The day they Flicked their Hats

On January 13th 2007 Northpoint proudly gave its graduating students from the courses Post Graduate Program in Media Management

and Post Graduate Program Advertising and Marketing Communication

a day to remember...

It was the day when 45 students flicked their hats into the air and laughed while the camera went click…click…click continuously to capture every moment of this special day.

The founder of Northpoint Mr. Prem Mehta, Chairman Lintas India was there to see the first products of the institute graduate. Mr. Ashish Bhasin, Director, Lintas IMAG, Mr. Pranesh Misra, COO Lowe were there to inspire the young professionals of the advertising and media industry. Dr. A.S. Ganguly, who previously headed HLL, was our chief guest who spoke to all the students, motivated them about industry in India.

All proud parents and juniors [that’s us… who hosted this occasion and made the graduating batch feel extremely special… :D] were there to clap as loud as they could as rows of stars in black robes marched down to the staging area to receive their degrees in classic wooden frames.

Students from these two batches have been placed within various Lintas wings and other big names! There’s Group M, TAM, Carat Media and Mudra.

As juniors we are happy that our seniors found their spaces in the world outside of the academic world. Only we hope that we find our calling as well and get a graduation party as nice as the one we gave them!!!

We have a lot more photographs of the ceremony, keep watching this space for more.

Deepika.

Lost Media

We live in exciting times. Times of rapid changes. Things are moving faster than ever. Every fortnight some new technology enters the market. There was the cassette era then the CD era came in and now it’s the iPod generation. Television rocked the world and nothing has been the same ever since. The times are exciting and living in such times is nothing less than fun.

However there are people who’ve paid a price for the development and the technological advancements we’ve made. The iPods of the world are made for the consumption of a certain category of people. Not all have benefited from the development route that we’ve taken.I’m citing the example of the Patuas of Bengal. The Patua’s are story tellers. They tell their stories through their paintings. They paint on cloth scrolls, which in a sequence unveil a story. The Patua expects to sit with his audience while he sings and narrates stories, which have a moral lesson for his audience. The stories would talk about worship of gods and goddess or tales from well known epics. Stories of how a person who did not worship a goddess was punished. The Patua would go to a fair or a market place or to a cluster of houses and perform. Year after year he narrated the same stories that the audience already knew, with the same scrolls and the audience enjoyed it. It was a form of entertainment for people and a means or livelihood for the Patua.The patua’s were entertainers and not just painters. The scrolls that they made were passed down from generation to generation and the same story would be retold. Now this folk form of entertainment has lost out to the new forms like the Cinema and Televison. The Patua has no audience for his performance. You would now find the Patua sitting in an exhibition with scrolls after scrolls of his narrative paintings. He is not a performer anymore but a mere painter. His paintings are displayed and are bought by elite clientele. The stories that he tells are also different, he now incorporates contemporary events, often sensational and related to disasters and scandals. The stories still have a moral end to it, somehow he relates these incidences to our old notions about right and wrong about justice and injustice about honesty and dishonesty etc.

‘Traditional Hand Painting In Vegeteble Colour’ this is a signboard under which three Patua’s are sitting displaying their scrolls in a Crafts Museum in Delhi. This sign says a lot about the Patuas encounter with the modern. Firstly the fact that the sign is in English tells us the audience that it is talking to. Secondly the mention of the fact that it is ‘traditional’ meaning that it is a work which has a significance in the past and has a historical lineage, characteristics for which nowadays there is a lot of demand. Ethnic and Traditional are words that attract a large number of audiences. However it would be important to note that the paintings are not really in Vegetable colours. In the past, more than fifty years back perhaps the Patua painted with colours extracted from vegetables and flowers but that’s not the case anymore. The word ‘vegetable’ is wrongly spelt suggesting the limited affiliation that this group has with the language or the audience it is talking to. Thirdly the fact that this sign advertising the product exists is the most significant messages of all. All old forms of art, expression, entertainment are undergoing a transformation. There is a constant struggle for survival and in this struggle the art forms themselves loose their true essence. The changes that we see around us are inevitable however we need to be conscious and sensitive towards the effects that these changes has on the society.

Kasturi

The XBOX Campaign

I have been gaming since I was in school. I have seen gaming evolve over time and since I am an advertising student now, here is my non-expert opinion on the recent Xbox 360 campaign.Microsoft launched Xbox 360 in India this Diwali. For me, it was surely one of the most awaited product launches. It was launched via 1400 stores all over India. Xbox was launched in two variants priced at Rs.19,990 and Rs.23,990. Microsoft amalgamated with Redington for distribution of the product in India. Adidas, MTV and Samsung are other partners associated with the launch.

The TVC creative featuring Akshay Kumar and Yuvraj Singh is quite wacky and different. In the ad, they find themselves in an almost unreal village, where villagers have super powers. All of them are doing typical village activities but with a twist. For example a village girl, while drawing water does a 9.5, 9.7, 10 acrobatic dive into the well and throws the bucket out, a man stretches his infinitely elastic head from outside the house into the kitchen and much more.Another key ingredient missing is that they haven’t included the mind blowing graphics its 20 GB hard drive can fabricate.

When I was a kid (you can still consider me one ‘cause I love staring at CGIs {Computer Generated Images}) I used to be amazed at the graphics these machines would produce on my TV. That’s one of the reasons why I want a videogame console, to see these awesome graphics whenever I want.I bought a Playstation and that’s because I got small tastes of it each time I went abroad. I played PS in malls, Sony showrooms, friends place etc. This is why I think Microsoft has got a good marketing strategy. They are giving potential buyers their first tastes of the Xbox360 by allowing them to play the Xbox 360 on a 32 inch Samsung LCD in malls, IT showroom, Adidas outlets etc. Sony had done something similar for its Playstation2 at McDonalds.

Giving the TG a taste is sometimes enough for him or her to buy a videogame. You don’t need an expensive TVC or a huge media plan.I am no “Marketing Guru” (yet) but I think if you wanted someone to buy your gaming console the campaign should have the following:- The creatives should feature actual visuals of the games - TG should be given a taste by actually letting them play.

Let me know what you fellas think, you can contradict my views or you can concur with them.

Yash

60 Years of Indian Advertising

Most of you know what happened on August 15, 1947.


And what happened on Jan 31, 1948. You would therefore, naturally expect these events to have got front page prominence and made front page headlines in newspapers, across the country. But do you know that hardly any newspaper carried this news on their front page. These news items were tucked away on the inside pages. And the front page was used to carry - would you believe it - ads.

I know this sounds shocking but in the 1940s that was how it was. The front and last pages were used for advertising, and the inside pages carried all the news.This was not because there was an overflow of advertising. It was the editorial style of those days .The size of the advertising industry was then just a mere 5 crores. Today, it has crossed 10,000 crores.In those days, press advertising accounted for a major chunk - almost 75 %. Cinema and outdoors accounted for the rest.In the late 40s, industrialisation was hardly existent. Even in the fifties, industry meant basic infrastructure - steel, coal and power. Advertising was hardly needed. The manufacturing sector was in its infancy. Most products were being imported. And were perennially in short supply. With demand always outstripping supply, there was hardly any need to advertise. In the fifties companies didn’t market their products, they rationed them.It’s therefore, not surprising that advertising then was a minuscule industry. Only large industrial houses and multinationals would advertise, and that too once in a way. Since the consumer segment was dominated by imports, advertising was consignment oriented. That is advertisers would wait till a consignment of products arrived, imported from the UK, before releasing ads. Very often, the advertising material came along with the products and then the local agencies would arrange for their release. These releases were mostly done by a handful of multinational advertising agencies.

Prominent among the agencies of those days were J Walter Thompson, which set up an office in India in 1926, and Ogilvy, Benson and Mather, which started operations in 1928. Others included D J Keymer, L A Stronachs and Grant Advertising.

In 1939, the advertising department of Lever Brothers was spun off as a separate entity - Lintas, a short form for Lever International Advertising Service. In the initial stages, the scope of these agencies was very limited. Since most products were being imported, so was the advertising. The concepts, the layouts, the designs were all imported. If an Indian language was required, the local agency would merely translate the whole ad - literally, without the slightest adaptation. As regards non-consumer products, most of the advertising was corporate in nature, with a sprinkling of public interest advertising.The size of the advertising industry thus continued to be very limited through most of the forties. This also had much to do with the socialist philosophy of those days.

Nehru frowned upon conspicuous consumption and advertising was thought to promote unhealthy consumerism. In fact in many public fora, Nehru denounced advertising and all that it stood for because of his rigid view that advertising encouraged consumption.Further, through the initial 2 decades, the industry’s growth was hampered even further because it was largely confined to the press medium. Because of the Nehru Government’s aversion to commercialization, radio, as a medium remained untapped. The then Information and Broadcasting Minister, B V Keskar. thoroughly disapproved of film music and radio then was not the Vividh Bharati we know of to day. In those days, advertisers had no option but to use Radio Ceylon or Radio Goa - then under Portuguese control. Radio Ceylon was in those days extremely popular, just because it aired film music. Binaca Geet Mala was a rage, all because AIR banned film music. Thus, during the forties and the fifties, the advertising industry struggled, against heavy odds.
A turning point came when India started manufacturing products, in the country. Imports were slashed. New companies were set up. Cotton mills that until then just exported the raw cotton started manufacturing cloth. Tatas launched Hamam. Indian medical products started flooding the market. The multinationals started manufacturing their brands in the country.All this augured well for the advertising Industry.


The disappearance of foreign goods from the market and the availability of Indian options triggered two types of advertising: One, to explain the absence and the other to reassure the consumer that the Indian alternative was just as good. All the new brands needed advertising and new Indian agencies needed to be set up.The Sarabhais set up Shilpi. The Birlas set up ASP. The Mahindras set up Press Syndicate, etc. Then in 1966, Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister. She understood the power of radio and devoted her attention to its mass media potential. Radio went commercial in 1967. Advertising over Radio was permitted. And several memorable radio jingles were heard for the first time. Some, which we still hum today.The late sixties and the early 70s was when the concept of brand building took root. Advertising converted plain products into powerful emotional brands. Ordinary butter was converted into a powerful brand with the creative use of humor. And thus was born Amul.


Another example was the ‘Made for Each Other’ campaign which created the largest selling filter cigarette brand.And then there was that memorable campaign, which was truly breakthrough - it took an ordinary soap and made it stand for freshness personified, with one of the most outstanding commercials of its time – Liril.The seventies saw the economy getting healthier and healthier. New products were launched. New campaigns created. And several new agencies were set up Agencies like Rediffusion, Trikaya Grey, Chaitra and R K Swamy Advertising Associates.Advertising boomed and this growth ushered in a more rational approach to media planning. In 1970 the country’s first All India Readership Survey was conducted. Arguably, it is the world’s largest study of its kind. It threw a lot of data on readership habits of consumers. And this data helped to channel the advertising rupee more judiciously. These studies have now become a regular feature and aid considerably in drawing up scientific media plans.The seventies also saw an acute shortage of newsprint. Advertising rates went up. Surcharges were levied in 1971 and again in 1972 / 73. Rates went up by more than 40 % during this period. That’s when media planners began looking for cost efficient buys and explored alternative media. Hoardings which till then were all hand painted now began to sport 24 piece posters.In 1976, Television started accepting advertising. Initially only in Delhi and Bombay. Those days all TV sets were black and white. And much of the early advertising was in static slides with voice-overs. That, however, marked the beginning of a media turn around.The very next year there was a publishing boom as Press began to clean up its act. New magazines were launched. New styles of journalism came forth. Racy. Hard-hitting. Personalized.


Towards the end of the 70s, the second readership survey was conducted. There was now an abundance of data. And this marked the entry of computers into the advertising industry.The 80s were a period of hectic activity. Industry was growing. Media boomed. Newspapers started coming out with colour supplements. And in 1982, came the Asian Games and Colour Television. More importantly, came India’s first TV Serial - Hum Log.


Suddenly, there were so many options, so many opportunities for advertisers and agencies. Rates were low when compared to the viewership delivered. Everyone, including small advertisers could afford to advertise. Doordarshan even had special reduced rates for the small-scale sector. TV played a big role in helping lesser-known brands become household names. One example: Nirma. It advertised extensively. And because of TV it became a brand to reckon with. It compared its price with the blue coloured Surf and showed how the yellow coloured Nirma was more economical. It was TV again that helped Surf fight back. The Surf commercial featuring the now famous Lalitaji established how it made more sense to buy Surf than the cheap Nirma. The Lalitaji commercials are one of the more memorable campaigns of Indian advertising. Hum Log’s success led to the launch of a number of more serials. And with the launch of satellite Insat 1A, Doordarshan could be seen all over the country. So when Ramayan was telecast and then Mahabharat, almost all of India stayed indoors. Streets were deserted. And those who didn’t own a TV set went across to those who did. Advertising worked, like never before.Then came the nineties. Technology continued to propel advertising. It was the start of the channel proliferation era. The MTV generation. Scores of soaps. Magazines multiplied. Liberalization ushered in scores of Multinationals. The best brands throughout the world were now here. Advertising kept pace. It became sleeker and slicker as it attempted to cut through the clutter did. Cable was in. The Internet beckoned. FM tuned in. Hoardings got more colourful and life like. Some brands thrived. Some fell.Today in 2006, it’s marketing and advertising warfare. It’s full of action. It’s the place to be. The 30 sec TVC, they say is on the way out. Integrated marketing communications is the way to go. Keep tuned in to this blog site. It will keep you posted…

Siva

The Quarter Gone Good

Rome wasn’t built in a day. What was the hurry anyway? There were Gods, Deities and Happy people. There was no need, whatsoever, to have Rome built in one day flat. Life sure is different now and here.Batch 4 of Northpoint Centre of Learning has been here since July zero six and has already slipped into, comfortably or otherwise, million-decisions-per-minute-gear.Northpoint is one such place that won’t let you forget good ol’ days from college. At the same time it puts you on that fast track... actually come to think of it, it makes you choose to get into that fast lane!

Independence day was our first full fledged event. We organised a sports tournament with squash, table tennis [the most exciting, i must add], swimming and an intelligent treasure hunt. We had all 4 batches participating on this day, that's why it was almost like a Northpoint get together. The tournament ended with a loud afternoon party with winners being awarded their prizes.

Okay, now Northpoint has had two batches that studied their Post Grad Prog in Advertising and Media Management (PGPAMM) and one batch that went through a Post Grad Program in Advertising and Marketing Communication (PGPAMC). Our batch currently, drawing the best of both, is studying Post Grad Program in Advertising, Media and Marketing Communication. (PGPAMMMC). [just acronyms you'll come across often on this blog!]

In July, we had an opportunity that no other batch had. Lowe International Account Planners' Meet happened then and guess what, we were cordially invited! We got to meet and speak with the top management of Lowe worldwide. A chance that no student gets so easily!

Of course we do meet representatives from the corporate world very often, they are the ones who take various sessions for us. Now it seems difficult to imagine a post graduate course without all of this. How can a masters course not be different from a graduation course!?
One big difference that will make your eyebrows raise... we dont take an off... even on Sundays! So obviously our faculty works on Sundays too. That's how dedicated Northpoint is to us. And did you know Northpoint is in Khandala? It is beautiful. In the first two months we had just one day free and we made good use of it to go and see Lonavla and Khandala.

Today, batch 4 has one corporate internship in its portfolio. All of us spent one good month at various companies from varied industries like jewelry, FMCG, electronics, telecom and more. Currently, we are doing a Media Planning stint with divisions of Lintas Media Group at Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.

We are soon going to be equipped, making the marketing communication industry a big part of our lives, marking the start of our careers. Blogs being one of the most powerful ways of communicating today we chose to speak up from over here - this is what we call our Podium - NorthPodium.

Keep visiting this space to hear what we think about the new trends in this industry, about what we are upto at Northpoint, about the books we read and much more!!!