‘TV is by far the most powerful and effective in building equity and awareness’

Due to the pandemic, digital media has become an easy as well as affordable medium for brands to reach out consumers without much hassle. However, TV still has a strong presence in Indian households. Advertisers across genres prefer TV over any other medium in order to increase their credibility amongst consumers.

At the recently held e4m TV First conference, industry leaders discussed why TV is still a preferred medium and how advertisers are making the most out of it. The panel discussion was moderated by Dheeraj Sinha, CEO & The Chief Strategy Officer, South Asia, Leo Burnett; Chairman, BBH India. The panel consisted of Sambit Dash, Partner - RPSG Capital Ventures, Girish Hingorani, Head - Marketing & Ecommerce, Cooling & Purification Appliances Group, Blue Star Limited, Gaurav Dhawan, Chief Revenue Officer, Times Network, Rajan Amba, VP-Sales, Marketing & Customer Service - Tata Motors Ltd- Passenger Vehicles. 

Speaking on why TV is still is the popular medium, Dash of  RPSG, said, “ I think television is still the key medium for a brand to gain  the trust of consumers and create an impact. What I mean by trust is that it's just human conditioning; when you see an ad for a brand on TV, you think this brand has enough money and so must be having enough consumers and so it's big enough for me to trust. That's where the trust comes from and impact is all about reaching a large audience at the same time.”

While Amba of Tata Motors said, “I think one of the things, that we often forget is that, families take decisions, it's all not always individual. For brands like us, which are high-value purchase brands and where the decision to buy is taken by the family and not individual, TV makes a lot of sense. It's got the most widespread of a penetration in that sense and I think that it allows us to tell stories, the larger screen allows us to tell stories in a family setting in a much more inclusive way than digital does and that certainly help brands like us.” 

Hingorani of Bluestar said, “TV is by far perhaps the most powerful and effective in building equity and awareness. A brand like Bluestar has been built on television over the last two decades or so. We still kept investing on TV because as brand equity cannot be built in private and one has to be reaching out to as many consumers as you can, even if you're a B2B brand. The audio-visual experience that TV gives you, without you having that option of skipping the ads, there's nothing to beat television.”

Dhawan of Times Network said, “What TV does is, it very beautifully helps you address key behavior points so if you want to impact the behavior of any particular market, you will see that TV actually works beautifully. TV has a far bigger impact, you trust the TV word very easily, there's a lot of credibility that come with it. TV even today is the highest reached medium in India as 70% of India is connected through television in one way or the other.”

The discussion then shifted to IPL.

Speaking on the impact of IPL, Amba said, “We've been investing in IPL since 2018 as partners and not just as advertisers. We've seen some tremendous boost arising out of that. But having said that I think that every brand needs to think very carefully about that kind of investment. It is a massive investment and it's a one-time huge investment which can blow you out of the water. If you're a brand looking to make a big impact and you've got something new to offer and you can afford it, it certainly makes sense because you will get that mileage.”

Similarly Hingorani, said, “Bluestar has been on IPL ever since the first season, I've been on every season of IPL. We've been there, we're not a big brand in terms of deep pockets, we have very limited money available but we choose to use it wisely. Of course IPL has a great timing advantage for us because it's the start of the summer season, most of our campaigns are launched on IPL but what we've learned is that IPL is very different from other television advertising. One thing for IPL is that you have to acknowledge the fact that your break hours will be the lowest, which means people would want to obviously wait for the next over so they are not really going anywhere. So that advantage of engagement is there with IPL.”

The panel also discussed about Connected TV and how it is emerging in India but will take time for the masses to follow as people are becoming more accessible to broadband connections. Dhawan said, “It looks very small as we speak because not too many people into it but with the passage of time and improved data speeds, it will catch up. Right now it looks like it is in the sushi category you know good to have it sometimes but can't have it as a daily meal, someday it will become part of your daily meal.”