Tag: Media

  • Reach out

    Last week, I read an article that gave the ‘share of the pie’ picture of different media in India. As expected, print is still king, though TV is fast catching up. Internet is still fighting to touch 2%. Meanwhile, something else i read quite sometime back says how an online video ad gives an 84% recall as against a 54% for the same ad on TV. So, why wouldn’t brands be more digital than TV?

    I might be over simplifying it by putting it that way, but the power of the medium seems to be only measured by its reach. And that’s when the marketing gurus (including self proclaimed ones) are crying themselves hoarse saying that engagement is the key (at least until we get the new term). So, then, is everyone trying for a balance? Similar to Nikhil‘s comment on a post a while back, are marketers using offline for reach and online for stickiness? You wish. Thats generalisation, but there are too few examples for me to not generalise.

    While it is claimed that it is the lack of broadband penetration that is preventing the web from manifesting its true potential, I think, from a marketing standpoint, its also the mindset. If engagement was the mindset, don’t television and radio also offer some opportunities, at least some, if not the multitude that the internet provides? Interactivity still means SMS contest, without context.

    So, its all pointing to the fact that different media are used with a simple logic – x numbers of my TG can be reached through that medium. And what do we do after reaching them – Why, show them our ad, what else? And until that midset changes, would it really matter if our broadband penetration suddenly zoomed?

    until next time, reach out, engagement in?

  • Breaking news….

    Its not exactly breaking news that the media industry is looking at a phenomenal boom in the next few months.. and thats across the verticals – print, radio, television and so on..which raises the question of how much ‘news’ acually happens in the world on a daily basis.. is it so much that the existing entities are not enough to make sure that all of it reaches the world, and if not, then what justifies the mushrooming of more of their kind? which is, i guess, when we get into creation of news, sting operations and overall sensationalising of trivia.. when a malayala manorama in kerala would carry the ‘news’ that your neighbour’s cow broke its tether and damaged your fence, and NDTV would get its video footage and classify it as ‘Breaking news’.. you would be happy, so would your neighbour, since any publicity is good publicity.. but will i, sitting hundreds of kilometers away and not having any specific interest in bovine revolutionary tactics, be interested in the news? i guess not..
    the argument would be that ‘you dont like it, dont watch it’, but what if all the channels/publications think its worthy news, what option does that leave? nothing, and sadly we have only ourselves to blame, because we are less interested in reading/seeing Chidambaram’s fiscal policy than Nigar Khan’s physical policies…
    but what prompted me to think about this entire trip was manorama’s week long front page coverage of the death of a malayali in afghanistan.. isnt that exactly what the terrorist group would want? extensive media coverage and a sublimal building of fear in the citizens? on a parallel note, a murderer would get much more prominence in coverage than a guy who might have saved a life..
    by creating sensations out of every possible trivia that happens in every remote corner, isn’t the media encouraging a whole lot of wrong things? there is a thin line between right to information and right information, and it takes a lot of maturity to walk the line…and so it aint so strange after all that lives full of trivia would slowly but surely get converted into trivial lives, for who wouldnt want their 15 secondsof fame?

    until next time, what news??