Movies in India are underleveraged by brands: Dominic Proctor

India is a content powerhouse, with the largest movie productions, massive digitization underway and 169 days of live cricket. The question that faces the M&E sector here is whether stagnation was an option at all. On the second day of FICCI FRAMES, Asia’s foremost conclave, Dominic Proctor, President, GroupM Global spoke pithily on the state of Indian film, cricket and the best way forward.

Proctor believed that for developing a globally recognized content base, it was necessary for India to move away from the fragile ecosystem where Bollywood, cricket and a handful of national icons and stars were used for all messaging. “This must change if India is really serious about building a world class sports and entertainment industry,” Proctor added.

Cricket is going through a global resurgence. Indian needs to look beyond cricket and start investing in non cricketing sports and the signs for their success are very encouraging. Recent initiatives in F1, Hockey, Combat sports and Badminton are encouraging but not enough, Mr. Proctor felt.

While Bollywood and the Indian film industry is an all pervading influence, brands in India do not leverage this platform optimally. Revenue streams exist in content advertising on multimedia screens & producers and studios should look beyond theatrical returns & innovate new platforms and formats. Simultaneously, creators should extract total economic value for the content with consumer centric audience planning. With a nod to Web driven content, Mr. Proctor said that digital formats will drive advertising revenue growth in under branded India and also help the Indian media and entertainment industry reach out globally.