“Clients are comfortable with traditional media, but demanding with new media”

The first session of the exchange4media Conclave, ‘From Available to Accountable: Ad spends movement in Slowdown’, focussed on the burning issues of accountability of different media vehicles. The exchange4media Conclave was presented by Star News and was powered by Hindustan Times. The associate sponsor for the event was Yuva.

The eminent panel comprised Abraham Thomas, COO, Red FM; Rajat Sethi, Executive Director Reader’s Digest; Rohit Sharma, COO, Zapak; Sandeep Lakhina, COO Starcom Worldwide-South Asia and Sudha Natrajan, COO Lintas Media Group. It was moderated by Praveen Tripathi, CEO, Hansa Consulting.

As the discussions continued, many points came forth about accountability becoming important from media owners, media planners and buyers and advertisers standpoints. Natrajan said, “Why do we need to set the tone of accountability only during tough times? To begin with, media stakeholders need to be accountable in their own strategies and re-look into what their consumers want.” She added that the clients should define performance metrics right at the beginning.

Thomas countered the point, and said, “On the flip side it is not necessary that money will get allotted in the same order. The broadcaster looks at par ratio. Also the way money gets spent, depends on ideas, innovations, and the efforts that the media owners takes to develop differentiated audiences – it is not only on metrics.”

Sethi added here, “If there is no increase in growth, then there is a need to increase the market share. Those companies that outspend others in these times do much better. It is not right to slash budgets and marketer’s need to allocate the budget across the media spectrum.” He went on to say that the marketers might have different objectives - it could be profit or brand image - and agencies need to train people to understand the buying behaviours of customers.

Sharma opined, “I believe that all mediums are equally accountable but internet has a greater opportunity, as marketers and media owners are waking up to the fact that they can get precise demographics and psychographics of their target audience. But the challenge is that despite being a highly accountable medium it is still nascent, and is yet to become a mainstream medium.” He pointed out that though each medium has to be accountable, there is an element of less or more accountable to it too. He is of the opinion that since the internet has an engaging audience, there is a higher pressure to be accountable in the medium. Even while developing an ‘advergame’, Sharma said that the client wants to know how his brand will be consumed through the game.

While Sharma emphasised on the potential and challenge of the internet, Sandeep Lakhina, COO Starcom Worldwide-South Asia noticed that even traditional companies who were initially considered in the print or television categories are now exploring new media. Lakhina noted, “Whatever money you spend in marketing and advertising it has to result into something. In certain media, measurement is easy, but it is not in the rest. During slowdown, clients demand more efficiency, and with traditional media like television and print, they are more comfortable. But when it comes to new media they are more demanding.”

As the discussion came to an end, the panellists concluded that it was time to become smarter and follow the strategies post slowdown as well. The panellists unanimous view was that accountability should be there irrespective of slowdown and accountability should be used to create an upside for media owners and all partners in the media food chain not just as away to punish.