The rise and rise of media planning

Media has always led change in the advertising industry.

Till the ’70s it was only the print medium that ruled the roost along with the radio, which was clearly viewed as a rural and niche-urban medium. Television changed the way the industry functioned, wrote, and even thought. Yet it was only with the growth and fragmentation of the media that focused planning became possible. Within the agency, a quiet revolution was taking place. The media department was coming of age. Slowly it was transforming from an “estimate culture” to a “planning culture”. The old guard gave way to group of young ladies who were to be the czarinas of the media for some time to come.

Rhoda Mehta, Ketaki Gupte, Meenakshi Madhwani and Kalpana Rao re-wrote the way media planners were perceived. They were to set the stage for the Lynn’s, Divya’s and Punita’s of today. Even then, the industry seemed united as it seldom was. When Carat announced its plans to enter India, every big advertising gun worth his corner office cried foul and warned of mayhem if this was permitted.

However, events were overtaking the poor little big guns of Indian advertising. They could give Carat a difficult time, but their masters from across the oceans had decided to introduce a new word into the advertising lexicon … unbundling. And like good little school children taking orders from the headmasters, most of the leaders of the advertising industry watched and in fact helped dismember the media function.

Meanwhile the economy was opened up. The gap between the media independent and the “brand agency” was growing.  Along with all the planning expertise, buying became an integral part of what the media agency did, for itself and for its clients.

The growing importance of media was beginning to be reflected in the introduction of awards like the Emvies, by the Advertising Club Bombay, and a Media Review
occupying an important place on the roster of their events. Even the Asian Federation of Advertising Associations (AFAA) gave its blessings to an Asian Media Forum to be held every alternate year in Bali. The stakes were really big now, and the grand brand agency heads were finding themselves in a piquant position. 

The bigger agencies which were separated from their media arms almost had no locus standi with the publishers and TV channel owners. The very few agencies that still retained an informal control over their media outfits, and the medium and small agencies that were still “full service”, were the only ones who were relevant in any inter-industry forum. Apex associations like the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) had a Hobson choice to make.

The setting up of a Media Forum under the aegis of the AAAI seems to be a via-media (pardon the dreadful pun) that could help everyone. Media independents could have their rightful say in the affairs of the industry. Publishers and TV channel heads could speak to the people they want to, in a familiar environment and the AAAI could still retain its position as the nodal association. Win-win, you might say?

Just wait till someone in New York decides that the mantra for the coming years is “re-bundling”. 

The author is an ad industry veteran