Premjeet Sodhi, Senior Vice President, Initiative, Lintas Media Group

The days when one said 'I am XYZ brand, buy me' are passe. People don't look at advertising in that way anymore, they have to decide for themselves what they want and in that sense you have to mean really something and be relevant to the consume...Anything that looks nice now might become passe later, so how it integrates into the thinking of the consumers and how consumers adapt to it for a long term is important.

It's been just over a month since Premjeet Sodhi took over as Senior Vice-President of Initiative and moved based to Delhi (Gurgaon to be precise). Sodhi, who has been with Intellect prior to his present role, is an MBA from IRMA, Gujarat. He has a varied experience spanning retail, technology, and finance sectors, and has controlled and managed various tools at Intellect.

Sodhi, who has been with the Lintas Media Group for the past four years, had spent some years at MRUC (Media Research Users Council).

In conversation with exchange4media's Tuhina Anand, Sodhi speaks at length about the changing face of media in India as well as the needs and demands of today's customers. He also shares his views on how brands can face the challenges of an ever changing media scenario.

Q. If rural market has potential for marketers, what, according to you, is the best medium to reach the rural market?

I really don't know what is rural, it purely depends on brands. For some going beyond south Delhi would be rural. For some brands extending beyond the 10 lakh towns would be rural. So, the definition of rural is a very Census driven number. I think we need to redefine our own boundaries and the consumers whom we want to reach, depending on our distribution strength and availability of consumers for that category.

If I go with conventional definition of rural as defined by the Census, even there if you talk of cell phones as a category I think it is making big inroads there. Media is expanding day by day and it is not the push but the pull which is expanding the media. By nature we need more and more media and the rural consumer is no different. By rural consumers we mean people who have the ability to buy products and services, that consumer is just as discerning and intelligent as any other urban consumer. Of course, the thing that he needs is different, and therefore, the kind of brands and services he seeks is different.

So media has no limitations, but of course, what kind of media reaches to them is important. At the ground level if you reach the rural areas you would need to associate with local publications which have a deeper need to reach those areas. Associate with TV channels which have a wider reach in rural areas and of course you need to do other activities. If we say that we need to do other things because conventional media is not able to reach them, then one is off the mark, because the consumer is much more discerning today, and add to that rising competition, one needs to do more than mass media.

I do not recommend any blanket rule, so to say. One would find research where magazines say they are more engaging; radio on their part, too, claim they are more engaging. Measured across various parameters at the aggregate level, I am sure each of the media has its own benefits. What is critical is that for the current task that the brand needs, which media makes the most sense, which media will deliver the output that is required at that point of time. There is no media that is bad, it is only which media is relevant at that point of time. Engagement level depends finally upon which magazine, and with whom and for what category are we talking about. Those days are gone when the engagement level was left on the vehicle per se. You have to figure out the best way of engaging with the consumers so you do good for the brand, but at the same time don't hurt the brand value of the media vehicle too.

Yes, there are some media that are gaining more and more time. Because of so much more media at one level, the overall time that a consumer is spending in any kind of media is increasing. Because availability of media is also increasing, you don't need to sit at home to watch television or sit at your office computer to use the Internet. With the easy accessibility of media, the time spent on media is increasing hence, the pie is becoming larger. Within that pie, a lot of new media is coming in. If you consider gaming as a media, then it is eating into the pie too. If you consider cinema as a media, then yes people are seeing more and more movies. People are reading a lot more magazines, so that too is eating into the pie. Compared to the past, print is growing and so is the business, however, if you consider how much percentage of consumers mind or share of media time print has, percentage-wise other media are gaining more than print.

It is critical how these initiatives are sustained over time. Right now it's a novelty as few brands have done it, but in a few days hundreds of brands could be doing it. Anything that looks nice now might become passé later, so how it integrates into the thinking of the consumers and how consumers adapt to it for a long term is important. I would love to see efforts by brands, which are more long term, to build communities rather than as something that one did at a time and felt good about it and then just let it fizzle. To sustain it one has to constantly innovate.

I firmly believe that tools, research, processes and systems are the way ahead irrespective of whether it is abroad or in India. Yes, it becomes quite easy abroad to use these primarily because they have larger resources to invest in tools, and secondly, it becomes difficult to invest in India because of the relative size of the country. For us, a 3,000-sample size does not make sense. Any research that needs to be done in India has to be magnified with so much more resources that often it becomes impractical. The tools that work abroad might not work in India. They need to be adapted to the Indian context in the way consumers perceive medium and consume media.

A lot of fundamentals of media planning that exist in India had been developed on the basis of research systems abroad many years ago, though they have sustained us so far. However, the way consumers think and consume media in India is very different from the way consumers think abroad. Therefore, any tool that comes from abroad needs to be tweaked, reworked on or reconfigured upon to adapt to the Indian concept. Lintas Media Group has a huge focus on tools, and by tools I don't just mean just software, but tool as a process or system. Lintas Media Group has realised that the ways of planning need to be changed because the consumer is changing, media is changing and the needs of a brand are changing. I think our focus on tools will continue.

No doubt BTL is increasing, but it is not increasing at the cost of ATL. The spend in most media in most categories is on the rise. Moreover, there is a huge buoyancy in the market, so the overall spending pie is becoming much larger. I am sure a fair share of it is going to BTL, but I don't think it's growing at the cost of ATL.

Personally, I am of the belief that brands should go beyond what we call ATL today. It all depends on the task at hand, if the audience is in a mall then there is no point in doing TV activity. Because of the dynamic nature of the audience and the media available, one should explore the options of contacting the audience everywhere. The form of media is changing drastically, take for example when you watch TV on your mobile phone, what would you call that? In a few years all kinds of media will be in all places – what about the newspaper that you read on a website, is it the Internet medium or is it a newspaper? Form and the way media is available to us is changing, therefore, lines are blurring between ATL and BTL. We are probably in a transition phase where we are still going with old definition which is bound to change. I think in future a lot more of unconventional activity would happen, some of those would be driven by technology, while some would be driven by the consumers' need. Technology has a way of surprising us and we should be ready for these surprises and adapt, or else we will be obsolete.

No, I don't see any conflict, and I frankly don't see why there should be any conflict. If you are talking about guarding the turf in the sense that creative solution or even media is being shortchanged, I think both the parties are missing the point that it is the brand solution that is being shortchanged. What we need to focus on is whether we did a great brand solution than mull upon whether we did a great creative or a great media.

The bifurcation came when the media's sole job was to reach out to the consumers because that in itself was quite a task. Reaching a consumer in the way research uses the word 'reach' is not that difficult. You spend X amount of money in Y number of publications and channels and you have managed to reach the consumers. But the problem is that so many more brands are reaching the consumers in the similar way, therefore, are you the one with whom the consumer is engaging? There is so much more that needs to be done rather than just reaching the consumer, and doing that extra bit requires one to know a lot more about the brand.

Understanding the consumers and how the brand interacts with the consumers becomes important. I am not saying that we will advise what the creative solution should be, but yes, if both the sides are working for the same purpose, by discussing together there is a benefit that happens to either side or both, the dialogue should certainly happen. Media and creative solutions should be integrated enough to give a solution for the brand.

Personally, I am enamoured by blogs, I think they are fabulous. But it is also a fact that blogs are highly fragmented. I doubt we will have any mass blogs, even if there is a mass blog, it will be very small as compared to the mass media we have in television or print. A blog is a conversation area, it is not an area where ads should be put. Blogs should cultivate an environment where people can discuss about a brand or issues that are symbolic of the brand. Maybe not brand issues, but issues that a brand is worried about. The days when one said 'I am XYZ brand, buy me' are passe. People don't look at advertising in that way anymore, they have to decide for themselves what they want and in that sense you have to mean really something and be relevant to the consumer. Technology always surprises us at the rate at which it takes over, so blogs, too, might become relevant to us. Blogs will be big, though I am not sure if blogs will look like what we see them as today. I can't predict on technology, but the basic concept of being able to converse with anyone in the world is a very strong concept and must catch on.

The task is to bring more strategic planning into the thinking in media planning. This task emanates from the background that I come from, where my core competence lies in research. I have been working on strategic planning as well as understanding how consumers are changing, how media requirements are changing, and therefore, what the brands should do to communicate with the consumers in the changing scenario. Having trained in these functions, I will work towards inducing that kind of thinking into media planning. While the way media planning is happening at Initiative is certainly great, I would like to bring my thinking into the media planning here, which is basically about thinking a lot for the brand and, therefore, how can the entire communication process be integrated to media. That's the core assignment, but of course in delivering those tasks there are the issues of manpower, talent and others that need to be handled.

On an aggregate level, I don't think print has a major problem. In fact, it is growing and innovating, and getting into new areas, addressing new segments and new needs of those segments. Also print media is gaining in circulation, volumes and business. So, that's not a problem. However, if at all print has a problem, it is in the area of what is the share of the consumer's mind that it occupies. Today, the consumer is using more media, there is no doubt about it. It would be foolhardy to think that consumers only read the newspaper and that's the end of its life.

Of course, there are some consumers in India who are like that, but we are talking of a certain set of consumers who are into media and also increasing their media consumption everyday. This increased media consumption is coming from a number of media sources, in some cases it is entirely different media and in some cases it is the same media in a different form. If it's the Internet, then from the websites to blogs, that is eating a lot of time. If it's newspapers, then from the mainline daily to the supplements, that is eating into the time of mainline dailies. So, there is definitely much more competition in getting the time of the consumers.

I don't have one formula on strategic planning in mind. When I say strategic planning, I mean starting the thinking from the brand side. Very often, not much focus is given to the brand, and instead the entire thinking starts from the media part of it. I think we need to take a step backward and understand the brand, understand the environment and issues that the brand is facing, what the brand needs today and, therefore, what is the media solution required for the brand. People can say that hey that's what we have always been doing, no doubt about it, but from my understanding, more rigour is required in the first part so that the latter part of media solution becomes so much more relevant.