Only TV can deliver the mindshare we want: Vaishali Banerjee

The COVID-19 virus has caused a permanent disruption of sorts for businesses and marketers have to learn to live with it, said Vaishali Banerjee, MD, Platinum Guild International. She was speaking to Dr Annurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief of e4m & BW Businessworld during the e4m TV First conference. Banerjee shared interesting insights on 'Why TV is central to building brands’.

Speaking about the disruption caused by Covid-19 and its variants over the last 23 months, Banerjee said: “It has been very challenging both personally and professionally.  In terms of business, we have to be more agile and develop the ability to think on your feet and capture demand as it comes.”

On how TV continues to dominate and remains critical for brand awareness and brand recall, Banerjee said, “We know FMCG and other mass products need TV but for a category like Platinum which is niche, TV is very important.”

“For a category like ours to get any kind of mindshare, we have to have a basic level of awareness and nothing but TV gives you that kind of reach”, she added.

She added that Platinum is focused on the young, urban audience, and a decade back more than 85 per cent source of awareness was TV, and despite the rise of digital a substantial percentage is still TV.

“So you cannot walk away from the medium”, she underlined.

Banerjee also spoke about PGI’s strategy for regional markets and how TV has become a critical part of this approach.

“We have used regional TV for our reach from Day 1. If we look at South and East of India, they are proud of their languages and rightly so. There is nothing that can build connect with people if you speak their language,” she shared.

When asked about her expectation from a business standpoint over the next 12 to 16 months, she said the recovery has been strong and it will stay that way.

“Last year the recovery was very strong. Though we did have Omicron, it has been short and less severe. For the next year and a half we are going to be very bullish in the market. Last quarter we have seen growth over the pre-pandemic at a quarter to quarter level.”

“We are expecting pre-pandemic level growth to continue which is 20-25 %, the demand is very strong and this demand is beyond metros as well,” she further added.

Sharing her views on PGI’s dependence on TV in 2022, Banerjee said that for marketers and brands it’s not TV or Digital, it’s TV and Digital.

“As marketers, it has to be an integrated media approach.  For every marketer, it is also the question of building efficiency and effectiveness, and you cannot look at one medium vs another medium. We also want media houses to respond to the needs of marketers because ultimately that leads to healthy business.”