COULD I IDENTIFY…
1 ) Reasons why India has been producing a consistent supply-line of media planning and account/ strategic planning professionals over the past four decades? 2) Critical factors which empower expatriate Indians with the knowledge, ammunition and skills to excel in this sector even in foreign markets.
First, I must highlight that Malaysia has contributed a few brilliant media planning professionals to the regional industry. Particularly my senior Ogilvy colleagues Victor Kiu and Andre Nair. During her active planning days, Margaret Lim’s reputation had also reached ears across borders.
There are others. But one must acknowledge that it is not simply coincidental that Girish Menon, Prashant Kumar, Gurpreet Singh, Ranganathan, Ashutosh Srivastava, Gowthaman, Sutapa Bhattacharya, Anirban Ganguly, Dipika Nikhilender, Faraz Khan and a host of others, have established strong footprints in Malaysia/Southeast Asia. So, are there some common traits, facets, skills and attitudes which they unavoidably share? Even with Ranjana Singh (Jakarta), Manpreet Singh, Abhijeet Ray and myself, ex-JWT colleagues from an earlier generation, who came out to SE Asia/Far East in the early 90s. [now, 29 provinces and seven union territories]; b) these provinces had different ethnicities, languages, cultural nuances and preferences.
2) Competition among marketers was heavy and intense. Indigenous companies and ambitious SMEs vied fearlessly with multinational corporations. a) Gujarati entrepreneur, Karsanbhai Patel successfully outfoxed the might of Hindustan Lever’s Surf with a low-cost detergent (Nirma). b) Agency personnel working on highly-competitive accounts acquired gritty trench-warfare traits and challenger mind-sets.
3) Agency personnel, especially media planners had to KNOW the brand and the entire competitive landscape including; a) brand, key competition and category sales data in each province. b) Account planning emerged
much later in the 90s. c) Savvy media planners had to work closely with group account directors, doublingup as strategic planners.
4) Planners had to demonstrate strong quantitative aptitudes and capabilities besides appreciation of concepts and qualitative facets if they wished to survive. a) Making sense of a huge corpus of brand/market data; b) In some categories/sectors, required data was not available , c) then one had to generate reasonable assumptions and competitive/sales ratios through market visits and sales-force intelligence d) using a mix of analytical tools. e) Execute manual calculations using Agostini and Metheringham methods; g) Gross/net reach, average OTS and frequency distributions were calculated manually and painstakingly by provinces, f) then the net reach and average frequency achieved across multiple media – print, radio, TV, cinema.
5) Media planning could not exist as an isolated monocosm. Planners came to the table as well-informed professionals a) armed with knowledge of markets, brands, geographies and other relevant nuances.
6) Media objectives, priorities and rationale were crafted with informed understanding of the brands actual support requirements