Stephanie Besse, Director, Mediaedge:cia Singapore

It is something that allows a planner to devise a complete communication plan, rather than just a TV media plan or something like that. And those kinds of tools don’t exist at all. It is difficult to have something where you feed information and you have the entire plan with factors like PR, BLT etc in place. If something like that comes in place, what’s the importance of human thinking and logic? How will one’s service differ from the other? Tools are just devices that have to work in conjunction with good thinking.

In terms of the people I interacted with, I think they were very classy. They have a great understanding of where the industry is going. They have understood factors like 30-second ads losing their efficiency. The India media industry has grown at an exponential speed. What Indians need to understand is that most of what is happening here today has happened in some other country, some time back. So they can learn more from other people’s experiences. That would work in their favour as then one is ahead of everyone else as they know the consequences of what is going on.

An example is seen in the case of MEC itself. The team and the leadership we have here has had plenty international experience and they are leveraging that to ensure that MEC growth in India is steady, at a good pace and comprehensive.

One very prominent is seen in the brands itself. Since the need of the hour would be to target specific strata of the populace, brands are becoming more and more niche. In 20 years of our experience, we have never seen brands becoming as niche as they are now. They are launching all kinds of variants for specific section, responding to the need of each market group. Interestingly, with the way in which market is saturated, this doesn’t even necessarily lead to an increase in marketshare. More than that, it is done to retain the share.

Unless brands manage to get an untapped market or create new markets, they just can’t grow their share. Look at the car market worldwide; there is no growth anywhere, except for China. In the current scene, there is replacement, not growth. This is precisely why we see very niche products coming, as only that allows replacement and stop your consumers from going to competing brands. An example here would be the credit card market. They manage to bring in new people by introducing different kinds of cards, based on lifestyle and psychography. Or, the mobile phone market. We need to understand the consumer’s need and then create things like incentives etc around it.

We have basic tools for digital etc, which are again of the nature of optimisers. For other functions like gaming, we don’t have anything. But for these, we conduct consumer research to gauge what is the reaction to these mediums and what is the best way to use them. Then we have done work to understand the efficiency of things like sponsorship and so on. For new media like these, we don’t have enough inputs to convert them into tools yet.

Tools are not that way interesting or differentiating at all. All agencies have these tools and more or less all do the same thing. For clients, they sure need to know we have all the tools to optimise the budget but what is important is the way we use the tools.

Navigator, on the other hand is a thinking process, which is unique to MEC and it plays a crucial role in adding value. It allows media professionals to think in terms of communication as a whole rather than just advertising. Navigation helps in what we call communication channel planning and that is really where MEC is headed.

Whenever I hear this question, the first thing that comes to my mind is that mass media is dead. But yes, to reach everyone at one go is very difficult. A fall out of this is that methods of communication and the message itself will soon cease to be universal. There are a lot of factors that you need to understand. Research tells you that 90 per cent of a population watches TV, but it also tells you that not many from this watch TV advertising. So unless, you don’t understand the atmosphere in which your target operates and interacts, it is very difficult to make communication effective.

Speaking on tools, MEC probably has all the tools that are there in the market, whether it is basic media planning tools like GPS tools, which is a desktop tool or something as unique as the Navigator, which isn’t really a tool but a process.

The key about Navigator is that it puts consumer in the heart of the process. So whenever we begin with communication issues, we first understand how consumer reacts to media, to the brand and his relation with the brand. When we device our plans, it is not ‘I want to talk to you’ but more on how the consumer wants to be talked to. To cite an example, you want to buy a computer, where do you get your information from – father, friends, Internet, computer magazine, mass media, where? If I know more about the way you think, then I can place information in the manner that it comes to you not only from a source you interact with but a source you trust. This is where steps like in-product placement come into play.

It does happen. We try to hide behind tools and then forget the quality of thinking, which is a shame. But at MEC, more than tools, it’s about the way we think. From high strategic media planning, we are moving to communication channel planning. The best combination is when you can use the tools, question them and then come up with a result that is strategic and intelligent.

Mediaedge:cia has its presence worldwide and we have some key ways of doing our work – the way we strategise and think and use our tools. Now with MEC in India we need to tell the team here more about these ways. We have various modes that will help this team feel like a part of the MEC like interactions via Intranet, interfaces, which showcase all works of MEC and we constantly invite people to give feedback. We have also planned various training sessions, where I interact with the team, teach them more about us and learn a few things from them.