Shrinking ad budgets and an explosion in media have planners scrambling to find new ways of delivering more bang for the client's buck.

By Shailesh Dobhal 

• In January this year, Philips India's electronics division took a radical decision to pull out completely from advertising on television and outdoor media. Instead, the company decided to concentrate only on advertising in print dailies in its seven key markets. In the last six months, that move has helped Philips save Rs 1.2 crore. More important, despite using only dailies, Philips claims to have upped its marketshare for flat TVS from 1 per cent to 10 per cent in those markets.

• Beginning January this year, refrigerator major Electrolux slashed its ad budgets for the print media drastically. The Rs 50-crore that it will spend on its three brands-Electrolux, Kelvinator, and Allwyn-will nearly all be poured into television commercials, instead of last year's TV to print ratio of 70:30. The reason: Electrolux wants to put all its eggs in one medium to build and consolidate its brand triumvirate, instead of spreading it over several.

There's something happening in the advertising industry and we're not just talking about traversing the slough of despond. Yes, the gloom is still all-pervasive. Consumer buying is flagging, ad spends are down, agencies are shedding flab, and no one is quite sure about what the future will bring (See It's A Long Winter Ahead For Advertising, BT August 6, 2001). What we're talking about is how clients are becoming more discerning about media usage. Recently, Kartik Iyer, Vice-President, Initiative Media, the media planning/buying arm of Lowe Lintas & Partners, got a pithy brief from a client, a consumer durables marketer: ''I'm going to spend 50 per cent of last year's budget, but I want 200 per cent more effectiveness.'' If Iyer's client had a penchant for cliches he'd have simply said: ''I want more bang for the buck.'' That's the message reverberating through the corridors of ad agencies and, in particular, in their media departments. Suddenly, the focus of attention at agencies is their media departments. And media planners, once known as backroom boys, are today in the forefront of action, with clients often spending more time thrashing out media plans than they do finalising the creative output of their agencies.

For the traditionally non-glam media planners, this is their moment in the sun. More important, it's a time when media divisions of ad agencies have to use all the wizardry they can muster to satisfy clients like Iyer's, who want to spend less yet want ads to be more effective. That, however much it may sound like an oxymoron, is the challenge facing the media divisions of the Rs 8,000-crore Indian advertising industry. With the consumer market-the engine for advertising growth-sputtering and advertisers slashing their budgets, the industry expects total billings to inch up by just 10-12 per cent this year compared to last year's growth of 20 per cent. What comes as a double whammy for ad agencies is that the average client also wants to see his slashed budget travel longer. ''For the past four to six months, clients have become extremely vigilant about how the agency spends their money on media,'' says Samarkant Kukreja, Media Director, Contract Advertising. ''Media decisions based around gut feel or the tendency to explore are out...now everything has to be substantiated, quantitatively or qualitatively.''

No surprises there. With as much as 80-85 per cent of a brand's advertising budget accounted by spends on media (the rest is spread across the cost of creative, research, etc.) the need to stretch every media rupee is all that more. That has put the pressure on media planners, whose role within the agency is changing. ''It's all about interplay now, and in a depressed market like this, media planning is right at the top,'' says C.V.L. Srinivas, Chief Operating Officer, (North & South) Madison Communications. ''The media planner today has a say even on how long a campaign will run,'' he points out.

Eyeing short-term options

C.V.L. SRINIVAS The COO (North & South) of Madison Communications pretends to be bewildered by the explosion in channels.

The biggest impact of the new role of media planning can be seen in the changing perception of media. Check out what some consumer durables marketers are doing. Traditionally, such marketers use TV as a strong long-term brand building medium. But many marketers are forsaking TV and opting for more print advertising. Like Korea's Samsung, which had relied on TV in the February-June period but now wants to change to print. Says Mona Jain, Media Director, Optimum Media Solutions, Mudra Communications (Samsung's agency): ''During the festive season this year, late August onwards, expect lot of tactical activity, with the media mix changing to include more print.'' Instead of long-term lock-ins, media planners are increasingly opting for a series of short-term opportunities or adjustments. ''Forget about year-long planning. Now, the longest you plan for is a quarter,'' says Sushil Pandit, CEO, The Hive.

So even though the broader media-mix for a brand is planned annually, media planners are continuously shuffling the actual vehicles (channels or programmes in the case of TV and publications in the case of print) they choose. Enterprise- Nexus, for instance, pulled out its client Escotel (cellular services in Kerala) from prime time (9 pm to 10 pm) on Asianet during the first two months of the KBC-run on Star Plus, simply because its target audience, SEC A, B, and C males, on Asianet had migrated to Star Plus. Says Sumita Das, General Manager (Media), Enterprise-Nexus: ''We couldn't advertise with KBC, which is nationally telecast, simply because the market in this case was only Kerala and it would have meant a colossal media wastage. We instead concentrated with the regional channel on non-prime time slots.''

Consolidation Is The Name Of The Game

It's called clout. The more you have it, the better you can negotiate. That's something global ad agencies are realising. Next year, the Interpublic Group, one of the world's largest agglomerations of ad agencies, which in India comprises McCann-Erickson, FCB-Ulka, and Lowe Lintas & Partners among others, will be unfurling Magna Global, an integrated media services unit. Magna Global debuts in the UK, US and Germany this September. In India, Magna will represent the aggregate media negotiating interests of most of Interpublic's Indian entities and control Rs 1,700-1,800 crore of media spend. MEENAKSHI MADHVANI, CEO, Carat India The other global leviathan, WPP Group, has Mindshare (representing HTA, Ogilvy & Mather, Contract, and Equus in India), controls Rs 3,000 crore of billings. Plus there's Rediffusion & Everest's The Media Edge, the reported coming together of Mudra's media division Optimum Media Solutions with the Omnicom Group's agencies (RK Swamy/BBDO and TBWA Anthem) and Leo Burnett's media arm, Starcom India, which has merged with Ambience D'Arcy and Orchard Advertising. Such mega consolidation of media operations will dramatically change media planning. Large clients with multiple brands will enjoy enormous clout in getting better deals. Says Shashi Sinha, Executive Director, FCB Ulka: ''A lot of clients want one agency to do media buying for all their brands.'' Adds Meenakshi Madhvani, CEO, Carat India Group: "Consolidation is a big opportunity. But problems of (client) conflict will get magnified." Consolidation could also help survive the current slump. Bulk buying and negotiations will help media monoliths to drive better margins, and the same will get passed on to both advertisers as well as group agencies. By Aparna Ramalingam

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