 What do you think? Is TV still the most powerful brand building medium for marketeers? Is it? Well it is our Brain Racking topic and this is our first panel of the day and ladies and gentlemen please welcome the session chair Mr. Saad Khan, National Planning Director, Strategic Planning, and FCB, who are followed by our panel members with a round of applause, Mr. Ajay Dham, Joint Executive President and Head Marketing, Ultra Tech Cement, Avinash Kumar, AVP Marketing, Patanjali, Keetra, Abbas Media, Darbar Marketing, Kellogg India and Chief Marketing Officer, Vizilai. Is TV still the most powerful brand building medium for marketeers? You may tweet about this as well. So good afternoon people and I think you are the right question. Is TV still the most powerful medium for building brands in this country? And I was waiting to hear some responses and I did not get those responses okay except for one or two maybe like really people who believe in that. So I'm still asking the question once again is TV still the most powerful brand building medium in this country? Yes sir. Okay so fine so what we're going to do is we're going to start on this okay the topic says TV first somewhere now to be very honest okay I've got like a panel of some really big marketing install words with me okay and we have been discussing before this session okay we had like a little coffee together and so is there a correct answer for that is there a right answer for that or is answer slightly complex and it has many variables and that's what we're going to discuss. So I am Saad Khan I am national plan director at FCB Ulka okay I'm just going to introduce the panel to you again okay so we've got Sumit from Kellogg's okay we've got Rajeev from Darbar we've got Vivek from Pitylite okay we've got Avinash from Patanjali and we've got Ajay from Ultra Tech Cement okay so I just set this whole thing up for a while okay I'm not a media planner guys by the way so just be for me as well this is like a good learning experience because I'm going to only learn from these gentlemen out here okay very clearly but I have certain questions because what I have been seeing is how media landscape is changing okay over the last few years okay constantly so we were I was brought up in a generation where we only had television in print okay okay today we have digital today we have OTT today we have so many new things augmented reality all these kind of things and mediums are coming a big time okay and things are changing in a very very big way okay nothing is small in this country as I always believe that because we are a huge country now everything is under penetrated from that point of view right from categories to mediums and everything okay digital is touching 300 million people plus okay TV is 800 million people plus okay and so is like printers going into millions of households so what is happening and I will just like come to the panel now is that in this whole new complex scenario earlier planning media and going out and talking to consumers probably was an easier job okay but now with all the fragmentation one within the mediums and also the availability of multiple mediums okay when you guys think of your marketing plans when you guys think of the role okay of each medium okay how do you define the role say of a television the role of a digital or say the role of a print okay really and that's okay how do you manage the marketing mix a media mix that you have out there okay and that's what and I think anybody I would probably want to start with Sumit with you if you can just go ahead on this no it's a million dollar question I think that's what media planning agencies have been doing for a very long time so so in my mind it's it's it's not as complex honestly ultimately the task for us to grow our businesses is what's our source of growth where they are and how do we reach them in the most cost effective way right I'm at a very simple basic level that's that's what it is I'm a firm believer on reach and just delivering reach more reach in the most cost effective way every month every day every week so that's the principle with which I come now to deliver this reach which is the medium that then ensures that I can do it in the kind of budget we have different brands different organizations will be in different life stages and therefore somebody would need a pan India reach that they'll want to do somebody might be a Bombay specific brand somebody might be a tier two brand and so on and so forth so what works for that right I think that's important so with that as a context I think coming specifically to the point on TV and I think that if I have to put the moves on the table it's about TV versus digital right every other medium is there have has always been there and my point of view honestly is that if you think about from a pan India scale point of view what we have done in the past has been clearly television I don't think it's gonna go away in any time soon it will remain for the first in our terms for the first 35 percent at 3 plus TV will always be the medium that gives you the right right ROI the right reach as well of course TV comes with spillovers etc and that's the challenge and I think that's the role where I believe a lot of good brand managers or good category heads or good marketeers that's the place where they make the difference which is about how do you then as you talk that reach how do you become more and more cost effective digital plays a brilliant role for example on doing that of course you have the Charlie challenges of whether it's unduplicated reach and so on and so forth you know we can have multiple of those conversations but if you just step back and think you know the kind of impressions digital delivers today what versus what it used to deliver a couple of years back so you will get incremental reach from that the point to keep in mind therefore is that how do you play the mix to your benefit to the geography that you are in and to the life stage your brand isn't I think simply put that is what my guidance to my team has always been and more often than not I've seen that work for our benefit going by what you are saying there are few things that we need to consider I'm not a great fan of the TV advertising though we spend quite a bit of it and what I have understood is if you ask yourself how you view your television whenever there is an ad break you change your channel so how do I know whether when I am shooting I am shooting at the right person and it is it is hitting the right person see the whole game is about 780 million people reachable by TV channels who are these 780 million people nobody knows in first place second place the world has changed especially when you have 550 million people on high-speed internet curtsy geo and the market the way it has changed at least I know if I have reached 50 million people if I have reached 70 million people I have if I have reached 100 million people at least I know who I am interacting with second thing since see the things are changing TV is no more an idiot box it is getting in more and more intelligent it is getting more and more interactive there is no doubt when you are going for a national campaign and you are going from brand building you have to bombard through TV because that is one medium where there is no control nobody has no control so you will be seen all over the places but how many people are receptive and how they are going to respond or rather embrace your brand is something which is going to be challenging third thing that is going to be a see whatever has happened has happened from tomorrow the world is going to change because tomorrow is first February and then you have a new try guideline coming into place so the idea is now if you look at other thing that I am going to share with this that there are more than 50 million smart TV is going to be operational by 2020 so these are when the programs are interactive and it is more and more according to my test I will go to that channel another thing that needs to be considered is that when you are talking about TV TV is not into a prime time people talk about prime time when we are buying TV so 7 o'clock 6 o'clock to 11 o'clock is your prime time but what is actual prime time is 8 to 10 so in the new world the my time is going to be prime time it is not the time slot that you are getting people into and that is how when I look at my media planning I get into it thank you yeah so Viveka you want to talk about this a bit because we have a very strong view on on digital side as well okay which is a very good thing but what we are chatting about the roles okay today you can use see TV is a powerful medium and it will remain as powerful as you would use it the way we use TV as marketers will have to change so the debate is not so much about is it the most powerful medium the debate perhaps is around how is it going to remain the most powerful now let's keep few things aside TV will give as you rightly said will give the highest reach in India if you want to build we were discussing it over coffee if you want to build a scale brand if you want to build a brand beyond thousand crores two thousand crores there's no gains saying the fact that you have to use television but certain things are happening because of which the role of TV is going to change first of all there are other mediums which are encroaching into the TV viewing habits that's one thing which is happening and what we call distracted TV viewing is reality of the day second thing is that the sole TV viewing is actually only for is around 40 percent rest is all combined family viewing because 98 percent of households are still single TV households you know the reality of mass scale brands in India is that the reality is not here the reality is not in the TV studio reality is somewhere outside and that reality is that a single TV households we have but having said that even youth living in class three class four towns are digitally active and digitally savvy they are internet so the way we would use TV and the way role of TV has to change I'll illustrate that with an example TV is not going to be a medium which is a medium we're going to use primarily to put the brand message which is pray and pray and then see the task is done if I take doctor fix it now doctor fix it is a waterproofing brand ten years ago I could have just put my message on TV and said now awareness will happen people will ask about the brand my brand is built I have done distribution but not no longer what the role TV is playing is that now we're using multiple mediums so what TV what we do is that we are the same brand a master Amitabh Bachchan that message on TV is to create a need in the mind of consumer about waterproofing that's one message we then give that message to everyone now what happens is this person when if he's in the cycle of making a house of waterproofing then he comes to us through a call center digital or we do digital marketing separately and we generate a lead and then use digital medium to give him a different message and the message is about if you don't do water proofing then there's a consequence of price or your house will be leaking etc etc then we use different medium which is the third medium is direct contact he comes to us and we give him a different message the point I'm trying to illustrate is the way we use TV is going to change drastically and TV is nowadays for some brand it's a only medium for for actually giving the message but the two three things which are happening one is that TV has a halo effect on the impact of other medium which is digital and that is what we speak about whether it is paid on social you know it's a fact there is a report by Accenture which shows that the ROI which is what actually affects market leaders and business people the most the ROI of TV is the highest followed by paid search and it is also a fact that paid search get positively affected by television advertising so television advertising you can't walk away from it otherwise the likes of lip-cut and Amazon would not be using TV to build the brand given the digital mediums we have observed that when we advertise on television the searches we have branded searches go up dramatically my call to call centers grows up dramatically that's one impact which TV is having on digital which we have to take comments and talk second thing is long term you you if you want to build brands which are emotional which have a long term consideration I don't think you can build brands like Dove or Fevicol or Bajaj only through digital because digital is also a medium which is it's a it's a it's a bipolar or it's a medium with paradoxes on one hand it's a medium which has very low attention spans you flip with the flip of a finger you go on other hand the subject which interests you whether it's a cause CSR water shortage or or child issue or or something else you involved you've watched that video you forwarded you share it so it's a medium with both impact so the point is that the TV has to be used in conjunction with this these mediums in a complementary fashion and as you said gentleman sir very very well the content is going to matter really really well the second only second point I'm making is that if TV will play and continue to play a very very big role in driving brands in the minds of people which is a primary role actually which is consideration I don't think we could have built Madhya Pradesh or Vodafone or Kerala tourism without TV advertising only through digital not possible but he has digital can compliment when you get a person in the funnel by making sure that is a mark you're taking him down the funnel and take him to the logical conclusion of closing the sales so best we can add and discuss more yes and Rajeeva what's your view on this I'll just tell you a small story about one research we did in city of Banaras, Varunasi in UP so our research team went to a small village and researching one farm labor woman and asked her do you watch TV she said TV so she doesn't know anything about digital youtube everything she watches youtube on this medium okay having said that you know this is one real life story which one has seen and you can see look around and see all your people who matter to you people who basically buy your products they are on digital and they are using it having said that you know no brand in our industry in FMCG industry can be built without television at the moment but you know what is television television is what is a bunch of programs why do watch why do people watch TV is because of the entertainment so anything which can provide entertainment to people would be the screen to be on whether it's through mobile or through the big screen or coming through a TV channel or coming through say a platform like youtube or something people will light it up currently the numbers are in favor of the broadcast medium television 826 million TV digital is still scattered measurable is a big question people don't share data nobody is readily sharing I mean nobody shares the data I mean it's all short in the dark so unless until you experience it you can't put money behind it that's number one number two there is no model which can tell you what is a sufficient amount of money to be put in order to build a brand in TV we have some empirical data for past 25 years or probably more which we can say that you know you put so much of money and you do do so much advertising and probably you know you can build a brand like that that science right now doesn't exist third is ROI you talk to any digital seller guys will say we are very cheap how I don't know because still I find my ROI on TV and so for me I'll continue to spend money on TV but not ignore digital Ajay you come from cement industry okay and which is highly commoditized as a product okay as a product and therefore the brand plays a very very important role okay as far as cement is concerned so how do you look at television bad day for me because two things I had earlier avatar I was in media and FMCG and all that stuff and HD one of the key programs that we promoted big activation was a no TV day and and sad day that I'd be I think pointing to a differing with some of my colleagues air friends air second bad day because you called my category commodity a bad bad place for me and so I think going going away but I think I'm a big big believer in the what they call the Byron Sharp School of Management so I think this targeting while digital is the new new shiny thing it's hugely this new shiny object is hugely overestimated in my my this thing one me watching advertising within the set of a certain frame and page etc ask ourselves does it play a huge role in terms of how we react to the brand I don't believe so so I think is it changing the landscape certainly so I think we had just one knife in the kitchen now we have a paring knife we have a scaling knife etc etc but coming to the core question of has TV effectiveness gone down let's look at numbers kind of stuff has reached gone down I don't think so has time on TV gone down it is going up is the video even on digital the video content that is going up so to me whether you watched it on the idiot box or you watched it on the mobile phone I don't care it's for I think the TV channels to look at third thing if you look at if region frequency are the two things that you go by the that school of thought there's nothing that substitutes that kind of stuff globally also while there is huge hue and cry I think over the last 10 years despite huge amount of stuff moving to digital the share of revenue has come down I think four to five percent of TV kind of stuff despite digital growing wherever it is growing viewership share is about 50 55 percent on TV even now has you watch and in defense of TV I said irony now but in defense of TV completion rates are 100% you watch your ad on same parameters that you evaluate the other shiny object 100% completion rates I am not thumb flicking TV at that point of time the ad break versus content viewership rates down 20% has that changed in the last 30 years I don't think so Anita tell me if those numbers are correct incorrect so has it do you have another tool which you need to use fairly strategically so ultra tech we use we cannot teach consumers how to build their homes or give them expert advice on how to build their homes or simple checklist how to build homes that task we do through digital but from a brand building point of view has TV is effectiveness gone down or is this medium any less effective I don't think so right since we're talking of effectiveness I think just want to make a comment here what is effectiveness of TV is it just reach is it reaching X number of people because there's a lot of distracted viewing there or is brand awareness enough if you if you think take take two categories doctor fix it is it enough to reach 100 million people and get them aware about the brand is it about reaching people those 10 million only out of this 100 million who are making homes so how do I reach them so perhaps effectiveness has TV will have to get down to sharpen mechanisms or complement with other mediums to define effectiveness as am I reaching my audience at the time when he's in the cycle of thinking about my category of the product and that is going to be name of the game so yes through digital I can target people and I can reach only those one million who are right now in the process of making homes but in TV that's not possible I there's no way for me to target I have to still spray and pray that's one but having said that digital also has a limitation how much how much of wide reach digital can get very very despite all the high numbers of penetration of mobile and and on phone the advertising reach of digital is very very limited that's a fact so we have to look at effectiveness from the point of view of not only reach but reaching my person consumer at the time when he's in cycle of buying I think that something which other mediums will complement TV greatly so that has thought of I would give you two data points and then elaborate on it I had a discussion around a year back that despite digital being so prevalent in America the share of digital versus TV is almost similar it has not gone down but when this was spoken at after that the kind of transformation which has happened which is being ignored is that OTT platform has come into play one second when once if you ask anybody here if you ask me rather I don't have a TV connection anymore at my home I have a TV with Chromecast and what I do I have all the apps of all broadcasters on my mobile phone and I'm a premium customer of all of them and if I add value of the entire thing and the kind of content and the kind of freedom that I have there is no denying nobody is saying that TV is going to go down TV is certainly going to yield space to digital in first place second see in India especially the adoption speed is pretty slow if you look at any of us all of us have been brought up on TV so there is a resistance to change people don't understand digital so fast and so they are not trained into that medium so what they try to do is push it and put it at an arms length it is shiny thing for sure and it will keep on shining it will certainly have an impact on shininess of TV when TV came into picture if you remember 82 1982 when first colored broadcast happened and the kind of TVs that we used to watch and you see today see when I am talking to a customer I wanted at least a grip on the data that I am getting into that data is not at all available it is not that I am going to do a zero budget on TV I'm going to have at least 45 50% of my budget on TV for sure but my expense on the digital space is going to increase and that I'm not increasing my budget at all what I am doing I am doing weaning away few rupees from that to this and digital in itself what you said is correct that when you have a TV campaign going and a digital campaign going then you have to have integrated marketing plan TV needs to be supported by digital if you don't have a support of digital your TV plan is not going to work anymore and the times have changed you have such an interactive medium he said red button if you ask me I don't use TV at all for watching music I simply stream it and I believe with the kind of tariff plan that is there and the kind of interactive medium that TV has become or rather digital has made TV an interactive medium it is going to change and it is going to change drastically so whether you like it or not in year especially in next one year at least things are going to move I had a plan shared by Middle East group M because we were trying to expand into that market and they showed us that in last one year TV has come from 52% to 43% and digital has also reached 43% print is still there nobody is talking about that but print is activation thing so call for action happens through print still and in India it is going to remain so despite digital being in space TV being in space the number of the circulation of newspaper has increased so nobody is going to eat anything completely but data and the money and budgets are going to shift for sure just one quick point you know one of the things that's honestly helped me in this conundrum has been if we have our consumer journeys really thought through you know this automatically gets solved so you know if you're looking at driving awareness driving wide persuasion TV will play a role but you're looking at driving advocacy TV can't do anything right so Instagram will work brilliantly for you Twitter will work brilliantly for you so I think as as marketing it's important that we do our homework there is a the brand's role in a consumer's life is certainly not just seeing a TV ad he will engage with the brand at very different levels just like he engages with each of the mediums at very different levels so it's important that we understand that we clearly identify what's the objective at various points equally for example in in store when he's going and sitting in the aisle he's probably looking for value more than anything so your message changes there as well so how do you ensure that you are first clear on what the role of your brand from the time a consumer is aware of the category to the time he's standing in an aisle and buying you is clear and mind you this is not linear right it's happening at multiple levels so if that's clear to you then you can define the role of the medium and then you can use each medium to the best possible best possible way so this ad this ad was so much said so there's no denying the fact that we need TV to have large reach and to be scalable brands one is that mapping the consumer journeys and as I said for fix it also you reach consumer journeys at different points in the journeys and use TV for something else digital for something else but there's something else which is happening nowadays a lot of consumers and young consumers believe brands less and they believe the word of mouth and influences more there are youtube celebrities there are instagram celebrities so brands will have to use TV to do general awareness and brand building so that brands in consideration set but to get them to move from consideration to preference and purchase you'll have to use other mediums notably digital to drive influencer marketing influencer marketing is a word of mouth for whether it is health nutrition or fashion that is the categories where or in our categories in construction and Ajay will abide by it the influencers play a very strong role your contractor your builder so you'll believe them more so when experts speak about your brand then people believe your brand and then they make the purchase and that is something TV cannot do so yes all are required I think as a marketeers as we go into the future TV will remain the largest and the most powerful medium and I and I want to stick to it but the way we put assigned objectives to TV versus other mediums will have to be more granular because other mediums will emerge differential tasks that you assigned consumer journeys have to be mapped then only TV can be made more effective it's often a fallacy I must say we do by comparing ourselves to us and we do extrapolation the issue is when will we reach there how fast will we reach there and will we reach there in the same shape you know Rama Bijapurka in the book very very notably said India is today a duckling will it grow into a swan no it will grow into ugly duckling it will be different shape so our digital landscape ten years from now will be different from the USS that's my thing and I think we'll have to evolve over models because India is no longer a triangle it's a it's a it's a it's a rhombus there'll be a fat middle there'll be a small the bottom small on the top and each will require different ways in which we'll use TVs with them TV for African medium will be different for middle will be different for bottom will be different so we'll have to learn to be very very versatile and and use TV not in a spray gun approach but different approaches for time for us yeah I agree with you there you know with TV you know when we think of TV we think of 800 channels and you know and 24 by seven kind of targeting of ads to people but the moment you start focusing on on a fewer time bands on a on a fewer channels than you know your scores change and that that's what we have done in recent past we have looked at fewer channels fewer time bands fewer genres left out few genres completely and seen some success on television on digital I mean a digital ecosystem can be divided into three parts one is basically search and display second is e-commerce and third is a video part so one has to spend money judiciously in these three parts we have seen very high rate of success in the e-commerce part of it where you know you put your ad right next to the purchase basket and you see a very good result the as far as the video part is concerned the success rates rate is still yet to be this thing I mean yet to be fed what is the success rate there because probably there is a the question of sufficiency is not answered so far in that sufficiency and viewability these two things are not answered and one general observation that you know whenever you're watching something on youtube your eyes are on the skip button you know you're just looking at the skip button skip button skip button and skip and then you know start watching so that's another thing which is yet to be answered although there is a huge the numbers are huge right now it can't be ignored uh one thing which you have not talked about here today is print you know that also is very important you know I quote the example all the time when google had to launch its phone they took economic times front page google spent about 1100 crore rupees last year in in television print and and stuff they had their own medium to spend money as well they chose television and print and others as well so thus thus thus that says a lot about what we have to offer today which is the television the print and the rest of it and correct I agree and the best thing was always I always wondered all these brands which have digital at their core okay like they are digital fundamentalists right okay amazon google even they had to come on television okay and that's a that's something okay which says a lot about still about the strength of the medium but one very interesting thing Rajiv you said okay and I kind of caught on to it was okay that uh no brand can be built without television in India okay and I just want to like spend a bit of time on this okay see uh so before television before 82 at least in this country okay brands were still being built okay they were being built on print okay and magazines then television came in and again brands took on television okay then digital came in and again now we have very very strong opinions okay like some guys really believe that digital is what really works okay and there are guys who are saying keep a balance there are still guys who are saying no nothing beats television okay question which I really have here is okay to build brands okay do we really need say a television or those kind of things okay those big scale mediums there are many brands in the world which have done this few by the way okay but we have which have done this without really going out okay red bull I always kind of like think okay how could they build a brand okay and they actually spend a very very paltry amount on television okay uh Zara okay again 0.3% of their entire marketing spend is on mail and media now how do these brands have become big okay yeah so how these brands okay something is something they are doing okay they are not probably approaching it in the classical way maybe I'm not sure but there's something that they're doing when they're still building themselves without really getting on say big reach okay kind of mediums I think you know the product idea itself was very big you know so initial days of iPhone launch the first year of iPhone when it became Jesus Christ of phones yeah did they realize I don't think so it was only through influencers and word of mouth and stuff and sorry same goes for these all all these brands because you know the product itself was so good that it it went on its own the kind of category I was talking about is FFCG category where we operate in and there's a huge competition okay and everybody's trying to gain 0.1 1.1 1.1 person market share so they are you know it's very important to be on television as you have to spray advertising to a lot of people and at some level I think a little bit of spillover works very well for our kind of yeah so then I will go to what Vivek was saying actually we're going to have an interesting point that you know about scale okay and that's the key things maybe somewhere like even in say juices okay beverages okay we got a brand called paper boat okay of course it's no comparison to say a double real or a tropic can in terms of volumes and everything but point is that paper boat still has built itself without really if I recall correctly going hardcore on say television okay is it that is the only thing is that tv helps you scale up is that what somewhere we can like no sir I think you asked an interesting question but often I think we need to take a step back and ask a more fundamental question the question is for whom am I building this brand and at what scale I want if I'm building a brand from 18 to 22 and if I ambition is to reach only x million people fine either I see for every thing we say there are going to be exceptions there are going to be aberrations fab india is a mass brand fab india is now I don't know six hundred eight hundred crore brand built without advertising tv they are in print they are not on tv so yes you can build a brand you can build a scale brand also not depends who your tg is where this tg is you know these answers are not so simplistic saying I can build a brand without tv with tv so it depends on your ambition and you know Rajiv a fantastic example apple iphone was not advertised was built into an iconic niche brand till sometime back they came on television right why they come on television why they're on billboards now because they want to achieve scale how do you achieve scale in india you need television though the point is that yes there are two aspects to using tv in india for building brand one is scale what's your ambition is where your target group and audiences and the third thing I still say is that if you want to build sustainable emotional engagement with audience which is more white not youth there are always exceptions to what I'm going to say I'm going to get hit by any one of them I think you need television and so for example other aspect we should look at is you know what is tv tv is a screen size or tv is content today the housewife is watching let's say kumkum bhagya and television earlier she had to do appointment wing today she can actually steam and watch it at any point she wants on the television on the same screen so what is tv tv is going to evolve into what it will be a very curious mix of content screen size but there are exceptions here also see there are certain things which people would want to watch on big tv big screen tv which is life sports events okay big movies now would they like to watch their big movie on on a phone I doubt it so tv will play a role content will evolve tv will also become smart now tv now otts which you must have spoken of in the morning is going that way we will have to become smarter to see how do we integrate a brand message into otts without getting intrusive those issues will come into play and I think will have to evolve a different model of balance of privacy and intrusion to make sure that we use the tv in the right way because tv is no longer going to be beaming tv is also going to be I want tv at the time I want to wear I want if I'm streaming Sumita just like one thing we were discussing that about okay so of course tv because of the whole cost factor of tv okay because the cost of not the cost per reach okay actually the entry cost okay you have to take into account share of voice you have to take into account okay okay is it really enough there's a threshold always okay on television and sometimes you think okay if I don't have this much of budget for example where I can beat say other guys okay then what is a kind of call you will take that point in time will you still go over there probably and not achieve okay what you set out to do or will you deploy that budget okay into something else which will help you achieve it no I think I am a very strong believer that a basic threshold is important and below that it won't work for you and therefore I guess if you are not being able to reach the threshold it means you probably are neither not a pan India brand in which case there are other ways in which you will do it right so whether it's regional tv itself or it's about digital if you're doing metros you can do that as well print so all those all those choices are always there but yes a basic reach is important therefore a basic investment is is important on television it does result in spillovers but more pros than cons and nothing is perfect in that sense and therefore in media parlance 30 percent to 35 percent at 3 plus unless and until you are being able to deliver that you're not reaching that also remember that whatever market mix modeling that we have done we have seen that that level of reach is the highest ROI that you can get on television so the versus all other mediums put together so the first amount of money that goes if you're being able to deliver that kind of reach you'll get really high ROI and then of course all of it starts tapering and you can put other mediums but the short answer to your question is is that you have obviously have to make that choice you need to have that much investments available so that you can put a basic reach behind your plans because the reason I ask is on not every brand okay is the leader brand not every brand is a big brand you will have always have more challengers and they will have lesser budgets and how smartly will they play the whole media game okay instead of fighting say three times four times the money which say the leader is putting on television and that absolutely you can be much more gorilla about doing your thing so so if you're bombay you can uh i'm saying youtube can give you really good reach uh even if i leave the entire conversations around how many people are watching it and what's the clip through but it does can give you the kind of awareness you want in metros and even outside metros for that uh for that matter so so clearly possible that you want to say something so uh just to add to this point you know uh you're talking about entry cost so entry cost could be different for different people's it's so if you're supposed to have a restaurant which is operating in a basically trying to attract customers in a in a local neighborhood you know then obviously you'll not use television you'll use probably uh a local newspaper or maybe you know uh maybe digital work in a in a way but if you're talking about pan india brands uh something which has a high distribution then definitely tv is the answer uh a small store a small restaurant a startup i'll say something like a small thing like you know milk basket is what we have in uh deli right now so basically these guys you can order your milk or anything which you want in the morning at 11 o'clock at night and at five o'clock in the morning you have it at the doorstep so that's very localized kind of a startup so those kind of things obviously you don't need television you know you would need something word of mouth influencers and and stuff i think someone also talking about content i think you were talking about content before we came here and uh somewhere i also believe that you know tv okay after a while okay gives you a sort of content fatigue because ultimately what do we do we just create few copies okay one or two copies and or three copies maybe and we run it like for next one year or six months or whatever time versus say on digital okay you can do so much more you can refresh it easier okay there can be more engagement okay so how do you solve for this because of brand which is totally going say towards television okay or having a big chunk of the budget on television how we'll solve the whole content piece okay on this so uh again contrarian on that one uh i think brand managers get bored of their copy far more than uh than consumers i am a firm believer that while i think we passionately love our brands consumers are not waiting to see our ads and saying i've lapped it for the eightieth time and now i don't want a kind of stuff second piece i think if your insight on the brand is right and that resonates with a large swath of uh audience uh then that's the piece to go uh rather than uh personalizing for the hundred hundred and twentieth ad customized by saying hey ajay do you want to buy this bottle of water just because my name is written on on the ad i'm not gonna do that kind of stuff so customer i think some of those things i think are good pitch points from some mediums point of view but i think these two points are i think overplayed uh but uh and the second piece on this one is content uh we are not very frankly if we're being completely Jewish about it we are not the we are buying eyeballs at the end of the day uh whether consumers are watching my ad uh within news uh or they're watching between kinky if i've gotten the right audience and like you said you've scoped and spanned the zoom in lens of if i'm Mercedes obviously there's no point me going on kind of stuff right but if i've gotten my right audience uh content variation actually plays a fairly low role in terms of where you've seen the the the commercial if you've gotten the insight right if you're connecting with the audience right uh too much variation within creative i'd rather step back that is just activity for that's like running in an airplane right you're just doing activity for the heck of it uh and like i said we get for board of our commercials far more than yeah so i'm yes i just want to add to a js saying see that's not the issue because how many of us have ever got bored of watching fevicol ads on tv we run the ads far less than what everyone thinks but still have the highest share of mind because if you create good engaging ad medium is not an issue but there's a contrarian example we can think of famous zuzu's ads if you are still a very versatile marketer you can still create content which need not bore people over 40 days so it depends how you treat content but i fully agree with ajay you know content and boredom is not an issue of tv issues of relevance and engagement so when you are talking about all this let me give you an example for the company that i work with 5000 crores without any advertisement on any of the entertainment channels gc we were not on gc you're talking about apple which was celebrated all across the world and this was a patan li brand which was not known at all and it is an indian brand 5000 crores in no time without any advertisement on gc we were there only i used to sell media to babaram dev and that is how i was hired we used to do only print and news channels which were if you look at that time no none of the brands fmcg brands ever ventured into news genre on television and still the brand was built it is not the advertisement that builds your but the way you interact and the way people receive you despite not having any information dissemination through mass medium still the brands are made but that does not discount either tv as a medium or it does not highlight digital as a medium we did after we reached ten thousand but ramdev is apple for you right yeah no ramdev ramdev is ramdev is iphone no no and ramdev is apple for me but i have an apple in front of me also question again is like if there was no baba ramdev over there would have done the same thing because there's already there's a big brand okay which it became a case study that news genres can also build a brand and you will be surprised to know that it was not brand building access if you ask people what is the money frequency which is required on a gc and versus news channel the news channel was dirt cheap that is why we went there and it worked because it had to work whether we are there on news channel or not on your news channel but only would have been what it is today it would not have changed anything you know what actually basically what works is advertising right what works is advertising whether it's on news channel or any other channel i think see also very important is because this is i can see that there's a decent amount of the tv is important and maybe this amount of like digital also probably very very important okay apple did not advertise on television for a long time like apart from that's like super bowl ad okay and then the pc versus mac campaign which they run for a while in the middle okay one ad okay which again goes to show point okay which you were talking about was that the message is also as important as the medium okay probably sometimes more important they were also by the way were not on digital media for a long time this is strange kind of company which isolated itself okay and yet there is no definitive answer to what you're asking it will vary from brand to brand situation to situation and how people lap it there are a few things let me let me give you an example herbal is something which people were waiting for because they had seen results of how chemical is harming you double was there for i'm sorry i'm rajiv is there but rubber he was there for seven for such a long time and the kind of scale that patan li achieved in four five years double was there for a long time what what we did we do we are actually are helping them also to grow because we created a market so i think uh and just like probably we have how much time do we have i think we are done one time now we are over time five minutes now we can see because the topic is so interesting we can keep on talking about is i've got like some six more questions to like really like proud about here but maybe for some other day some other session but the important point is you know uh still probably the jury is out because ultimately just saying it in one breath okay that this is the most powerful medium actually has many caveats okay where are you what is your target okay what are your scale ambitions and all those kind of things who are you targeting who's your segment okay and you have to look at that statement maybe in that context for example you know scale completely agree if you want to achieve a scale in this country you want a big growth trajectory there's no way you can do without say television because of the fastest and the most cost effective medium to reach the maximum number of people digital again i think we have a lot of passion for digital here too okay uh and somewhere the question again i've always and news channels okay but that's a strategy a lot of people have said that to me as well there's just go frequency go news channel okay particularly for example elections are coming and as i started and razi agreed on it you cannot discount print medium in india at least for at least five more years yeah so i will just leave the house like open for questions okay and then we'll just probably call it a wrap after that there's a gentleman back there uh hi my name is abhinav sir veri i'm a digital media publisher and a journalist my question is open to the panel uh now 90 percent of the households in india are still single tv and uh the nature of content on television is also family oriented but when it comes to digital it's more of individual targeted right i mean you cannot have shows like mirzapur and gandhi bath on television because of the nature now when it comes to brands a brand like itc we will they're a big advertiser on television but when it comes to digital they tie up with a digital publisher and uh come up with a more targeted series which empowers women on women's rights a brand like durix condom i mean condom is a heavy advertiser on television but when it comes to digital they tie up with a news publisher to come out with the content on funny sexual encounters so the question which i'm asking is and it's open to the panel do you think uh from a brand perspective when you need more targeted and different category of advertising like branded content digital will be the way to go and when you want to build a scale tv will always be the undisputed leader i mean and that should close the debate i don't know i'm just asking so brand it's content which is very different which is if you've got to uh most consumers in india first time home makers how to help you through that process that's what brand altritic does so it's right causes for causes what's the medium what's it for you uh what's the use uh like so it talked about is what part of the the uh purchase decision making that you are tapping what is the role that you were signed i think you've got to kind of play by the rules of the medium there are just more tools available to you to achieve the task uh to get the consumer right and in a country like india which is so hypocritical what you're saying is not going to be correct there are so many viewing habits that are there in public domain you can go through those data completely prohibited thing but it is what's the most that you go to railway station where you have free wi-fi and you just see what it what is happening on those places you have a question before that the third objection red flag of the day hypocritical versus what right yeah check yeah raju said any good product can do well so this is not just the question to raju but i would like to ask all the panelists is it only the product which is good can do well and can become a brand a super brand from a brand advertisers uh advertising advertising sinks bad products so that we all know right the more you'll drive uh i think the repeats negatively if you if you if you have great advertising and a bad product destroy it yeah you're gonna destroy it no same here i think uh bad products you can't sell beyond the point of time right let's be clear whatever you do in advertising your product has to be good now advertising can help sell a proposition better but of course that's common sense you'll know that and also uh few of the brands like red bull or beera xara we have discussed most of these brands yes they are new um zara i'm not very sure i don't have a recent number but it is not very enterprising when it comes to beera beera and red bull they get associated at the point of sale a lot and therefore uh i understand the the numbers are improving on top the marketing and sales ops they are very very strong and that's how uh it you know it takes definitely some time but it builds so not just advertising yes uh this forum is all about tv whether tv or ott but i believe that it's it's closing the loop is very very important when you communicate and you do not close so what is the measure that we are taking to you know get the end result so communication is made but at the end many of time it does happen which i have observed is we are not able to actually either able to connect the right customer at the right time so i just need to have little clarity from you all if you can simplify the question for us once more i got i got lost a bit yeah so so there were two things two part of it right one was that the brands are even building without uh mass media without advertising but then again as vvek said when apple has to go to mass they have to use the television so beera still is not cannot cannot be considered in terms of volume or revenue that they are still at that level so all my my my question was that a product is good advertisement is good but still there are certain cases wherein still brand doesn't do well why is that so you're perfectly i think that's the whole point we are trying to say there's no one simple answer to this if you have a great product okay you can also have a bad product i completely agree don't sell it then okay you might have great advertising and if it's good advertising on a bad product it'll destroy the product faster okay that's another issue but then of course distribution okay if you're in service for example okay your experience on the on the on the ground okay all those things have to work finally together okay even the other things like we have more stakeholders a pity light definitely the way pity light works okay uh with with the with the whole uh carpenters everything all those programs okay the whole thing okay and that is where the core of it is as well it gets this strength so it's a mix it's right exactly the marketing mix and it all has to work like a well oil machinery media is just one part of it talking to consumers there's so much more it's starting from the product okay to your distribution to the way kind of sales people you have okay to the kind of okay how you're talking out in there over there and that's how it kind of like has to orchestration in that sense of thing and if any pillar just kind of any key is off the melody is not going to sound good that's we know that can I just add to this basically every product has a product lifecycle right and the fatigue sets in some for some products very soon very early and for some products slightly later in mobile phones for example you know it's much sooner than say other products it's like just a few months like look at the look at Apple sales for this year they have degrown for the first time in so many years so you can't say that good product good advertising but still you know they're failing somewhere they're failing because probably the pricing is high or there's something wrong with the product or maybe somebody competition is doing better products so answer is not it's not a one word hour one sentence answer a very important thing we forget is access and distribution you can have good product you can have advertising then of course Rajiv said pricing but distribution determines success of failure in India whether a product is available at a place where consumer is going for that category remember that that's that's the most critical and the third last but not the least is sustaining that quality and access over a period of time a lot of companies go like this and then sink so sustaining your distribution sustaining your quality over a period of time and broad basing with various SKUs is a very well planned task it is not easy you have to go back to your classroom on four piece let's take out the cotter and read the four piece all four need to be there in the right place Hi this is Akshish from my CSEI I'm sorry to interrupt that would be our last question we have 14 minutes over time last question fair enough so it seems that TV is not worried my question is why is it not worried when Avinash Kumar and me have stopped watching TV for last two years till the time fire stick came down why I stopped watching TV because there was nothing relevant which I could enjoy since the time fire stick came down on the OTT platform I started watching it again and there's a lot of relevant content it seems TV is not worried why is it TV medium the since morning it seems that TV medium is very confident about that it is nothing is going to go wrong with the TV medium and it'll still reign supreme it doesn't seem to be worried that there's a big change when Avinash Kumar from Patanjali says that he is he does not watch TV anymore and Aksha Kamu does not watch TV anymore so see we can have okay the way I look at it always is finally when debates happen and try to put numbers on the table because otherwise it becomes anecdotal okay like I watch TV like for example in this case we can say okay these are like six people out here if I watch TV okay you still have like somewhat like 15% of people watching TV and maybe the three of people watch TV as well so we don't know but when you look at the numbers by sheer numbers when you put them on the table okay then nothing beats TV in that sense of things second thing you have to always remember is and now important point which I'm taking out from this session is okay that maybe you can do without TV maybe you can do without TV if you're a local player if you're a regional player okay of your budget selling but if you're really aiming for the big kill if you really want to grow out there okay in this country because marketers will always have limited resources and you will have to deploy them in the best possible way okay to reach to your consumers also what it does in terms of again a very very important point was the emotional connection the bonds that you want to create out there okay storytelling okay so TV will still play a very very important part at least in that sense when you have to scale up when you have to go out big ambitions and you really have to like in a world where consumers inundated with choices has so many brands okay why should I building of the preference the building of the consideration okay those things work better probably at least in my opinion maybe on TV me talking about performance you're talking all those other things lead generations maybe digital comes in very very strong engagement okay as I say because I understand one more thing on digital what happens on digital okay and sorry just like 30 seconds more is that see TV is still when I'm sitting in front of TV okay I know that an ad will come okay it's not but digital when brands join digital they're intrusive okay because I want to talk to my friend I don't want to see you come so we have a lot of debates happening in the world right now on this whole thing of intrusion okay how much can you go branded how much can you not go branded that's why when we say when brands go on digital cut the branding down okay cut it really down don't sell out there people are not out there to buy stuff they're out there to connect to connect with other people out there like no more learn or whatever they are doing so yeah so I think I think TV is still if you have those and let me give you one more data which is very contradicting 90,000 people were surveyed about their TV viewing habits all of them used to watch TV and they are they were asked on what on TV or on your mobile 62% were on mobile TV was on mobile was 62% out of that 90% 90,000 people surveyed so I think you'll have to just cut us now so and if you just want like probably we'll be around for a while maybe just catch one of them if we just before we run out of here okay so thank you so much gentlemen and thank you for your questions what an interesting session we are 18 minutes over shot by time