what is the ROI you see. See, I think when you talk about ROI, I think there are two ways to look at it. You know, the first and foremost is, you know, what kind of consumer metrics I'm trying to sort of, you know, influence. Is it awareness or is it consideration? While that's on one side, the other side is my business objective, right? So, you know, what kind of internal objectives I have, what kind of market I'm looking at, you know, what kind of competition I have in that market, I think. So, whenever we have done a sponsorship, I think we have always been able to rake in incremental performances by minimum, say, 20 to 25 percent. I think that is what keeps us going right from, you know, your test series to your pro-kabadi leagues. And I think there is no ending to that. Excellent, yeah. So, obviously it's measurable, right? Anyone here else who measures it and has some experience on measurement of live events versus regular? So, we've been partnering IPL for some time and one of the measures that, so one of the metrics that we had kept for ourselves was about awareness and association on a specific set of parameters when it comes to the brand measures. And we were, apart from, of course, the GRPs, etc., a couple of things which are useful is recall measures that we do amongst people who have been exposed to the branding. Sure. And what is it that they are associating it with? So, that's kind of giving us some direction on the brand parameters. So, you see a clear difference in live events versus regular? Yes, it's clear. Great. What about your experience, Anupat? Sorry. See, I'll talk about a brand which is fairly new. 2M was just launched in April of 2017. We first started advertising in December of 2017 and IPL happened in April of 2018. So, you know, a brand always has this challenge because whenever you take a property like that, it is very expensive. But does it give you the returns that are required or that justifies that investment? So, I think what was important for us is to ensure, to get on to the IPL bandwagon and seek participation was, do we have really assets which can engage consumers in a relevant way? In the medium when the cricket match is on. And the asset for us was, of course, 2M is a healthier snack, bake not fried, 40% less fat. But we also had our brand endorsement, which is Virat Kohli. So, if you have the biggest property on cricket, then I think it makes sense because it's not about, are you the biggest investor on IPL? So, if you look at VoIPL, they would invest upwards of what? 300 crores. That's another strategy now you're being... The associates sponsor like Coca-Cola would invest 125 crores, but 2M invested 11 crores. Lovely. And we chose a property which was relevant in a way that whenever you're watching a match, you binge along. Yeah. You eat almost mindlessly without really being aware of what you're eating. And typically it happens to be a snack, a back snack. And when you actually end up watching the match, which is three hours or seven hours or eight hours, if it's a one day. And then by the end of it, you realize that you've eaten so much and you feel guilty. So, 2M as a brand actually takes the guilt out of snacking because it's a healthier alternative and we actually ask consumers to eat more. So, we said, okay, if there are 13 wickets falling in a match and you know, So, actually you can binge along through the match and I think that was the proposition we created. That was the communication we created. And we just took a follow wicket property. Every time a wicket fell, we said Eat lot, figure not. That was the 2M proposition back then. We changed it to fried not, figure not, making it more competitive. And that's where, whenever a wicket fell, that band popped up and it popped up 720 times during the IPL because 13 wickets, 14 wickets fell in a match. So, what it did was, we had a certain awareness that we had built before, but this just accelerated the awareness. You want to give us a sense of exactly that's the learning we're looking at. So, give us a sense and without disclosing actual numbers of what the awareness buildup was with your launch campaign initially and what did it really take it up to? I mean, in terms of percentage or some numbers so that we learn from the audience. So, we were measuring on the top 8 metros initially because it was a new brand, premium, 50% premium for the market. So, it was the right PG and the right geography that we were targeting. We had reached an awareness about 20-25% after 4 months of airing. From December till mid-April. Post the IPL 6 weeks, awareness in mainstream metros was 65%. Wow. That's a huge learning, right? That's what a brand can gain. So, I think that's, you know, and why did that happen? Typically, when you plan media, you plan for a frequency of 4. Absolutely. You'll have a reach objective of 50%, 60%, 70%. But here you are having an opportunity to have a frequency of 13 in a match of 3 hours. So, you can just imagine you have accelerated the whole reinforcement 3 times over in one match, which would have taken us 3 months. I think that has, because you know, post the IPL, we also continued advertising. But while the awareness has built, it hasn't built with that speed that we found the IPL. We've also seen that across a lot of our brands and that's what I wanted to, you know, get from you a little bit also on Cisco. Have you seen any numbers? Can you highlight some ROI numbers on one brand versus the other or one, you know, one category versus the other? Any learnings that you can give us? See, as far as Cisco is concerned, I think, you know, when you look at ROI, the important thing to look, you know, is also to figure out as to what kind of monies you are putting in, I think. And so we spoke a lot about IPL. I mean, like, undoubtedly, you know, the league which is doing the bestest, I think, in India. Yeah, it is the biggest now. But I think if you look at the next big player, I think it's the Prokabadi league. So I think it's also about as to, you know, how smartly you put in your box and say, fine, am I able to get the same airtime benefit or the same kind of visibility? Give us learnings. I want learnings on ROI. People want to know, right? You guys want to know, right? How much learning? So for me, I think, you know, within the company, we launched this new brand, which is about, you know, personal care appliances with the help of, you know, Prokabadi league. And, you know, we were very happy to see that, you know, while Prokabadi league was able to generate a lot of awareness for us, a lot of engagement also was generated because there were, you know, my audiences, which were, you know, who were ready to sort of go ahead and talk to the brand that, okay, fine, you are now moving beyond LED because, you know, I'm a pro LED guy. But if I'm giving you a new offering, I'm supposed to tell you this story before, you know, I compel you and say, okay, fine, go and use it. So it helped you launch your personal care range better. So I launched my brand with PKL. Okay. And did you measure the success? Well, I think in the first year, we were very much safe enough, I would say, within the margins, but second year we grew because, you know, we also participated in the second season and we almost grew by 15% in the second year, you know, after consuming PKL. Which is a hard core, hard metric, salesman. Yes, sales. Here you have one awareness number and a learning on sales. Okay. So interestingly in both these pieces, what I observe, what I'm observing is that the brand life cycle or the life stage is actually common, you know, he's talking about launching and he's also talking about a new-ish recent launch. And Nerulak here has been a brand which is like being around with us, but we'll hear from him and I'll ask you soon about, you know, how you, have you used it? But before we move on to that question, on ROI, since we haven't taken Vikram's view, on discovery being relatively low reach, numbers are low, relatively while you're, you know, such large events that you do globally must be obviously so much money involved. How much are you able to really sell it to, you know, sponsors? Is it tough? What is the way you, you know, have you seen success in sales? What is your view? Because the same aspect of what we are debating, what is ROI? What is the GRP? In your case, there's hardly any GRP per se that we are talking about. It's very, very low versus cricket obviously. I'm not demeaning in any way, but slightly, you know, you do understand the reach being so low. How difficult is it to sell your events? So we don't sell GRPs. In fact, I would love to have a session with whoever can to, you know, give it to our organization because GRP is not a GRP strongly. Absolutely. We look at three things which are meaningful to the brand to associate with. And there are these three filters which we put in before. We decide to go ahead with any piece which could then become relevant for the consumer. And if it's relevant for the consumer, it's going to be relevant for the brand. We really don't look at the brand and plan anything. So the three things which we actually look at first is content. Is your content a killer piece of content? Is your content actually going to ensure that the consumer gets a feeling of FOMO, fear of moving out, right? If I don't watch this, I'm missing out something. I think that's the first filter. And of course, from a discovery lens, we ensure that we put our filters which is saying does it ensure that it is satisfying human curiosity? That's one. So content is very, very important for any ROI. The second piece is community. We don't chase large mass audiences. So in our country, cricket and Bollywood is a religion. Now, when you look at this, this is more closer to the general entertainment space where you get masses and then you have definitions, new definitions like JRP's, et cetera, coming up. We don't get there. We believe in super fans. Super fans are nothing but passionate communities. These are individuals who want to associate with a set of content pieces. And if you're going to produce that, they are going to stick to you and they're going to spread the word as well. They do the viral effect for us. So A, are you appealing to your passionate community? So the second C has to be satisfying that which is community. But do you see a Phillip in your ratings? I'll come to that. Because after all, we all measure that, right? Absolutely. So there is content. There has to be community appeal before you produce any content. And the third piece is credibility. So if you are not going to be a credible brand or a platform on that piece of content because with more power comes more responsibility, if you have these three right, our experience in the past is you have brands flocking over there to partner with you because you are producing content which people want to. Coming to your piece on ROI, we are quite different when we do live events. Let me narrate a piece. We believe in informing audiences as much as inspiring them. So recently, couple of months back, we had an event which was live into the blue hole. Yeah. Once we announced these promos, et cetera, a lot of people in the few panels earlier, I think a few guys mentioned saying the search quotient goes up. People start searching. Now, what is happening in live in the blue hole? It's basically 45 miles away from in Central America where there is a territory which is still unexplored by human mankind. Nobody's actually been there. It is known for its blue crystal waters. It has tons of sharks and great sea life. Nobody's been there. Now, there is ocean expedition happening over there where people are trying to find what are the mysteries over there and what happened thousands of years ago. We'll go and shoot that and put it live. That stays. If you want to actually say that you have human curiosity to be addressed, you're not just going to watch it live. People will watch it one year, two years, five years later. And that's how monetization and ROI works with killer content. So also, live repeated various times. You don't chase dollars live. If you make great content, you'll make enough money live. But did you get sponsors for the live? Absolutely. You did. So good. So you're saying that advertisers are... We've already got one narrow lag. Thank you for setting it up. Oh, lovely. Okay. So coming back to the whole piece that we were discussing on the stage of the brand, which is where we saw that Cisco saw some success on personal care launch. You saw huge success on 2M. Let's hear from Piyusha. Narrow lag has seen success, not necessarily launch, but kind of a relaunch of sorts. You refresh the brand in a way. Or if you have any learning that actually launch and relaunch is not the only time you can do associations, please share with us, because I think brand lifecycle clearly, we believe, new news does very well on live content. Yeah, the granddaddy on the stage. We are going to be 100 next year. Okay. Great. But no, not really launch, relaunch, but I would keep it in the realm of relevance. And every business, every brand needs to stay relevant. And by that logic, probably every day we are reinventing ourselves in some way or the other. One of the things which is a very important parameter to keep in mind, and before I get on to what we've done is the conviction to stay in. So I'm very glad when I hear Amit talk about the second year of PKL partnership and then suddenly the sales zooming. So that's something which you take hard from, that there's a conviction to stay in. And that goes beyond ZRP numbers. Coming to what we've been doing, so we have a couple of brand assets which we've kind of nurtured over the years. One of them as Vanita mentioned is our jingle. And last year we had, in fact, refreshed it where we converted it into a complete song and we went into regionals and we created multiple languages around this jingle. And so that kind of gave us an opportunity to integrate it into a lot of shows that were happening which are Deferred Life. Deferred Life, live award shows, yeah. A lot of concerts and award shows where the, you know, it's a lot about celebration, it's a lot about happiness and it kind of fits and gets woven into the entire narrative very spontaneously. And that is when we got our jingle to be sung by a lot of artists on the stage, a lot of anchor mentions, etc. Similarly, since we were partnering Cricket on pre-post live, which is basically the network Cricket Live property which we've been now building a couple of seasons. Now on that also, when there are anchors who are singing your jingle when there are senior commentators like Sani Gawaskar singing or mentioning about it, suddenly you know, you get a lift and that's something which we've been kind of relying on. So do you again, do you measure that lift? Is there a measurement behind that? It fits into what I mentioned earlier, the recalls that we were measuring. So it fits in there. So trauma does take up. That's right. And maybe some imagery scores or something like that. Imaginary and trauma both, mind measures . So bringing that learning here now, what I'm hearing him say is that even mature brands are using live event sponsorships, basis synergy, right? So synergy is important, context is important. So that brings me to a point that Anupam mentioned that they brought a synergy and they did it pretty early on in the live stage because usually a synergy and context comes later in the brand lifecycle stage. So why don't you just shed some light on how you see the importance of when it comes to the organization and how important is it to get the brand to be in the know at least in the initial stage? Like if you hadn't built that 20 awareness and you straight away went into IPL with that property, would it have worked as well? What is your view on that? I think going straight into a very property like IPL is a little hasty. I think you certainly need to establish the brand's basic proposition and consumer need to be aware of it. So the live event does it is of course there is a context of the live event, what the program is. Here it is sports, it's all about energy, fitness, winning, competitiveness and those are the things that if you want to espouse on your brand then possibly it's a good fit and depending on you know and doesn't matter really whether it is a cricket oriented, fall of wicket property which happens 13 times in a match, typically any live event doesn't really consider a brand logo placement as integration or endorsement or sponsorship. There has to be something contextually built around the program seamlessly. But don't you think like major brands who are known like Airtel today does a lot of you know fixed non-FCT stuff on cricket etc. Not everything is contextual. So that's where I'm talking about how the brand life cycle versus context is there a difference because I am hearing you all say that context is critical. Obviously context is excellent but all brands can't manage it sometimes. So how important is it without the context also? No I think it comes in the context actually gets derived from the PLC or the life cycle itself. A new brand seeking to you know achieve a certain metric, sales or recall or awareness would of course you know follow a certain brand guideline or let's say a brand charter that they would have created. Look at Rolex 40 years with Wimbledon. Absolutely I mean I am still not able to define the brand metric that they would have put its precision they launched those you know the technology when it was introduced in Wimbledon 2007 the ball tracking. Rolex was the one which brought it. Absolutely that's a brilliant example. So from perspective context is something which I believe always is the driver force. Okay. For a new or for an existing brand I mean it's immaterial. Actually just to build on that you know if you look at Rolex the same example it is about technology, precision premium association all of that Wimbledon brings and that's why such a long standing association. So bang on there. As is for like cricket for a health brand and I think that will remain eternally relevant as long as you have the resources to of course content and association can be taken to the next stage as you go year after year which we see in the example of Rolex as well they find newer and newer ways of reinforcing their proposition and getting that leadership edge. So I think that remains a job to be done for brands as you move from first year to second year but context is absolutely without context I think the investment is not leveraged well enough if the contextual fit is not there then maybe you will make the investment but the kind of response and the return of investment you will get will not be that large and that's why contextual integration is extremely important. Absolutely. So that's a big learning for all of us. So yes visibility spots are all okay but can we do something contextually. Vikram what is your say on discovery on such events when I asked you what kind of brands and you got Nerolac to partner. Do you think again more mature brands usually would come to I do understand of course the context of target audience that of course given but broadly would there be more mature brands coming to your event sponsors as sponsors. Have you had some launch campaign or brand that you can think of that comes on your live event. So you know just taking on from the contextual spot which you know Piyushar Anumam kind of said I'm a strong believer for any brand perception is greater than performance right so GRP is not a GRP to the point and that's very important because in a country like ours where you know when you look at live events it's largely spots where cricket is maximum over there. What really happens in such scenarios is you have an array of brands kind of lining up over there and whatever we see today in live spots you know you've got jerseys where you know I think teams are bidding against each other. Yeah so and they increase every year and then the ground is flooded with lots of logos. So while contextual is important I think it's even more challenging and that opens up a world of new opportunities when you are fighting the only perception space. You will always say that there is something called share of voice if a jersey has got so many how do I create a surround around it because a logo on a jersey or anywhere else is not going to be enough it's going to be a blind spot for sure. And when you start looking at what we do in the perception space the share of voice has is a very different dimension whether it's events or it's any other content space that we are looking at. And when you look at live events specifically it's nothing but if I have to put it in in one line it's appointment viewing at its best because you've got the attention span of the individual over there you've put down everything and said okay I want to go and watch this and I want to watch it now and I don't want to watch an action weekly or probably the highlight as well. So that's going to be very very important saying okay here there is something else which is getting created over here so if you want share of voice and you want a more fit with the passionate community which is existing over there there is nothing else which is available when you want to do it and I think what's important is can you also then look at is there a possibility by the nature of the event or anything else can you pre and post package it in a great way that it stays stronger with the consumer. Bringing us to the next point of discussion that is you know how it is very important especially in sports which is the largest piece of live content just to put some facts on the table sports content is as high or as 80 to 90 percent content wise programming of live events and in terms of within that cricket is the largest pie which was earlier as high as 75 to 80 percent but today it's become lesser which is 60 percent or so this is some stats I took from a leading sports channel so that is where sports is what you were just highlighting that's so many elements today on sports and how can we really leverage each element differently and you know in conjunction how much experience do we have on our own brands or from other brands that you so rightly brought in as Rolex on the effective use of not just sponsorship on television but maybe combining say a team sponsorship or getting Virat like you said or whatever so Amit if you can shed some light on you know how you've used a conjunction of things you know and do you have any examples of what you've done for Cisco see I think right now we are at a very very nascent stage of you know coating a strong example as of now I guess because as I said it's too early to say that okay I've achieved this or I have not yet achieved this I think but most importantly as I said before also you know are we moving in the right direction because you know there are those choices right now that I have as an advertiser in the market right now right from IPL, ISL, PKL and so on and so forth but ultimately what is my business objective I think and if I'm not able to define that the right way then I think maybe I am like anybody else just chasing the visibility quotient and I think that's too you know easier thing to sort of go ahead and get in television because any which way is like a brand Cisco otherwise also right throughout the year so I think is that what you're chasing as a brand absolutely no I think so my point is I think that's clear from across all of you that context is important and it's not just about visibility Anupam why don't you share with us very interestingly you said to me when we were talking that you took up Pune as a test market and you know built a Pune team sponsorship you know that's so interesting because you know how does the venue of the match really lend itself to you know through a team sponsorship for your brand how was your experience I think it was when we were launching 2M we also had the Pune Super Giants franchise for 2 years the RPSG group owned the club so I think it was more about when you are launching of course Delhi is the most important or the biggest snacking market followed by Mumbai perhaps Gujarat is the biggest state but actually we chose Pune to launch and I think it was also you know the kind of emotional association that fans have with their respective clubs I think here because you also have a lot of association for IPL per se but there are still fans who would like to take sites right so you were available only in Pune when you test launched when we started the test market we started only with Pune that's so interesting right because we were all south and you know how much can a market be you know be linked and you took up a sponsorship of Pune which was on after all it was on national TV and you chose to do I think that's an excellent learning very very interesting market years who have been there long enough I mean Pune actually is a torture test test market torture test and you know spending having spent about 700 years in Unilever Pune is a difficult market the consumer is extremely evaluative and you know where it was at one point in time Kellogg's launched something they started to experiment in Pune so I think if you succeed in Pune there's a high chance you will succeed anywhere else I honestly didn't know that that's a learning for me for person and I think you know if you're actually doing a test market on a new brand in Pune of course you had the leverage of the team on your side and we had reasonable success which actually helped us gain confidence that yeah if it can work in Pune it can work anywhere else of course we went to Delhi next because that's the biggest snacking market but Pune was a good test case for us excellent you want to talk about something on Pune nothing no comments so now moving on I think sports we've covered pretty much I think we've heard some good learnings one is of course about ROI context, markets, different forms of sponsorships, timing brand life cycle stage a lot has been covered let me now quickly move on to news as a genre you know what our experience as panellists has been and what we think about because news I think everyone knows today what part of the screen really gets seen as news and what part is really not there so with that extreme clutter what is our view on news as a genre whoever would like to take it and particularly of course since you took laptop branding in those days was it as cluttered and versus now you could talk about that so fundamentally I think we have we are known for putting in a lot of money basically in the news genre and thanks to that activity that we did for almost I think four years or something like that I think the law of association has been like really fantastic between our category which is LED to brand which is Cisco to even Irfan Khan so I think that is something that we are really proud about but I was talking to somebody this week and the person was from a news broadcasting team no sorry he was from GC actually and he is like Amit you give a lot of money to news channels but you don't give me enough and more money right and maybe he was in that sense sort of complaining or sulking and then he said see I mean like there is a lot of entertainment out there because of GC and all so I heard him patiently I said so you are saying that in India politics slash news is not entertaining enough I mean like look at you know what we have seen from last four or five years you know Namo and Raga and everything in between and this guy was like you know for a minute sort of like literally quiet and he was like no I got your point I said yeah if it is about entertainment I am deriving entertainment from news as well you know so what's the big deal so I think yeah so laptop branding was one such small thing that we did otherwise but I think so I think we are in love with television fundamentally that I think a lot of us are you want to add yeah please if I can add to the news aspect I think news is also very cluttered yes absolutely I think it is news channels are already creating their own space own proposition own traction you know if you and I think everybody loves to take this example if you look at Republic TV or no I think it has just disrupted the whole lot of things now there is a certain style of journalism the certain style of reporting if you feel that your brand's proposition aligns to that style go ahead and do something create a unique property over there where every time there is a debate there is something which that whole debate is getting branded as and because I think news is also a high frequency medium it's kind of some of the main programs are appointment doing much like soap operas on TV you want to watch that 9 o'clock because you feel that there is something more than that particular program is giving you so you go there again and again and again and if you see a strongly branded property coming every day then that's the kind of frequency you get on a daily basis so it's a very strong reinforcement of your brand and your proposition almost on a daily basis again it lines to frequency and because the genre the style of communication on that news channel aligns with your brand or your brand's proposition I think it possibly gives you a much richer debate so we don't we haven't really done anything but we are working with a lot of news channels to see what can be curated brainstorming right now on context but you know the ideas that we are sharing with them we are getting an instant connect with the news channels also because they themselves want to do it because the kind of support we are going through our lending ambulance proposition in to be able to create a news based idea is having a lot of traction so you will see that in the next 2-3 months he is not going to talk about it now otherwise we will borrow his idea having heard that I have a view on news but I think it's hugely cluttered and I'd like to pick you know Piyush's brain on that and I think he may not like me too much on this but you know they took up weather branding for example now weather branding goes with paints yes it also goes with roofing it also goes with some other brands on weather I don't know I think a lot of brands have taken it even for that matter laptop branding actually this question is for both of you you know what happens in news is unlike an IPL which is one large big event so if you have a property you have and own that property but in news there are so many channels today so even if you partner with the highest maybe the top most channel or the second most channel or the top 3 channels together you have a huge risk because there are sponsors who do weather on other channels so how do you kind of stand for weather or how do you stand for laptop branding isn't that like a huge challenge and accept it if it is so I have a reason and I also have a justification but I'll probably stick to the statement I made earlier stay convinced and you know just stay in the idea is to and I actually agree with what you're saying and there is a specific reason why we have continued to build that and somewhere you know over the last couple of years we've tried to see wherever possible we've so we were very heavy on what is called as non FCT non FCT elements we were very heavy across channels and in fact my team members are here and they've been also you know we've had a lot of sparring on this one but somehow what we have done is we've kind of tried to channelize it and bring it in a certain direction of course weather branding falls there I remember in fact almost about 10 years back when it started and I remember Mahindra tractors they had taken up weather branding they went from here to there and so so yeah it worked then we hope it will work now I would not be able to share numbers but it's about being convinced and staying in I agree that the screen is cluttered so we've tried to stay away from the live from that context you know taza khabar or whatever there are options which are there those headlines and those that somehow seems to be a blind spot now for again from our context and are you bullish on elections as a live event coming up now? I would love to the only problem is to cricket the viewership gets divided when it comes to elections across news channels because that's not one channel it gets that's the piece that I would have brought up so that's a conundrum honestly and still we would still be continuing to try and derive some sort of metric in terms of how we work with it but yeah as a live property of course it is juicy enough from an Indian context and especially the time set even as an advertiser do we all remember you know top three brands on sponsors of elections we don't right because IPL we get names but I think elections we don't right at least I don't it's recency it's just too cluttered it's like every channel has a different name and that's a huge con that I see that I put on the table should we open the house for questions yeah oh my god okay yeah that's only one great just see the way it my name is Dharmendra Rai I'm marketing consultant to a few local companies as well as to a few fortune 500 companies I was just wondering isn't a live event for the purpose of branding and all this very very risky just two things that I thought of one is I would never see a film fair award or an Oscar award live because it's terribly boring just watching a person get up from a chair and walking itself is very boring and the second thing is suppose you have a celebrity and he comes late for example Nokia did something with Shah Rukh Khan he came late and people literally didn't have any questions for him he was ignored till the chief executive Nokia said do you want to talk to Shah Rukh Khan at all so the subject today is live event on TV to that extent I mean of course the risk is the same right you got a celebrity you got some important people you got an important event and that doesn't happen for some reason it can backfire very badly I think on television it gets covered usually on such things because we're talking on TV so even if there's somebody late in the event it won't show up so clearly on television when it comes up because we have a deferred life concept of awards if you're talking about award shows that's just a metaphor other things also can go wrong some machinery doesn't work or stuff of that so I'm just wondering sports is the largest live event we spoke about elections a second in these things there are not such pieces right so yeah I mean shows yes some things can go wrong but then you go with the partners who have the most experience and the lead partners usually manage these things well their small four parts may happen you may like to add because he does things at such grand scale and things can so which is what I was mentioning exactly you know credibility is very important so if there is any broadcaster who's planning to do anything live it's nowhere close to what happens in daily life of a broadcaster when it comes to production so you're absolutely right but there are there is a lot which goes before you do live and all these things are taken care of whether the celebrity is there and then like she mentioned Manita mentioned it's it's deferred life so you edit a lot of things and and you have to take care of a few things because you don't want to bore the consumer so if it's a if it's a four hour affair on ground you want to cut it and maybe it makes sense to put a three hour deferred life takes care of a lot of things there are very few events which actually goes straight up live mostly it's sports we are on time let's give them a big round of applause thank you gentlemen thank you Manita Keshwani