Gulf Oil's Amit Gheji Roots For Traditional Media

Defining the growth story of mass media in India, Amit Gheji, Head Marketing, Gulf Oil, India, highlights the two key parameters- reach and consumption per household. While the reach of mass media has been high traditionally, given the ever-growing population, infrastructure and economy of our country, it still continues to grow, even if at a small pace.

However, consumption has grown faster/more significantly, during the pandemic. He credits the reruns of Ramayana and Mahabharata during the peak of the first wave lockdown. This TV viewership was almost completely over and above the normal consumption. Now, of course, with the pandemic subsiding to a great extent and people resuming a back-to-office life completely or at the very least working in a hybrid model/environment, that kind of consumption is unlikely to be seen again. Gheji expects normalcy returning in terms of growth of consumption of media/content on the go via smartphones and overall media consumption also spurting, but the skew of growth will probably shift back strongly to digital, post-pandemic, he says. 

On Mass Media's Relevance

Certainly, more and more consumers and especially younger consumers are embracing new media platforms – be it OTTs or YouTube etc. Having said that, mass media still remains very much relevant. One just has to look at TVRs of marquee properties like an IPL or a KBC to see that whatever growth you see in media consumption in digital media, a majority of that is in addition to mass media, rather than replacing mass media per se. Even today, some of the most-watched videos on YouTube or most-watched episodes on OTTs are reruns of TV episodes including traditional family dramas!

The only irreversible change one might see is that consumers are more and more gravitating towards personal choices of media/content consumption and that may chip away at watching content as a family and hence a slow and gradual trend away from large devices to smaller devices and from family-viewing to solo-viewing.

On Genres Garnering Maximum Inclination

Talking about TV, it’s, of course, GEC that rules the charts followed by movies and then news etc. However, for the Automotive lubricants space, since a huge majority of our target audience is male, we look at genres and content which has a higher male viewership skew. And that would mean a mix of News, Sports, movies and music. Of course, GEC impact properties help too. 

Other than TV, being in the business of mobility, we also look at OOH and Radio as important mass media which can target our TG effectively.

On Investments Earmarked

This behavioural trend will surely have consequently actionables for advertisers and marketers. We are already seeing that while traditional media spends are not declining per se, but the bigger growth is in digital media. Tech giants are raking in huge ad revenues as more and more marketers and advertisers want to be part of the digital marketing bandwagon. It certainly helps that one is able to target one’s TG in a sharper, more effective manner and can measure the success or failure of a campaign almost on a real-time basis. However, one has to be wary of the ease with which a number of views can be achieved today if you have a certain budget. So even within digital, the focus is shifting from awareness to engagement. 

As for our marketing and presence in the year ahead, while we won’t move away from traditional media completely, but yes, increasingly, more of our marketing will be targeted at consumers through the digital ecosystem. In our industry, we have to also keep the influencer (mechanic) in mind as he plays a key role in purchase decisions. And while many of them also have access to smartphones now, but it is important to not generalise with a metro mindset and keep our presence on traditional media like OOH, Radio and TV too to keep them engaged and aware of the brand and our products.

On Challenges & Opportunities For Mass Media Companies

Mass media companies are already adapting to the new landscape to quite an extent. For example, some of them have their own OTTs as well so as to not lose out on young consumers who don’t prefer a mass medium but don’t dislike the content per se. So today, cricket is telecast on a TV channel as well as its OTT platform for example. Many news channels take their YouTube channel viewership seriously and post more newsworthy clips and make an effort to promote them, get more subscribers.

What is possibly still an opportunity for them on this front is to further the use of AI-based marketing and fine-tune/personalise the targeting of content that is specific to individual liking. 

On Emerging Trends

We feel the trend towards personalisation of media consumption will continue. AI-based learning will make content/media targeting sharper and more and more relevant to individual consumers. Advertisers and marketers while making use of this opportunity will have to guard against being seen as ‘pushy’ advertisers or ‘spam’ and need to work on seamlessly integrating themselves in the content by being relevant and contextual.