Interview with Rahul Johri

- Ankit Bhanot

As Senior Vice President and General Manager—South Asia Discovery Net- work Asia Pacific, Rahul Johri looks after the overall growth strategy and new ventures in the region.

Q: Discovery was the first channel in Indian market to introduce infotainment genre. How the TG has changed from 2004 to 2012. A: Discovery Channel, launched in 1995, is the first unique content channel which introduced Indian view- ers to factual programming. Ever since, Discovery Channel continues to satisfy viewers‘ curiosity through its varied content, covering a wide variety of genres - science, history, adventure, wildlife, mystery, engineer- ing, technology, etc. Viewership patterns in India are constantly evolving. Indian viewers have become more informed and dis- cerning and has insatiable quest to know more. Discovery, through its bouquet of eight networks – Discov- ery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Discovery Science, Discovery Turbo, Discovery HD World, Discovery Channel Tamil and Discovery Kids strives to satisfy curiosity of millions of viewers in India. The company has pioneered in bringing many refreshing genres and formats to Indian television – survival, forensics, life- style, travel, cuisines, etc. Q: Competition is getting heavy now; multichannel networks have entered in info genre. How do you think channels are positioning themselves differently? A: Viewers today are looking for well-defined, high-quality and reliable content. The channels that have a distinct brand proposition will emerge as the most-preferred destinations for viewers, advertisers and affili- ates alike. Discovery Channel offers viewers distinguished and unique mix of programming across a wide variety of genres. Discovery Networks has been a market leader in introducing unique content channels globally and in India such as Factual, Lifestyle, Auto, Animal Kingdom, Science and High Definition. We aim to continu- ously strengthen our leadership by providing viewers with the highest quality content and best viewing ex- perience.

Q: How much do you think the most anticipated term for advertisers ‘Indian Youth’ has evolved in terms for content viewership from 2004 to 2012. A: Considering that 60 per cent of India‘s population is less than 30 years of age, demand for unique content is on the rise. We have witnessed television consumption shifting towards high-quality, credible and entertaining programmes and an increase in demand for an alternate to soaps, movies and sitcoms. The changing market dynamics, our internal research and viewers‘ feedback suggested demand for unique content channels and en- couraged us to launch channels like Discovery Science, Discovery Turbo, Discovery HD World and Discovery Kids – to meet the desires of the aspirational India.

Q: How much responsible is digital media for this change? A: Digitalization will be a key milestone for Indian television industry, as viewers will not be restricted for choice of content due to capacity constraints of analogue cable. Digital provides higher quality to viewers, thus enhancing television viewing experience. Digital platform, besides offering an enhanced viewing experience and an increased choice to viewers, demonstrates the real value of the brands and their unique propositions. In fact, in our view digitalization process is already on in full swing. Five years back there was no DTH and today, DTH and digital cable are changing the television viewing experience.

Q: Discovery is one of the biggest niche channels in the country and you guys are hardly present on digital, if I am not wrong Discovery don’t have an Indian website also. Why? A: Discovery Channel is India‘s leading channel in non-fiction entertainment reaching nearly 70 million sub- scribers. It is also amongst the top five most well distributed channels in the country, reaching over 300,000 vil- lages in the country and is available on analogue and all DTH platforms, as well as IPTV and mobile. Discov- ery Channel does have a website discoverychannel.co.in and is extremely popular amongst viewers.

Q: DCT coming into existence, how do you see role of regional markets in this genre? A: What others call regionalization, at Discovery we call it localization, which is a cornerstone of Discovery‘s India growth strategy. Our intention has always been to maximize reach and availability across India and satis- fy the curiosity of the widest possible population. Local content and language dubbing are two critical factors in this vision. Exploring every opportunity to expand our offering and localize our product, we launched multi- ple language feeds for Discovery Channel – Hindi, Telugu and Bangla and Hindi for TLC and Animal Planet.

Q: Competition claims to have 30% Indian content whereas discovery is still 95% foreign feed. Do you think competition have edge over you on this? A: We have been showing India content on our channels for years now. Not just in India, but also on our chan- nels around the world, we have showcased India through a variety of themes. Some of Discovery‘s biggest in- ternational series like Atlas, The Story of India, Ganges, Rhodes across India have presented various facets of India. While showcasing themes around the world, India has emerged an important and vital part of the stories, hence have attracted renowned hosts and personalities to capture India in the global series like Anthony Bour- dain: No Reservations, Invite Mr. Wright, Go Asia with Janet Hseih, World Café Asia, VIP Weekends with Ian Wright and many others. While our viewers primarily want to watch content from around the world on Discovery, there is also interest and curiosity to watch India through Discovery lens, hence we have taken the initiative to produce content in India. We have presented contemporary India through our productions on Discovery Channel like Revealed: Making of Ra.One, Revealed: The Golden Temple, Inside Indian Television, Revealed: The Gateway to Modern India among others.

Q: What is the biggest challenge in this genre? A: Our ability to produce and acquire popular programming is an important competitive factor for the dis- tribution of our networks, attracting viewers and the sale of commercial time.

Our channels appeal to discerning audience and thus, have loyal viewer base. The networks‘ strength and major thrust has always been on providing refreshing content for its viewers. Infact, Discovery Channel would be one of the few channels in the country which brings 8-10 new series every quarter across variety of genres – Adventure and Survival (Swamp Brothers, Man Woman Wild, I Shouldn‘t Be Alive, One Man Ar- my), Natural History (Wildest Africa, Mutant Planet, Planet Earth), Reality (Swords, Whale Wars, Gold Rush), Topical Events (Death of Bin Laden, London Olympics 2012), History (World War II in Colour), Engi- neering (Build It Bigger, Extreme Engineering) etc.

Q: What is your favorite among the Discovery Channel content bank? A: Discovery Channel has brought new and exciting formats time and again. My all-time favorite is Curiosi- ty – which asks and answers the most fundamental questions facing the world today. I also love watching How Do They Do It, that reveals the inner-workings of all things big and small.

Celebrity Endorsement

- Traptika Chauhan

The Upsurge and the Influence

―The health of a brand can definitely be improved up to some extent by celebrity endorsement. But one has to remember that endorsing a celebrity is a means to an end and not an end in itself‖

The upsurge of celebrities endorsing brands has been steadily increasing over the past years. Marketers overtly acknowledge the power of celebrities in influencing consumer-purchasing decisions. It is a universal- ly accepted fact that celebrity endorsement can bestow special attributes upon a product that it may have lacked otherwise.

It is believed that celebrity endorsements help achieve few motives like Instant Brand Awareness / Recall, credibility or PR coverage and may add new dimension to brand image. An appropriately used celebrity can prove to be a massively powerful tool that magnifies the effects of a campaign. But the aura of cautiousness should always be there. The fact to be emphasized is that celebrities alone do not guarantee success, as consumers nowadays understand advertising. They know what advertis- ing is and how it works. People realize that celebrities are being paid a lot of money for endorsements and this knowledge makes them cynical about celebrity endorsements.

Compatibility of the celebrity’s persona with the overall brand image

A celebrity is used to impart credibility and aspirational values to a brand, but the ce- lebrity needs to match the product. A good brand campaign idea and an intrinsic link between the celebrity and the message are musts for a successful campaign. Celebrities are no doubt good at generating attention, recall and positive attitudes towards adver- tising provided that they are supporting a good idea and there is an explicit fit be- tween them and the brand.

Do advertisers benefit from it?

In terms of Brand Recall/ breaking clutter or enhancing Brand image – an advertiser can benefit from Celebrity En- dorsement but whether Celebrity Endorsement will eventually lead to increase in sales can be tricky to answer. While the sales of Santro (from Hyundai) increased dramatically when SRK endorsed the Santro there are many examples wherein roping in a celebrity did not created any such impact

Indian Perspective

So how did it all start in India?

The latter part of the '80s saw the mushrooming of a new trend in India– brands started being endorsed by celebrities. Hindi film and TV stars as well as sports- persons were roped in to endorse prominent brands.

Advertisements, featuring stars like Tabassum (Prestige pressure cookers), Jalal Agha (Pan Parag), Kapil Dev (Palmolive Shaving Cream) and Sunil Gavaskar (Dinesh Suitings) became common. Probably, the first ad to cash in on star power in a strategic, long-term, mission statement kind of way was Lux soap. This brand has, perhaps as a result of this, been among the top three in the country for much of its lifetime.

In the Indian context, it would not be presumptuous to state that celebrity endorsements can aggrandize the overall brand. We have numerous examples exemplifying this claim. A standard example here is Coke, which, till recently, didn't use stars at all internationally. In fact, India was a first for them. The result was a ubiquitously appealing Aamir cheekily stating Thanda matlab Coca Cola. The recall value for Nakshatra advertising is only due to the sensuous Aishwarya. The Parker pen brand, which by itself commands equity, used Amitabh Bachchan to revitalize the brand in India. According to Pooja Jain, Director, Luxor Writing Instruments Ltd (LWIL), post Bachchan, Parker's sales have increased by about 30 per cent.

Crisis Management :

Also, when Cadbury India faced a major blow at the time when some of its chocolates were found infested. At this time they roped in Amitabh Bachan as its brand ambassador to win back its consumers and build trust. India is one country, which has always idolized the stars of the celluloid world.

Therefore it makes tremendous sense for a brand to procure a celebrity for its endorsement. In India there is an expo- nential potential for a celebrity endorsement to be perceived as genuinely relevant, thereby motivating consumers to go in for the product.

Where do the current Celebrity Endorsers stand?

According to the research by TAM Media, Adex India Analysis 2010,: 1. Kareena Kapoor as the leading female endorser possessing 45% of Bollywood‘s most sought after. 2. M.S. Dhoni tops the list of celebrities endorsing for maximum num- ber of advertisers on TV 3. 'Shampoos' was the top category in Celebrity Endorsements on TV during 2010.

Is there a science to it? So, which celebrity should one go with? Who should be the spokesperson for your product? Who caters to which niche? Does it always happen by trial and error? The US has a popular index, called the Q score, that summarizes various perceptions and feelings that consumers have in the form of ‗likeability‘ measurements. It measures familiarity and appeal of performers, characters, personalities, etc.

So, how about developing an index in India that would aid companies in reaching out to their respective au- diences? The index could be classified on the basis of demographics, psychographics, and geographical de- marcations. The index could be based on a rating that takes into account agreed parameters/attributes, past- present media coverage/favorability and relevance, ground situation in terms of successful/unsuccessful seasons/tenures, future prospects, etc. Once the rating system and index is in place, interested parties could subscribe to the report covering these aspects periodically.

Take Out While celebrity endorsements are on the rise, many in the industry believe that celebrities can build brands; some consider celebrity branding a misuse of millions of dollars. Whether celebrities create credibility for companies or risk the identity of brands is a concern that will continue to baffle advertis- ers. On the other side, it also continues to impact the audience with the mo- notony of their presence and their ability to make a difference to customer’s opinions.

Certainly, there is a huge shift in type of celebrity endorsements where every other celebrity is seen endors- ing some or the other commodity. However, previously, the celebrity was to bring in credibility, trust and realism. Today, what we see is an increasingly intelligent and conscious range of consumers who are not willing to believe anyone other than themselves. And hence the role of celebrities has now been reduced to bringing in glamour and noticeability.

What Women

Want

- Megha Ahuja

An excerpt from the Global Video Insights Report by Vuclip that sheds light on habits and preferences of women on mobile internet

Women’s Consumption of Content on Mobile Vs. Other Mediums

When it comes to spending time watching, reading and listening to television, print and/or radio, 59% of women consume 30 minutes or more of content every day. However consumption of content on mobile de- vices is now also a consistent part of women‘s days with 56% of women managing to fit in more than a half hour on their mobile devices daily. Mobile devices make it easy to squeeze in mobile ―entertainment snacks‖ throughout the course of the busy day

Women’s Mobile Usage Trends Aside from voice and text, entertainment is the number one draw for women on their mobile. Over half of our respondents want to be entertained by their device and this trend shows no sign of slowing down with more than 80% of women intending to increase their time spent on mobile viewing.

Spotlight on India Latest and upcoming movie clips have been the flavor of the month in our past two editions, with Rowdy Rathore and Ek Tha Tiger maintaining a strong lead among top searches from Indian users. Poonam Pandey sizzled again this month proving that being mobile diva is a different game altogether, leaving Katrina Kaif and Aishwarya Rai behind in top searches for June.

What’s Buzzing Among Youth

– Aarathi Bhat

Before answering the above question lets understand the background of Fastrack Firstly numbers don‘t excite them; they go more with gut feel

Secondly they believe the current SEC grid doesn't truly represent India correctly

Thirdly they are OK putting 80% of their monies on 1 risky venture if they believe in it

Fourthly think their TG is not loyal to any brand… but only to the word COOL…

Fifth - Swear by the power of Digital especially Social media and try and leverage it to its fullest potential

And so the list can go on… So yes they reside in a DIFFERENT planet…

The thought was seeded when Fastrack told us to come up with a radical plan for their new Fe- male Watches collection. Earlier to this we had presented a ―ZERO WASTAGE‖ approach using all the scientific knowledge possible. We had shown them how to reduce spillover and target our audience efficiently, however they weren‘t impressed.

That‘s when I realized using TAM and adding more science might not be the ideal way for- ward. TAM cannot tell us what the youth love and what forms a part of their daily conversation in their social circles. Thus from here the thought of making a RAW plan was conceived; I call it RAW because I believe its stripped of its bare essentials, something that we all use to come to a channel mix.- TAM ratings , reach /affinity numbers, SEC split etc etc… I started thinking of how today‘s youth consumes media; started talking to some channel sales guys which I felt fit the bill of my TG, and what did I find, well the usual – digital savvy, can‘t live without a mo- bile, chatterboxes, love to give opinions, leave their hate/love messages online, have a common friend in the form of ―Google search‖, extremely active in the social media circle… etc.

To now make a plan with this usual stuff, I had to first take a step in the backward direction- Unlearn… to Learn again… I asked myself – What do my cousins/youngsters do once they like a program and follow it religiously? (search for it online to find out more about the protago- nist / in-case they have missed an episode, talk about it to friends via FB or social media, YouTube it, like, post comments on the Program FB page, blog or Twitter it… and that‘s when it struck me – why not devise a plan using these parameters– Thus the plan was approached using the below- 1. Google Search numbers (India searches for the last 1 month) 2. Program Facebook page if any. (Looked at the fan count number in conjunction to number of active users since fans can be bought ;)) 3. Number of Active users on the Program Facebook page 4. Buzz Matrix – a tool that scans the net and throws up the total number of people talking about the program either through Facebook, Twitter,Blog, news article etc. 5. Absolute All India Reach number of a Program using TAM (since the planner in me urged me to use this.. ;)) I then scored all the programs using these parameters and the ones that ticked all the boxes were the clear winners – what I was surprised at was that it actually was making a lot of sense for Niche planning. E.g. So when TAM gives us a TVR of 0.04 for How I Met your Mother on Star World and 0.06 for Sound Trippin on MTV, is it right to pick one against the other because of the rating?? Ofcourse we as planners wear our common sense hat and don‘t take decisions merely based on TVR‘s, but now I believe we have a mechanism to fall back on and actually find what‘s buzzing in the digital space. What is being talked about? And which programs have hit the right spot in terms of engagement… Programs like HIMYM, Junior Master chef, SoundTrippin surprise us with the talkability that they are able to generate online (something that TAM would have never been able to tell us), clearly pointing us towards a new way of ap- proaching programs that till now we didn‘t have a way of analyzing . Have a look below for comparison –

Program TVR Buzz Matrix Top 5 [V] D3 Dil Dosti Dance 0.30 MTV Hero Roadies9

[V] Gumrah end of Innocence 0.29 [V] D3 Dil Dosti Dance

Anatomy of Sex 0.26 MTV Splitsvilla 5 [V] Steal ur girlfirend 0.25 Junior Master Chef Australia Humse Hai Life 0.24 Surveen Gugal Surveen Gugal 0.23 How I met your mother

The exercise that started merely as a way to present a plan differently on Fastrack has today become a standard practice for planning of all campaigns. However I believe this approach is in its infancy and has a long way to go, I would love to see it been built on to create a paradigm shift in planning. Request you all to share your valuable opinion and suggestions to make it BUZZZZZZING…  (In return all I ask is for royalties nothing more)

So what’s BUZZING???

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