‘In media all innovation is outsourced’
Content industries need to adopt more data analytics into the creative process, PUNIT MISRA tells Vanita Kohli-Khandekar
You have spent about 20 years with Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) before moving to Zee. From consumer goods to media, what is the first thing that hits you?
One, there are significant levels of consumer engagement. You use a shampoo or soap for 3-4 minutes. Your engagement with a daily soap on TV is for 17 minutes. When we did focus groups at HUL, discussions would last for 45 minutes. For daily TV soaps they last for two-three hours. Yet the amount of consumer centricity that should exist doesn’t exist. It is driven by content people but over a period of time they have probably lost touch with consumers. There are strong brands but the formality/process of brand building is not there. Two, there is serious traction now, but it (media) is still not in the consideration set of the best people. It is a young industry and needs to do a lot more on getting talent. Three, in media all our innovation (conception and production of programming) is outsourced. How do I sift what is coming, understand the consumers and then get an outsider to deliver.
Four, how to get more data-based decision making? I come from an industry where the marketer is the brand and P&L owner. Here content creation is the business; it gets you your business. But that world (of content creators) is not interested in data analytics. Netflix has made a business of using data. For example if you buy a film, the decision is to pay X rupees for it. In HUL, such a decision would have involved serious data and analysis.
In India broadcasting remains a very business-to-business (B2B) industry because it is so advertising dependent, how can that change?
In media, it is business-to-consumer (B2C) because eyeballs are getting monetised. Nobody takes a call on anything without ratings; if you get the ratings, you get the revenues. And ratings come out once a week. In which other industry do you have such hard linkage to consumer traction? But it needs to change to include other variables of consumer traction too – value as influencer of the consumer’s mind, value of engagement. For example, look at the YouTube FanFest. It is leveraging the influence of YouTube. The monetisation in TV is very B2C.
What strikes you about consumption patterns on TV?
In ice-creams (as a category) if there is a locality where a (ice-cream vendor’s) cabinet sells X lakh rupees a year and you want to add one more, logically you would go some distance away. The reality is reverse. All the new stores will come next to one another. It is about being in the right locality and more depth of distribution in the same locality — then more is more. That is what is happening in content consumption too — more is more. Because the number of hours of programming increasing means more quantity of time spent and more ratings. So, there is expansion in each of the markets.
We are happy when there is more competition in each market. Imagine being in a market which is not increasing. But more has meant more in every market. The thinking was that digital will come and eat into TV. But content consumption not increasing is not a problem.
How do you view Zee and its position now, more than 18 months into the job?
The business has increased, bottomline is up, and operating leverage is increasing. Our market capitalisation has grown three times in the last five years. This shows the strength of the business in the face of competition. This is based on the culture and the way we run it. The entrepreneurial element here is high. There is a P&L for every show and we take calls based on that. Zee, the brand, has been true to what it stands for. That is best reflected in our Marathi channels.
Why has the share of Hindi general entertainment channels been falling in the overALL viewership pie for the last three years?
Overall consumption for Hindi, pay plus FTA, is increasing; total impressions are increasing. There is no problem with consumption, what has changed is the measurement universe (the sample size has increased from 90,000 to 135,000 people over the last two years). And this increase is largely from rural India. The increase from the South is very high because the penetration there is higher. The problem is not consumption, it has to do with quality of content. The tyranny of sameness needs to be broken. There are no great characters and interesting stories.