| Mr. Bharat
Patel |
| Chairman,
Indian Society of Advertisers |
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Good
evening everybody, Professor Jagdish Seth, Mr. Dharen Chadha,
friends ladies and gentlemen before I start please switch of
your cells or put them on the silent mode. I think that this
is very essential because not only the speaker’s get disturbed
but also the people sitting next to you get disturbed so please
do that. In my capacity…let me check whether I have done
that….yes I did. Thank you, in my capacity as the chairman
of the Indian Society of Advertisers let me first welcome all
of you, a very warm welcome in this seminar which is called
the “Building Global Brands out of India”.
Most of us here are quite well aware of what this stands for
and the role it plays in the industry. However for those who
are not the members of the ISA, ISA is India society of advertisers,
who are promoting this program, I thought I might spend just
few moments and give you some background of our organization.
ISA was founded more then fifty years ago and its founder members
were Tata’s, Birla’s, Glaxo, Parle, Bata, corn products
and Polson, these were the great advertisers and great brands
of those days. Over the years major advertisers and small and
medium advertisers have joined the membership. Our current membership
is around 175. This is small in numbers compared to the total
number of advertisers in India. It is substantial when it comes
to their advertising and brand building appropriations. They
collectively account for nearly two thirds of all the expenditures
made in India. Let me just briefly take you thru the broad objectives
of the ISA. ISA has set its primary role in three broad areas.
First and foremost is the role of
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Maintaining
and upholding the ethical disciplining role in advertising.
The world over it has been the experience that if we do
not self regulate ourselves then our standards tend to
drop and its does not take too long for the government
of the country to step in and start regulating any activity
which has an impact on the society at large. As such the
ISA itself is a promoter of discipline in advertising
and in keeping with this objective ISA has been in fore
front in promoting codes and standards of advertising
in India. The Advertising Standard Council of India which
is ASCI was promoted by ISA nearly twenty years ago and
we continue to play an active role in the starting of
the standards and running of it. By proactively interacting
with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry we are
ensuring that ASCI code becomes the currency for assessing
…whether the commercial shown on TV meet ethical
standards or not. And the ASCI’s consumer complaint
council which is made up of civil members and the senior
advertising practitioners becomes their valuating body
even for the mandatory advertising code in the cable TV
act. In fact the government is working its way that ASCI
in tandem with the cable TV act with the codes and the
evaluation process. |
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The second
broad area where we believe we have a role to play is
to monitor, measure and moderate media in terms of cost
competition and media audience. That is the viewership,
readership and listener ship surveys and programs on that.
it is important for most of us who spend large sums of
money in advertising and brand building to understand
how cost-effectively our monies are being deployed. The
ISA’s media committee keeps a sharp eye on how this
efficiency measures are changing over the time and keeps
its members as well as the entire advertising industry
informed on the same. We were instrumental in setting
up of the first measurement of readership in the country
by the NRS studies needed, similarly we were actively
involved in the setting up of the television audiences
by being the lead player in the joint industry body guiding
the setting of the people meters for measuring the TV
audiences. When we talk about the cost of advertising,
we must not only deal with the media cost but also the
government imposed taxation which ultimately affects the
total cost of advertising. And therefore directly affects
the consumer prices also. Here too ISA has paid an important
role in the past and continue to do so in the future.
We have been instrumental in having the tax on advertising
after it has been imposed by the government four times
in past decade, in every ten years somebody comes up with
…somebody in the government comes up with the tax
on advertising like this allowance or tax or something.
And ISA has been in the forefront ever since in sixties
when T.T Krishnamachari started it right up to in the
nineties when Chidambaram has done that…pushing
back the tax on advertising. Similarly in the recent times
we have been able to convince the government to allow
the setting up of the service tax paid against the cenvat
that means the manufacturing excise duty which is paid
against that service tax can be set off when it became
a major burden. When the government levied service tax
on TV broadcasting you know the whole set of process of
service tax against cenvat was prime move by ISA. |
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The third
and the equally important area where we tried to play
a role in keeping the members informed and updated in
all matters related to advertising and development of
advertising issues across the world. As the members of
the World Federation of Advertisers, WFA, we have some
unique inputs in being able to provide such guidance to
all our members and we carry out such activity thru variety
of vehicles like the publication of our in house newsletter,
other publications and surveys which gives the cost efficient
comparison between the various publications, by running
workshops for our members regionally or all over the country
and of course by holding seminars such as this today.
We make an attempt to inform and keep our members and
also general advertising audiences and advertisers on
what is the latest development in the field of advertising
and marketing. It is clear that the stimulating discussion,
debate and deliberation around the subjects which are
critical to the times becomes the integral part of the
objective to train and exercise the minds of advertising
and marketing practitioners around such subjects and as
you will agree that the brand building has clearly become
a key ingredient for Indian businesses today as we embark
on the exciting mission of making a global impact out
of India. Branding leads to credibility in quality, stated
in another way, quality derives from branding, and if
we are to make an impact globally we need to build brands
out of India. |
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Perhaps it is best that at this
stage I hand you over to Dharen Chadha, who heads our knowledge
partner in today’s venture momentum strategy consultants,
to tell you more about the subject that we have chosen for this
seminar and how it is one of the most critical if not the most…in
fact not most critical but only critical area focused for us
in the industry. Dharen and his team has done a lot of work
in putting this seminar together so that we can have all the
benefits of hearing and discussing this issue with some of the
biggest names in the field of today.
May I also welcome on behalf of you, Doctor Professor Jagdish
Seth, who needs no introduction, thank you Jagdish for sparing
this time. We all know the hectic schedules that you keep and
we thank you very much for giving this time. Before I hand over
to Dharen I want to introduce him, Mr. Dharen Chadha, is the
Managing Director of Momentum Strategy Consultants Private Limited.
Dharen started the Momentum Strategy Consultants in 1997 upon
his return to India after serving as Global planning director
for J Walter Thompson. Under his leadership Momentum is growing
to be one of the leading brand strategy company in the country
having worked with such companies and brands such as Asian paints,
Lakme, Wipro, HLL, Brooke Bond, P&G – he helped on
our brand Ariel, Pepsi, Reebok, TATA, ITC, GMR, Lifebuoy, ACC,
Unilever, Esquire, VIP, Kotak, J&K Bank etc.
one more announcement I do want to make before I hand over to
Dharen, is that as it is inevitable in such seminars we do have
a very important speaker who was supposed to come in today to
talk to all of us , a Mr. Sunil Mittal in the evening and I
heard last night that he has been called by the Prime Minister
himself in the meeting today most likely something to do with
the reservation impact on the private sector which is now the
burning issue among the politicians and the pressures coming
on to the industry bodies but he is unable to come in today,
in his place the talk will be delivered by his executive director
Mr. Jayanth Khosla. It is a bit of disappointment for all of
and I’m sure more for you who are the participants in
the seminar but I assure you that his talk is going to be delivered
and perhaps some other time I say we will organize his presence
in this seminar. So over to you Dharen, thank you very much. |
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