Media reports
suggest that the BJP, today riding high among punters on the election results, is
in the final stages of identifying the agency that will handle its massive advertising budget – estimated at ₹ 400 crore -- in the upcoming electoral
contests. And the advertising function today is of course, organised in two
distinct halves: there is the so-called “creative” agency which designs the ad
and the media buyer who determines where it should be placed.
Among the agencies
believed to be on the BJP shortlist for the creative function is McCann
Erickson. And the front-runner among the media buyers is Lodestar. At first
sight, it seems like a great idea to divide up functions between distinct
enterprises, so that clients obtain best service. The only problem here is that
McCann is part of the global advertising conglomerate Interpublic, headquartered in the U.S.
And Lodestar is a media buying agency owned within the same chain of
multinational capital.
The
multinational claim to handling the business of a party that ostensibly
represents the true and unsullied face of Indian nationalism, is unlikely to go
unchallenged. The most likely competitor for the creative function is
reportedly Contract Advertising. And Group M is apparently bidding strongly to
acquire the media buying contract.
Once again,
we have a picture of a competitive free enterprise system working to ensure
best value for all, except for one inconvenient fact: both Contract and Group M
belong to the WPP group, headquartered in London.
When the
Congress party was seeking to identify the TV channel on which its young prince
should first be featured, it looked at the audience ratings
available and picked out TimesNow. It went by audience measurement
statistics available from TAM Ltd, a joint venture of AC Nielsen and Kantar.
This too
would be okay, except that Kantar is – if the repetition could be pardoned –
part of the WPP group. And Nielsen is owned by a number of private equity
investors who are just interested in squeezing it for profit. As the broadcast enterprise NDTV
pointed out in a petition filed before the Supreme Court of New York in July 2012, Nielsen is starved of
funds just from servicing its investors’ debts. It is simply in no position to deliver
services committed to clients.
In December
2013, the newspaper industry had its own moment of indecent public exposure.
The prelude to this of course, is a long and tortured history when every
so-called “readership survey” was the occasion for bitter recrimination between
newspaper groups which found their vanity either punctured or insufficiently
pampered. After a long hiatus when the industry could not agree on how best to
proceed with the audience research that would guide ad spending, the contract
for the Indian Readership Survey last year was awarded, in defiance of its
sloppy track record and dubious ownership pattern, to Kantar.
Soon after
the IRS results were declared for the last quarter of 2013, an unprecedented coalition of
newspaper groups
that were otherwise constantly sniping at each other, came together to denounce
the findings as sloppy, unreliable and perhaps, corrupted at
source.
Early in this
century, the newspaper industry was torn by a phony war between those who
ardently believed in foreign capital as the only remedy for its ills and others
who took a stand on what seemed high nationalist principle, demanding that alien
interests be kept out of this one vital sector where the national political
discourse was carried out.
While the
newspaper industry was engaged in these skirmishes over FDI, a major
operational manoeuvre was executed on its flanks, leading in effect to its
complete encirclement by foreign interests. Being narrowly focused on the issue
of ownership, the newspaper lobby failed to recognise the signals from a policy
move initiated in 2001 with little public debate or discussion, when the doors
were opened up for 100 percent foreign investment in ad agencies and market
research firms.
At a time
when over 65 percent of total newspaper industry revenue came from advertising
– and ad placement decisions depended crucially on the results that market
research firms turned in – these policy decisions passed without even a cursory
examination in terms of longer-term implications.
With media
industry fortunes today in parlous state, ad agencies have greater opportunity
than ever before to influence editorial agendas. When ratings agencies that
guide ad spending are themselves integrated into the same global chain of
capital, the impact on media agendas and indeed, on the political discourse,
could be profoundly adverse.
Waking up to
the absurdity of the situation, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on
January 16 issued a number of guidelines that agencies in
the TV ratings business would have to conform to. These norms, completely
unexceptionable on any objective consideration, would need to be
operationalised by February 15.
The
guidelines require that ratings agencies would have to be transparent in terms
of ownership and methodology. Any possible conflicts of interests – as with
cross-ownership involving ad agencies and media buying – would have to be
eliminated.
Unwilling to
shed the habits learnt over several years of conspicuous policy default and lax
public oversight, Kantar petitioned the Delhi High Court to secure a stay on the
new TV rating guidelines. At a hearing on January 29, the court declined to grant a stay, but scheduled another
hearing for February 11, four days prior to when the new guidelines are supposed
to take effect.
With very
little time left for a full hearing of the matter, the Indian media industry is
likely to enter the election season – and deal with the expected bonanza of ad
spending – without a reliable system to ensure its fair distribution.
Multinational
ad conglomerates in other words, could continue determining the media agenda
and with it, the tone of the public discourse, as the country enters an
election that is likely to be the most intensely fought in a long time.
