Big textile brands still favour print media over TV

The advent of the television (TV) has revolutionized everything - it has changed our life styles and brought the whole world into our living rooms. From being a luxury, it has become a necessity.

It has also become a huge medium of advertising, but it seems to have lost favour among the textile majors of Surat. Major spenders such as Garden Silk Mills, Parag and Prafull have now deserted the TV medium and focuse more on the print medium for various reasons.

"Until a few years back, TV was synonymous with Doordarshan (DD), as there were no other channels. People had to watch whatever DD showed, including the advertisements. If our advertisement was telecast, we could be certain that it was watched by lakhs of people. We used to spend Rs 6-7 crore each year on it, but the expenditure was worth it, as it resulted into additional sales for us," said a senior official of Garden Silk Mills.

"However, with the advent of more channels, the viewership has fragmented. Since most of the viewers keep switching channels, the money spent by us on advertisements did not necessarily translate into extra sales. So, we decided to stop advertising our products on TV," he said.

Garden still spends around Rs 3 crore annually for advertising in print media, through newspapers and magazines, as well as through hoardings.

Interestingly the official says, "The print media and that too women's magazines are always places where we advertise. We regularly receive few queries from the advertisement in such magazines".

The Prafull Group story is a bit different. Prafull cut down on TV commercial cost, mainly because of shrinking margins in textile business owing to increased competition.

"We could afford to spend any money on advertising around ten years back, because we had big profit margins. Since TV was the biggest medium, we used to spend huge money on TV advertising. Our margins have shrunk a great deal in recent years, mainly on account of intensified competition. We can no longer spend the money we used to spend on advertising earlier," said Narain Aggarwal, the proprietor of Prafull group.

"Our expenditure on TV advertising is nil. Lower margins and competition have also forced us to reduce the money spent on advertisements. Our advertising budget today, is almost negligible as compared to what it used to be ten years back," he added.

Parag group, another famous textile brand of Surat, which used to spend fortunes on TV commercials until a few years back, does not favour TV commercial anymore. Instead, like Garden, Parag also favours women magazines in print media.

"Parag used to carry out aggressive TV advertising campaigns until some years back. This was because the number of channels were limited. So, there were better chances of the advertisement being viewed, leading to higher sales. However, with the influx of TV channels, the probability of advertisement being watched and thereby conversion into sales has dropped. So, advertising on TV did not make any sense and like many other companies, we too stopped advertising on TV. Today, our most preferred media are women's magazines followed by newspapers," said an official at Parag group.

"Another reason is that Parag has developed a name for itself, and emerged as a good brand in the recent years. So the brand's dependence on advertising for business, is not as much as it used to be in the early days.