aMap is not a substitute for TAM.

Here’s a woman who speaks her mind. Her candour silences you and her knowledge leaves you struck with awe. She has spearheaded a study to empower advertisers and media planners in countering the alarming rise of ad avoidance today. Honest, forthright, sharp and quick-witted are only some of the words that describe Lynn de Souza, director, Lintas Media Services.

In a candid chat with Prajjal Saha and Sapna Nair of agencyfaqs!, de Souza talks about the issues that plague the industry today and the future which, she believes, will almost revolutionise the media business.

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Edited Excerpts

I am not blunt or straightforward; rather, I will say that I am brutally honest. And that’s because I am a Scorpio. I cannot be diplomatic. I like being that way and like it when others are also that way with me. I might be vocal about issues, but I strongly believe that what you see is what you get.

What do you get by not exposing the truth? I genuinely believe that one must stand up for the truth – there’s nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has the guts to speak out and I don’t mind if there’s flak.

No, not at all. I don’t think I am important enough to have enemies. I don’t think I have harmed anybody. Who do you think could be my enemy? You think LV (Krishnan) is my enemy? He’s a very good friend. What happened on TAM needed to be exposed and I did just that. But that’s a professional issue.

I am not at all anti-TAM, but certainly, I have raised issue with the data that TAM provides. For instance, I feel that TAM hasn’t kept pace with the change in television. I agree that in the last three years, the television industry has gone through a drastic change. But that’s not solely TAM’s fault. I believe it’s doing what it can. The joint industry body – AAAI and IBF – should be held equally responsible. This joint industry body hasn’t met for a long time on these issues. But after I raised these issues, the body met and discussions are on to improve the services.

In addition, I believe that TAM needs to provide a much better representation of India. As I said, the Indian television industry has evolved over the last few years, so TAM also needs to go beyond the 1 lakh plus towns now; it also needs to have better representation among the top end of society, which is quite difficult.

The truth is that besides me, there are many people in the industry, including broadcasters, who feel that TAM does not represent India enough.

The other thing that needs to be looked into is the financial transparency of its services. We are in a situation where the research agency charges without any transparency or rate card. So, you don’t know why and what you are being charged for. Even we are unaware of the kind of profit the research agency is making.

TAM has been awarded the contract by the industry under the supervision of a joint body. So I think we should know more about the project.

No, aMap is certainly not a substitute for TAM, nor can it be in the near future. We use aMap data, but only for analysis. When it comes to planning and using the data as currency, TAM is the only thing. We use TAM data for our research and this proves that I am not at all anti-TAM.

I agree. Television entirely may not be the ideal way to reach out to these top-end consumers. But then, it cannot be totally ignored either. For instance, special interest channels or premium news channels are one way to reach this segment.

Unfortunately, one never gets to know the actual ratings of these channels because they are always in double decimal figures. There is a danger in falling prey to numbers.

We need engaging communication to reach out to this segment and magazines and the Internet are fruitful media for that. The top-end slot has the heaviest consumers of media of all kinds. It’s important to capture their attention all the time.

One thing I would like to point out is that it is not about 360 degree marketing communication, ATL or BTL. The way we look at it is, firstly, one needs to be clear about the communication objective. There are various responses that you may want to receive, such as ‘I must go and do this’ or ‘I wish I knew that’ or ‘Ohh! I didn’t know that’, depending on what one wants to achieve.

Generally speaking, one shouldn’t describe media by its form because the consumer doesn’t identify with that. Various media can be used for specific purposes. There could be a dialogue medium, reality medium, social medium, information medium and call to action medium.

I agree that people talk about disruption tools being an effective way to reach out to the top-end segment, but I am really worried about that. One has to be careful while implementing these techniques, so that it doesn’t annoy the consumer.

There is a difference between breaking the clutter and breaking the rhythm. That’s what even the ad avoidance study that we conducted infers. In fact, this omnipresence of ads has become a menace for consumers. If this persists, very soon the time will come when we will have channels with no advertising. They will be purely subscription driven. What I mean is that when there is content without ads, consumers will be happy to pay for the content.

Disruption has to be within the realm of creativity by breaking monotony and clutter. Disruption should be created though an unexpected and engaging ad. If a media agency gets a fantastic creative, such as the Bajaj Avenger ad, it can be well showcased directly on television and the need for blending into a programme or film doesn’t arise. In short, I believe that there’s no excuse for the lack of a good creative.

According to me, both disruption and interruption tools can be used to reach out to the high-end segment.

There were two things we had suggested in the report because of ad avoidance. The first is for media planners, who can apply the engagement scores across content, genres and media. There are 305 such scores which planners can use on their target group at the time of media planning. To some extent, this helps to tackle ad avoidance.

Second, media buyers can formulate an advertising model. It may well happen in the future that people like me will be willing to pay more for a spot well played. Right now, we are buying bulk spots. Buyers will soon realise that being buying driven won’t help and that it doesn’t matter how many spots have been bought in a programme and, instead, will look for well-placed spots.

There will be a lot of work on that as well. Reading behaviour has changed. First and foremost, the masthead has no relevance today to a reader. In a situation where the masthead is often covered with ads and other stuff, what’s relevant is the content.

So masthead studies can’t use that as a parameter for measurement of readership. Advertisers do not buy space in a newspaper or a magazine based only on its readership figures, it’s also for the engagement it offers.

For advertisers, it is the quality that matters and that can’t be measured.

I also believe that there is a need for a separate measurement tool for magazines, either within the IRS or independent. Besides, sampling of each segment of a society needs to be done deeply, rather than just brush through it.

I know people in the industry bring out the cost factor for such services. In that case, where is the need for two readership surveys – NRS and IRS? Instead, we can have a single currency so that the money can be spent fruitfully on what we really need to do.

The general entertainment genre will certainly lose share, but will not be completely out.

But I am confident that among the several genres of television, news will continue with its growth. That’s because of the changing content and definition of news. The huge TVRs that the ‘Prince in the Tunnel’ episode got substantiate this fact.

Another reason why I think that the genre of news is expected to grow is people’s desire to be more informed. This is also why there will further growth for the infotainment channels.

Children’s and sports channels will continue to gain. The growth of sports channels will also depend on how well the different sports genres are promoted. Each sport has to be rendered visual appeal. The viewership growth in this case is slow, but still high. There will be a lot of cricket happening, so there will be good ratings.

I also think that the fashion and lifestyle genre is picking up as compared to where it was a few years ago.

Yes, there are a few markets such as in the Scandinavian countries, where Universal and Initiative work together, but in most parts of the world, be it Europe or Australia, Universal and Initiative are two strong independent brands, and that’s due to conflicting businesses. Similarly, in many markets, Initiative has a second brand, Brand Connection, to service conflicting businesses.

As far as India is concerned, Lintas holds a majority stake in the media outfit, so we report to the Lintas head out here, and not the IPG head.

As far as Lodestar Universal is concerned, I am not aware of the reporting structure out there, so I won’t be able to comment on it.

I really don’t know what the future holds, but the discussions are on. Nothing is concrete as of now. There are a number of mergers happening; on the other hand, there are disinvestments, too. It’s difficult to predict what will happen in the future. It all depends upon who owns the company and who has management control over the company.

As you know in August 2006, Universal, which is a very strong brand globally, but was going through a bad phase, was merged with Lodestar.

However, in the future, the IPG agencies may use a common knowledge base by sharing tools, information and database. That’s the advantage of working together. But then the disadvantage is when there is serious conflict of business and the client seeks completely different stewardship on the brand with no exchange of information between the two agencies.

It may happen, but there have to be four-five large agencies merged together, which can take on GroupM. It has to be a force as big as GroupM.

And if you are categorically referring to the IPG agencies, it’s too premature for it to happen. It all depends on how the market stabilises. There could be a few other agencies from the IPG bouquet or it could be that an arrangement such as GroupM doesn’t exist.

I needed to comment on it because of two reasons. One was because there were certain clients who wanted to know what our role was in the merger. Our clients needed public reassurance that this would have no repercussions on the Lintas Media Group and that we were not a part of it.

The second reason was that I was disappointed with the way Lodestar Universal decided to announce that it would become the number two agency in the country. That was unfair to all the agencies that are much larger than both Lodestar and Universal put together. I am talking from the industry perspective. I had to clear that in public.

Firstly, I would like to clarify that there was no race at all. Eventually, it was decided on the basis of which agency could help Universal better and also which agency Universal would be more comfortable with. However, I feel that the Universal Lodestar merger has been good for both agencies.

I don’t think so. Generally, promotions are due in our company in April. What happened was that due to Kartik’s (Iyer’s) sudden exit, we had to prepone Premjeet’s (Sodhi’s) move. But we had already planned to move Premjeet to the business side, in which case Kartik would have got a bigger role.

Premjeet has a rich research background, which will certainly help in the business function. In addition, he is also very good with people and will play a crucial role in the Delhi branch.

Similarly, Raj (Gupta) who heads Insight will now play a bigger role working as a common resource for the Lintas network as head of Media Futures. The best part is that he will not have to worry about getting the daily business for the agency.

I set up a hospital in Goa for animals and it is doing very well. I am now trying to bring the world of media and communication closer to the world of animals. There is a lot of negative publicity generated today by animal activists. They say that you cannot use animals in movies. I grew up loving animals because of movies like ‘Born Free’; the media is a very powerful tool and channels such as Animal Planet are an extension of that. I want to use media to promote the good side of it.