"Competition is everywhere": Indranil Roy, Outlook Group

As Outlook turned 18 recently, insiders could not but reflect that it was one of the toughest years in the company's history. And in the hot seat was Indranil Roy, Outlook Group's s President, who came into the job just in April 2012. About a year later, he had to oversee the closure of three international titles in July this year: People, Marie Claire and Geo.

Roy, who started off life in the circulation department of India Today in 1990, moved to Outlook five years later and has risen steadily up the ranks.

afaqs! spoke to Roy about how the Group has changed and where he would like to see it go. Excerpts:

Edited Excerpts

It's smaller, of course, but we are extremely focused now. Our own titles are very strong, be it Outlook Business, Outlook Traveller or Outlook Money. We have already started working towards what all we can do around the brand Outlook to strengthen it.

For Outlook Traveller, we are improving the book divison and adding fresh titles to it. We have also started working on the digital format of the magazine which we plan to launch around January 2014.

We are redesigning Outlook Hindi which we will use to strengthen ourselves in the regional space. We are getting into the luxury space with new titles though this is still at the drawing board stage. We are also launching a title, Outlook Traveller Luxury. We have identified our strengths and are gradually moving towards creating verticals below the existing titles.

Yes. The dollar moved from Rs 42 to Rs 62 during the period of our license to these titles. It was not making any sense to run these magazines. It was a tough call that we took.

Not really. People had always got advertising and Marie Claire would get substantial amounts too. But when one takes an international title, how do you grow it beyond a certain point when you know that you do not own it? This is a very critical question. It is difficult to plan ahead unless the markets are extremely buoyant, your realisations are good and circulations numbers are growing. It does not work in tight economic situations.

It was not a mistake at all. Expansion was a good decision, getting titles was a good decision; you have to have your spreads and organic growth. In 2006-07, when things were so good, we did not see the difficulties of 2013. When circumstances change, you have to take hard calls.

First and foremost, you have to think of survival and only then of your image. We are not worried about our image because we are straightforward in all our dealings, whether with employees or anyone else.

We are back on track to a large extent. As far as outsiders are concerned, it is my house and I have to mend it. Nobody is bothered about it. All they want to know is whether they are getting their money's worth when they advertise with us. That's all.

Competition is everywhere. It is finite money that is getting distributed with every medium. Everybody in the business is facing multimedia competition. Somebody is a winner at one moment and a loser the next time in a deal because he is replaced by somebody else. That is the nature of the business now, there are no clear winners.

The magazine per se is a not a top-of-the mind advertising medium so it obviously has its own issues. From an advertiser's perspective, it is not a primary driver but a secondary driver. Because it is a secondary driver, the challenge is how to get more business from the client. So the issue is not so much competition from other media but the fact that it is not a numbers driver because of which it is not in the top list of an advertiser. Magazines will have to reinvent themselves to get more business.

We are a sustanence and engagement medium and unless advertisers look at it that way, we will not be able to win. Niche publications in travel, women and home decor genres are getting good advertising. But the challenge is: how do you get to be a front runner in the selection process?

When an advertiser spends 98 per cent of his budget on TV, my question to him is: how are you going to sustain the campaign once it goes off TV? You cannot communicate more than one or two elements of the product in a television commercial. In categories like apparel where looks and design matter, advertisers automatically use dailies. Instead of taking a jacket in a newspaper, they can take a number of ads in a magazine to communicate a large number of features.

The big priority is to expand within the universe we have created for us: how do we expand our existing brands? The other big prioirty is in terms of doing new things and trying to integrate more readers in the segment. We are also getting into digital one by one, Outlook Traveller in January and Outlook Money by April. Once we have those things ready, we will be engaging more readers.

We have emerged from troubled waters and now it is a question of how we progress further.

We will do as much of digital as is required to be done. At this point of time, though, we are not sure from where the revenue will come from. Planners say that the trend is towards digital but the money coming in from digital is very little. So you need to know when to leap in.

It is bad but not as bad as 2012. There may be a small growth by the end of this financial year but we will certainly grow.