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.