TV has been the backbone of brand-building for decades: Panel

The e4m Pride of India - North awards were preceded by a day filled with engaging sessions, featuring industry stalwarts from across media, brands and beyond. The first panel of the day, moderated by Amrutha Nair, Head - Entertainment Ad Sales & Strategy, Disney Star, featured Charu Malhotra, VP & Head of Marketing, Hindware Limited; Jaikishin Chhaproo, Head Media & PR, ITC; Samir Sethi, VP & Head of Brand Marketing, Policybazaar; Archana Agarwal, VP- Media, Airtel; and Priti Murthy, President, GroupM Nexus, around the topic of “Power of TV in building brands and successful Indian businesses.”

Nair began the discussion by sharing a personal anecdote. Like most Malayalis, she and her family love football, and on the occasion of the FIFA World Cup final, they all decide to gather at their home in Kerala to watch the finals - Argentina versus France. Even though the tournament was hosted on a relatively new channel families in Kerala chose to watch the tournament on linear TV and she believes it’s a true testimony of the power of television.

Replying to a question on how large companies like ITC, with multiple brands, can make the most of the big screen impact of television, Chhaproo said "If you look at how mass brands go on their media journey, they normally go with a media mix of TV, print and OH. Once a certain level of awareness is reached, the focus shifts to getting your message recall done on a regular basis. Television plays a big role in getting your message recalled, and does it in the most cost-efficient way."

He added that consumption patterns changed, that more people, especially younger cohorts, were moving away from linear TV towards streaming TV, and that live events and other marquee events were consumed on large screens, whether on streaming platforms or linear channels.

“As advertisers, it’s our job to grab eyeballs, through whatever medium. We’ve observed that the youth also has a shorter attention span, which explains why short videos are gaining in popularity. That being said no one can deny the large impact TV has had on creating brands,” said Chhaproo.

Nair went on to ask Sethi how digitally native brands like Policybazaar could harness the power of TV, to which he replied, “Apart from a digitally native brand, we also represent a segment which is quite under-penetrated and over the past few years we have been investing heavily in expanding knowledge of the category, and TV has played a massive role. You can’t do a category-building job to this scale without television. It is still the single largest reach medium in the country.”

Sethi added that TV had been seen, especially by traditional advertisers, as a long-term brand-building medium, noting, “On the other hand we’ve also seen TV as a great performance medium as well. Apart from a long-term brand-building medium, we’ve seen it give immediate returns through ROIs on marketing spends, and we can track visits to our websites as we air campaigns on TV and see their effectiveness.”

Agarwal wryly noted that while people have been saying TV is dying for the last 15 years, “If you want reach for any product launch or any new campaign, no other medium is as impactful as television. Within a couple of days of a campaign being launched, you would have reached 70-80% of your audience.”

"Both TV and digital go hand in hand. However, when we want to increase our upper funnel to drive our performance marketing, my marketing team comes to me and says 'please, please, please do TV because that's what causes largeness for the brand' and that's what gives them a blip in search volumes and lowering their cost per acquisition and in getting quality acquisitions. From my time at Airtel, and even previously at P&G, TV has been critical for the brands,” she said while adding that different brands obviously use TV in different ways, whichever best suit their targets and needs.

Speaking more specifically about her category, the buildings material segment, Malhotra said that up till a couple of decades ago it was more of a commodities-driven industry. “Now it is a sector dwelled by established Indian players and some international ones. It's a category which doesn't want to follow a generic code of communication but wants to build brands. Is aimed at well-travelled, well-read consumers who have travelled around the world and want to have those brands and products they've seen abroad. This is of course the bath space industry, which was ignored till a couple of decades ago and now perhaps has the biggest flaunt value in houses. If you have guests coming over, the first thing you see is that your bathroom is clean and well decked.”

“And for Hindware, which is a trusted company and has built its brand over decades, TV has been the backbone of that brand building. People have grown up around Hindware, and TV has been vital as it allows us, and so many other brands, to do the kind of storytelling that helps build that brand in the long run,” added Malhotra.

Nair noted the importance of consumers’ mental availability in a cluttered media environment and asked Murthy, who has had a prolific career in building a wide range of brands, an interesting question, “Linear TV’s singular role is to provide entertainment. We create content, put it up, and expect nothing except for consumers to tune in and watch it. Meanwhile, mobile devices are clearly goal-oriented, from making calls to reading and sending messages to buying products online, besides consuming entertainment.  In that context, what is the power of collective audiences on television in driving mental availability or attention for brands? What are the advantages to advertising on TV?”

Murthy observed, “I think a lot of the answers lay in what the others spoke earlier. Each of these brand custodians has spoken about how linear TV has given them returns. Interestingly, there have been several studies on screen size globally, and there are players talking about attention deficit versus attention planning now so there has been a whole shift in that matrix. Where do you get more attention on a media buy or media plan, and whether it’s on a large screen or a handheld device? I think they will both co-exist as they complement each other and bring value. However, I think the value TV brings is far more intense and has a long-term impact, as compared to a handheld device.”

“That’s from a brand perspective. From a consumer’s perspective, which I always think of first, it’s different. Younger people are especially addicted to their handsets and use them to watch all their OTT content, etc. But an 18-19-year-old is watching content on their device, not so much out of choice, but because they don’t have a TV screen for themselves, and it is being hogged by other family members. So the evolution of linear TV will happen based on the impact it will have on the consumer. An 18-19 year old will be addicted to their handset for now but as they get access to their own TVs, the consumption pattern will change, and hence the brand impact will change,” she added.

The panel went on to discuss how “big screen” viewing experience brings families together and builds shared experiences and brand conversations. TV's superior entertainment quotient gets brands to emotionally engage with audiences like no other medium can. They also agreed that TV’s powerful characters offer disproportionate associative value to brands on TV and beyond, and a presence on TV brings inherent trust in brands.