TV attracts 70% of brand-building ad spend: Vikram Sakhuja, Madison

In a new series of interviews with marketers and media leaders, we discuss “Bollywood & Brands”, covering all things related to marketing, media, and especially films.

The second half of 2024 seems promising for film enthusiasts. There’s Kalki 2898 AD, which premiered in cinemas on June 27, Akshay Kumar’s Sarfira in July, and Bad Newz starring Vicky Kaushal, a follow-up to the 2019 comedy Good Newwz.

Hindi films have had a great run, achieving record-breaking numbers in both cinemas and on TV, starting from Brahmastra in 2022 and followed by Pathaan, Gadar 2, Animal, and Salaar in 2023. This year, films like Fighter and Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya have also earned the affection of cinema-goers, and their TV premieres are lined up for the year ahead.

It is therefore pertinent to discuss the place and importance of Hindi films in a brand’s media plans. Vikram Sakhuja, Group CEO at Madison Media & OOH, breaks down the factors that make films a key part of a brand’s media mix and what brands need to consider when they allocate money to film channels.

Sakhuja, a veteran in media buying, handled media and media research at P&G and then at Coca-Cola from 1988-2000. At the turn of the millennium, he was setting up the marketing department for Star’s TV Entertainment Network. After successful stints at Mindshare and GroupM, where he was CEO South Asia, he joined India’s homegrown media investment network Madison in 2015.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

Leveraging Bollywood for brand building

Marketers use media for a number of reasons. The dominant reason for using any media is as a distribution pipe — you've made an advert, and you want to make sure it gets seen. That is where 75-85% of the entire adex goes. At that point, it is metrics like reach, frequency, and cost per rating point that decide which medium or channel a brand should use.

The other way in which brands spend money is associative marketing — the media environment rubs off on your brand. Brands sometimes use sponsorship, which is quite different from associative marketing. Sponsorship literally means that this programme has been brought to you by a certain brand. So if Tata is paying a very handsome price for IPL, it's not just as a distribution pipe or even associative. It's much more than that. A sponsor is really seen as a brand that brings an event to the viewer. Through that, there's a certain stature and a whole new value that gets associated with the brand — higher-order values.

The reality is that most brands use films as a distribution pipe. Some of them can try to use it for sponsorship and associative marketing. That is where I still think cinema has a big role to play. It is interesting to understand how cinema operates. Cinema is a repeat business. A large number of people will go to a cinema hall and see a good film more than once.

And with films on TV, it becomes not only a repeat business but also a snacking business. People will come in and see one particular scene of a show, which they are very fond of, and they'll be there for that moment, see it, and leave. It is an interesting way of understanding how people watch and therefore being able to make sure the stickiness happens.

We found as media planners that films work very well, especially for males. For most brands that target men, if you have to get reach, then you need to have a film channel in the plan.

Winning media-mix for brands

It depends entirely on the category and more so, the brand imperative. Purely from a branding standpoint, it will probably be a 70:30 split in favour of television. Some categories might be more skewed towards digital while others towards TV — for example, the FMCG category might have an 85:15 split. Attention is another key aspect. A viewer’s attention on TV would be at 60%, while cinema would be at 70-80%, whereas scroll-based social media content might attract 20% attention of the viewer.

The Pitch-Madison report projected TV adex to amount to Rs 35,575 crore and digital to bring in Rs 46,565 crore in adex, but a large part of that is performance ad spend. My estimate of digital video advertising for branding is around Rs 14,000 - 15,000 crore.

I think the need of the hour right now, not a moment too soon, is cross-media studies at the industry level. But that, of course, is taking its time. I think pressure should be put to make sure that gets accelerated.

Learning from the cricket playbook

I think it's clear that among the passions and religions in India, cricket may be at the top, but films and Bollywood are close behind. Those who built the cricket events as marketing platforms have done a fantastic job building the entire sponsorship and associative marketing capability of a particular platform, which is why IPL gets the title sponsor prices it does.

What needs to be understood is how one should leverage films from a brand marketing standpoint to gain associated rub-offs or stature. Just because today the reality is that brands sponsoring a television premiere of the latest blockbuster is a one-off.

For the longest time, we used to call it the Prudential World Cup. We used to call it the Barclays English Premier League. This basically confers a certain stature to the brand. The English Premier League is a huge passion point, of course, not only in the UK but also among the creamy layer in India. I think that part is still untapped with films. My parting advice to film media platforms is to try to get the same sponsorship value out of films like the cricket folks have done.