The high road

MARKETING: Guess which brands are striking promotional alliances with pubs and restaurants now.

It is not unusual to see an alcohol or tobacco brand in a promotional tie-up with pubs or discotheques. But a cellphone service? ... a news channel? We refer to Hutch and Times Now.

Hutch has tied up with several pubs/restaurants in Mumbai for a promotional offer called Hutch Tuesday. Under the scheme, one can obtain an "M coupon" from Hutch through SMS that entitles the holder to a free drink (upon showing it to the bar tender).

Call it the "high" road of promotional activity, a route even Times Now, a 24-hour news channel, found hard to resist during the exuberant summer of sport '06. The channel linked itself up with several of Bangalore's famous pubs.

The perfect out-of-home (OOH) opportunity? Depends on the target consumer's profile. "Most of our target audience visits such places," says Harit Nagpal, director, operations, Hutch, "and there is a lot of branding opportunity in pubs and restaurants."

No one has utilised these branding opportunities more than music channels MTV and Vh1. MTV has tie-ups with pubs regarded highly for their music such as Elevate in Noida and Enigma in Mumbai.

The partnerships slip easily into a mutually reinforcing loop. MTV, for example, runs capsules with livewire action from these places as part of its Club Nights. The crowd rocks to large MTV screens, while MTV has an on-the-spot VJ revving up the mood with giveaways and much yakety-yak.

For tobacco and alcohol brands, in-pub visibility is not just synergistic, it is important because of the clamps on their advertising elsewhere. In pubs, therefore, it makes sense to go full-throttle.

Castle Lager, for example, runs its special Castle nights at pubs, while Godfrey Phillips is taking this route for new brands such as I-Gen and DJ Mix. Seagrams even runs special Seagrams' zones.

That a news channel should belong to this club, though, remains a matter of curiosity. Says Partha Dasgupta, business head, Times Now, "The World Cup provided a perfect platform to us to launch such tie-ups."

But on an ongoing basis? "Sporting and entertainment activities form a core part of news channels," he says, "so it's pretty logical to tie up with places where yuppies hang out." Quite.