Healthcare and retail are the crucial sectors

FIRST PERSON: FROM THE AD WORLD

Is all quiet on the eastern front as far as the advertising scenario in Kolkata is concerned?

Talking about the present, the agony and ecstasy of being in the business of advertising in Kolkata, are Sandip Chaudhuri, vice-president and head of office, and DK Guha, associate vice-president, of Lowe Kolkata, in the second part of the series on ad agencies in Kolkata. Excerpts from an interview with Business Standard.

How much do you think is the advertising market in Kolkata worth?

The way I look at it in terms of not only ad campaign but tenders, classified etc. the market would be worth around Rs 400-Rs450 crore.

What would be the cost of operations in terms of fixed assets and manpower?

Being located in Kolkata has its upsides and downsides. So Lowe would say that as far as cost of operations are concerned Kolkata might be slightly more profitable in terms of pure numbers. Costs are lower when it comes especially to manpower.

What about the rate of growth?

We think the rate of growth in advertising as in other cities is inflation driven and its the same in Kolkata.

Is manpower retention a big problem?

We should face facts and say, "yes it still is a big problem". It is becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable talent especially in higher positions. But we should mention that at the grass root levels Kolkata has enormous potential.

As far as creatives are concerned Kolkata is as strong as ever and comparable to any other city in the country.

In fact in our agency if we spot a bright spark we always encourage them even if it entails sending them to other branches to work under specific person for career betterment.

With the current retail and IT boom, has it helped generate more revenues?

IT will not be of much help because it has traditionally not been a big ad spender. If Wipro comes to the city, it would already have its agency selected from Bangalore from where it will source its work.

What about business opportunity form the hinterland vis-a-vis servicing national clients?

We are not so 'lucky'!! Its Kolkata all the way, most of our business are from Kolkata based clients but when I say this am including Tata Steel as a Kolkata client. We had hopes from Orissa but it has not lived up to its expectations. We also have done good work for City Centre and Dendrite in the city.

In Kolkata, healthcare and retail are the crucial sectors. With the current proliferation of healthcare institutes in the city, the demand supply mismatch will be addressed giving rise to competition which will be good for our business.

In case of retail, with the advent of the biggies in the city, the local mall owners feeling the pressure, have woken up to competition. The need of the day therefore demands a communication savvy business, wherein we feature.

How do you think the future looks, any perceivable trends in terms of integrated communications or social advertising?

We definitely believe that integrated communication is the way forward. The share of the advertising pie is not likely to grow too much in the future therefore the other communication opportunities will come into focus.

For example in Lowe, the rural marketing team has been one of the top performers and the media buying unit is also growing by leaps and bounds.

We think gradually more investment and time will be devoted to developing these functions of communication as the market evolves and clients will ask for holistic communication solutions.

How does the picture look for Lowe in the city?

As we have just previously said, Lowe is performing really well given that most of our clients are local. City Centre in Salt Lake, Dendrite and Jessops are among our many clients for whom we have gone beyond the brief to provide very successful integrated communication solutions.

For a client like City Centre the challenge lay in the fact that the supply would determine the demand instead of being the other way round. The challenge also lay in the fact that we had to maintain a balance in our communication activities between target audiences who would come to the mall for a cup of tea or a gourmet meal.

The success of our communication combination for this Rs 2.5 -Rs3 crore account is there for all to see! 70 per cent of the mall's footfall comes from SEC A,the rest is SEC B which is much higher than any airconditioned mall in the city. The male to female ratio is also exactly half and half. The age group between 18-40 years comprise 90 per cent of the crowd.

Dendrite was a different ball game altogether. The company's major business comes from yellow based glue which is so popular that Fevicol has come out with its new version. Our aim here was to develop modes of communication which the masses, the furniture makers would identify with.

For a company like Jessop with 200 year old history, who require major perception improvement in the market we have not opted for any streamline advertisement .

We are trying to run programmes with schools wherein children will be taken to their rail yard to see how railway carriages are built. We have created an anthem for Jessop employees besides motivational posters and mailers. For poila boishak we have planned a gift in the form of an 8 inches sandesh with a Jessop logo and a Bengali calendar for their 2000 employees.

The bottomline is that we at Lowe believe in customising communication in an integrated manner according to the need of our clients. And we believe that effective communication need not always be expensive.

We wanted City Centre to have an inclusive ambience, so as not to restrict ourselves to a particular segment of the socio economic classification simultaneously retaining that right amount of aspirational value. Not only did we do kiosks with captions like "from tank tops to tangails, inside or outside" but we have done the entire look of the very popular foodcourt called Hangout, starting from uniforms, menu cards, ambience, graphics, signages, direct mails, etc.

Dendrite is very strong in the industrial segment. Besides our very popular "utsaber bondhon" we started a programme on the regional channel Akash Bangla which is so successful that it is being marketed as a programme segment to other brands.

It was called Dendrite Para Championship and involved participants from various different paras or neighbourhoods in games which roped in the product association through games which involved sticking in some form.

A newsletter and club for children has been started called Bongo Club with a character called Bongo. The newsletter caters to children by providing craft tips and methods and various easy to make art and craft items.

The leather industry who uses this type of glue, we have designed a special newsletter which gives them international news regarding adhesive usage like super strong adhesive being used in bridges and even for bones.

We did a particularly successful direct marketing campaign with secretaries in companies where we gave them free samples of Denstick and after a few months about 40-50 per cent had been converted.

We are simultaneously running this campaign in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal and propose to promote occasions like Poush Mela in Bengal and Kite festival in Gujrat.