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For the promo and marketing departments at TV channels, this is the big one. Forget about whether the show succeeded or tanked, forget about TAM and the effective rates. PROMAX is their day in the sun, when they know what professionals think of their work. The event turned out to be a poor ambassador for the globally renowned PROMAX, with top billed speakers staying away from the proceedings. For STAR TV though, PROMAX rocked. Already on a high with the imminent return of the Big B to the small screen, the number of awards that STAR and Channel [V] walked away with made it look like O&M and the Abby awards.
Not just the speakers, but industry movers and shakers such as Subhash Chandra Goel, Peter Mukerjea, Pradeep Guha and Arun Arora were notable by their absence. Not everything was disappointing. There were some awesome presentations, which made up for the negatives and the disappointments.
PROMAX&BDA India 2005 swept over the city and took us completely by storm on July 11 and 12. This year’s theme was all about: ‘The Sticky Stuff’ and applying this new super glue between viewers, ratings, and revenues.
PROMAX&BDA flew in some of the world’s finest, most fertile minds, to regale and educate the attendees
with their case-studies, presentations and work mantras at the conference sessions. Jim Chabin, President/CEO, PROMAX&BDA, was most charming as he opened proceedings for this year —
happily handing out iPods and iShuffles. After which, he introduced Sameer Nair, COO, STAR India, into the
conference chair. And soon, Nair started doling out the sticky stuff that’s worked for him all these
years. One of the interesting facts he mentioned was that a staggering 10 million television sets are sold
in India every year and that in the last one year
itself, India has seen the sprouting up of at least 25
new channels. Compare that to the two and a half
channels we had while growing up, and it seems to
explain a lot about a lot, doesn’t it?? Mr. Nair’s
parting words of wisdom were: “Take your work
seriously; don’t take yourself seriously at all; Make
fun of life and live on the edge.”
The next contender for the conference chair was
Michael Benson, Senior Vice President, Marketing,
American Broadcasting Entertainment (ABC), who held
our rapt attention with the phenomenal comeback of
ABC. He presented two case studies: one of the
television series ‘Lost’ and the impatiently awaited
for ‘Desperate Housewives’.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Benson
said, as he spoke of how ABC had taken a complete
beating, and had slipped to number 4, after ruling the
roost at number 1 for so many years, with its last hit
show eons ago, way back with ‘ Who wants to be a
millionaire?’
The marketing strategies for both ‘Lost’, and
‘Desperate Housewives’ were respectively simple,
extremely focused; and complemented the shows they
were representing one hundred per cent. The result??
Two winning shows, which brought a failing network
back on its feet and jumping.
Someone in the audience asked him why the show was
called ‘desperate’ housewives; and his answer to that
was: “Nothing works better than a good title, and the
best marketing is always disguised as content.”
Taking the stage from Benson was India’s very own
Santosh Desai. Desai took an outside-in look at how
entertainment has evolved; and plays a very integral
role in people’s lives — more so now than ever before.
He focused on examining media from a cultural
perspective; and went back in time to when Indian
society was based on the very Brahmic principle of
restraint; to a time when it was considered decadent
to consume more than the bare minimum required to
survive; people hoarded plastic bags under their
mattresses; and Indians has mastered the art of
extracting huge amounts of pleasure from the minimum
for which he gave the fine example of ‘Antakshari’.
“Entertainment was doled out in homeopathic
quantities,” was Desai’s wry observation, “However,
today, we have gone from consuming the world through
our minds, to consuming it through our senses, and
entertainment has become the very center of our
universe.”
To read more, buy a copy of Impact dated July 18-24,
2005