13 stalwarts talk about key highlights of 2013!
‘Good-bye’ is the flavour of the season, and we do not swank to offer anything different. Although, you will surely note that our ‘good-bye’ is served with unusual ‘toppings’! Apologies to food lovers, we are not talking about food. While parts of the world are welcoming the New Year, there are people like us who are still saying ‘good-bye’ 2013. While our readers have seen our take on the top 13 events that made news in 2013, we take this opportunity to talk to people in the business to know what according to them stood out in 2013. Stalwarts from across industries of media, marketing, advertising, branding and entertainment share their insights. Team Adgully brings to you, a differently served ‘good-bye’ story straight from the horse’s mouth! Edited excerpts below:
Shashi Sinha, CEO of IPG Mediabrands:
A major highlight of the media business was the TV rating measurement system put up by Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC). Although BARC as an idea 
2013 was the year of 'youtube-ization' of advertising. It's the year that social media played a major role in pushing-pulling and sharing ads that really mattered. Authenticity of brands and social relevance of communication was in question and in conversation and all this was being played out on the digital medium. We believe our work for Gillette 'Soldier for Women' and Visa 'Adult Literacy' found a lot of resonance and had an important role to play in the new language of brands.
It was a tough year with a slow-down of the economy and focus on innovation and creativity. Also there was ‘massification’ of brands and services with Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns seeing a huge growth in consumption.
Ashish Bhasin, Chairman India & CEO South East Asia, Aegis media:
Viral Oza, Director Marketing, Nokia:
2013 has been a good year. Nokia launched 8 new Lumia devices very successfully in 10 months. To add to this, the Asha 501 became the 3rd largest smart-phone in 
Rupee depreciation during 2013 was way ahead of any industry forecast. However the positive outcome of rupee devaluation is India becoming more competitive as a global sourcing destination especially in high growth export oriented industries like IT, pharmaceuticals, textiles etc. Led by rapid penetration of smart-phones and enhanced wireless bandwidths, e-commerce did see an exponential growth across categories ranging from lifestyle products to groceries. I expect this trend to further accelerate over the next 2-3 years.
2013 for news channels has been tough as loads of regulatory pressure has been coming in and the industry remains occupied in dealing with it. Market condition has been tough because of recession and advertising spends, and election events moving up as of now and so on. Some highlights and game changers were: With the improvement of viewership as TV news channel category grown 25% after decline of 4-5 years. Now there is increasing engagement of viewers towards news category which is result of growing awareness and through social media. Also surprisingly new content are been shared amongst youth as participation and consumption have increased positively. And thirdly, most of large players are moving on towards getting large viewer based and so they have started doing new news content, but inspite of that we saw shift towards news programming.
Digitization and ad-cap have been the two biggest game changers in the broadcasting industry. With digitization the quality and standard of television has greatly improved and there has been a change in television viewing habit as well. It has also fuelled the penetration of high definition (HD) television entertainment. With the ad-cap coming in, a lot of channels have had to re-engineer their business models and sales strategies. The year also witnessed key channel launches. We also introduced an exclusive destination for Love and Laughter, Romedy NOW which extends our existing portfolio of channels. The extensive campaign that released around the launch was the largest in the English Entertainment category in the past few years.
It was heartening to see the GECs coming out of the typical ‘saas-bahu’ formula and experimenting with fresh themes. So whether it was shows based on sibling relationships, or fresh love stories or teenagers struggling to find a foothold in life; GECs seemed to be taking more risks with storylines than in the recent past. It was also heartening to see some established reality shows reinventing effectively in their latest seasons. Stand-up comedy also reached a new high in the year gone by. SAB TV, of course, continued to stay differentiated and successfully launched a fresh family game show format as also India’s first fiction-based cookery show. The year was also marked by changes in the distribution landscape due to digitisation, the opening up of the LC1 markets as well as a new method of television audience measurement, and the changes in the structure of content and FCT on television channels. The television landscape is likely to be significantly altered by these changes. The carriage and placement equations will change drastically. Broadcasters will have to be equally attuned to the needs and aspirations of the LC1 consumers, while due to less FCT, sales revenues would come under severe pressure.
I feel big move happened this year, in terms of investment. The quality of fiction programming is growing up, as our television industry got sustainable break through fiction shows like in Europe and US. There was significant investment done on content and creativity like VFX and graphics.
Gaurav Seth, Senior VP, Head Marketing, SET (Sony Entertainment Television):
2013 saw a lot of experimentation and innovations in fiction and non-fiction space both in terms of content and programming. 2013 also saw the acceptance of 'Seasons Format' of many fiction shows. And not only people accepted 'Seasons Format' but also accepted a 'format series' that was adapted in India that was 24. Such acceptance has made the channels raise their bars in terms of content and programming. Actually if we visualise the evolution of the entire television industry in 2013 it is quite fair to say that Television is no longer an 'Idiot Box' and audience has moved far beyond just watching 'Saas Bahu' shows.
The last two years have been tough for the Indian economy and business environment. In 2011-12 The INR 224 billion Indian print industry grew by only 7.3 percent from INR 209 billion in 2011. Over 2012-13, our economy slowed down its growth momentum reporting a mere 5 % growth. The overall impact of this was felt in the print media industry as advertisers adopted a cautious approach and that affected advertising spends. However, this year the economy seemed to take some steps towards a gradual recovery following the subdued growth achieved in the previous year. As we say that while the going gets tough, the tough gets going. For Dainik Bhaskar, 2013 was a challenging but yet an exciting year. We were very quick to study the environment and take necessary actions such as controlling our costs, streamlining our operations and fought very hard against the tide to successfully maintain our leadership position as a print media company.
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