Media Planning by Sridhar as on 29/05/2016

"Classes are FUN, (once you get out of college)."

A fairly chilled Sunday morning, in the wonderful environs of Indian Habitat Centre is not a bad place for a rendezvous with three of my favourite professors at my Alma Mater, IIMC, not bad at all. It sure is and is always fun. 

It was albeit more than just a meet and greet (on so many levels, but that's for another post on a different site altogether...) Sridhar was there as always on time, and prepared. 

It's nice to see those sides again, after all these years, and this post is going to be all about that. Nothing more. Nothing less.

India's internet reach is racing at galloping speeds, at the rate of 34.90% CAGR, currently we're looking at about 35% of the entire population online, second only to China in terms of no.of people online. And it's only going to get better and will do so at much faster rate than previously. 

In fact, about 550 million is the expected no.of people to be online and about 277 million and about 25% of them are going to be so only on mobile, so the 'second screen' is soon going to be primary, very soon. 

What the above means, more so for the guys at respective agencies is, that the thin line that was thought to be dividing the offline and online agencies per say is that much less true and relevant, the said agencies will have to work in tandem and if they aren't doing so already, will have to do so, for working in isolation will no longer make sense. 

We're already seeing that, what with AVC (Audio Visual Commercial) is NOT equal to a TVC (TeleVision Commercial) anymore what with the advent of innumerable Social Media platforms; akin to Facebook, Vines, Vimeo but the biggest amongst them, undoubtedly is YouTube. 

Social Media is another force that is an unmistakable part of the advertisement mix, simply because of the old wisdom; 'endorsement from a friend/family (or even an acquaintance) is much more valuable than hard sell'. The challenge though is to create content that is 'share worthy' or as the more pronounced and apt term for it being 'viral'. 

Small (and in some cases, medium) enterprises have (begun) to rely on online for influencing their respective TA/TG and it's being learnt that as much as 65% of influencing (prowess) for Medium and Small Enterprises is very much restricted to online. This could also stem from the fact that MSEs cannot afford traditional media owing to restricted budgets on marketing and Public Relations exercises.