DELHI/MUMBAI:
Scenario 1: The handsome young guy celebrates his corporate victory in his office. Pulls out a bottle of Aristocrat from one of his desk drawers and savours the brownish looking fluid. Cut to the next scene: in the hazy background which looks like a poolside party going on, our hero again is shown dancing with a pretty girl. Drinking Aristrocrat APPLE juice.

Scenario 2: A few young men out on a trek. They finally reach their destination to celebrate while their adventure gear is prominently displayed beside them. The adventure gear is from Four Square, a brand of cigarettes.

Scenario 3: A gang of boys and girls is seen dancing in the rain. Obviously they are having a good time, courtesy MINERAL WATER, from the `King of Good Times' aka as Kingfisher beer.

Such TV commercials have been flowing like beer on tap on various television channels despite the Indian government frowning down upon the practice. Informally though. No more. The authorities have started talking tough and ordered in no uncertain terms that satellite channels stop airing surrogate advertising involving liquor and tobacco products.

Some channels have complied while others are likely to follow suit. Figures about how much television advertising spend by the booze and smoke boys will go glug-glug courtesy the government fiat are hard to come by but one enthusiastic estimate placed it at a giddying Rs 2700-3000 million. Phew! Enough to make even a teetotaler hit the bottle.

But media planners and buyers believe they won't have to do that. Liquor and tobacco advertisers will find an out. Already ITC has invested in Wills life style clothing retail outlets which serve as a very effective branding vehicle for one of its leading cigarette brands. Not too many may take this capital intensive option but they will find other means.

Explains Delhi-based Initiative Media media director Ashok Dhadwal: "With the government cracking the whip on surrogate advertising on TV, the liquor companies will move to intensify ground events and explore other such below-the-line avenues for promotion. Outdoors is also an option. "

A lot of that was already happening with booze cash backing musical concerts, walkathons, exhibitions and seminars. Royal Challenge, for example, sponsors golf events and ITC, the tobacco major has in the past invested heavily in classical Indian music concerts.

A clutch of media planners and advertising personalities whom indiantelevision.com spoke to felt that there is a going to be a rise in the number of liquor and tobacco sponsored events in the near future in the effort to neutralise the ban on ads on TV channels.

Some may even take the cable TV route working closely with CATV operators to insert ads or "crawlers" during movies that are aired on home video channels. "I definitely see some liquor companies going to cable operators to have their ads aired on the home video channel on which the government's attention has not yet been drawn. The advantages are two-fold: cable operators' charges for ads are just a fraction of what satellite channels charge and in the short-term this can be an alternative to TV channels, " opines Bhaskar Rao, chairman of the Delhi-based media research organisation Centre for Media Studies.

Outdoor advertising and direct response advertising in the form of mail shots are media vehicles that liquor and smoke marketers may resort to. What could spoil the party however is the fact that in some places like Delhi the state government has banned hoardings.

But it is below-the-line advertising that the liquor and tobacco companies will resort to more. Take, for example, Cavenders cigarettes, a brand owned by Godfrey Philips India (GPI), which sells quite well in the smaller towns of North India. Cavenders, which had been quite prominent on satellite channels, again through a surrogate product involving adventure gear, is likely to go in for trade mark advertising now.

"Such below-the-line advertising will increase and hog a bigger share of the media budget of liquor and tobacco companies," feels Lodestar Media (which handles the Cavenders brand) media director Mona Jain.

GPI, which has a mass media budget of about Rs 400 million per annum for Cavenders, is likely to shift between 40-50 per cent of the total media budget to non-TV avenues. The global trend for the durables category, for example, is that between 9 per cent and 10 per cent of the media budget of companies is allocated for below-the-line promotional activities.

Of late TV channels have seen a surfeit of commercials pegging aerated water, mineral water, bar accessories by liquor companies. 8 PM Apple juice, Bagpiper soda, Kingfisher water, Aristocrat Premium apple juice, Haywards 5000 dart boards are just a few of the examples. Johnnie Walker scotch whisky promotes a series of successful stories on CNBC India through sound bytes from prominent Indians like Amitabh Bachchan. Almost every channel has been party to the surrogate commercial brigade, with the sole exception being pubcaster Doordarshan which by mandate did not carry such fare.

"What are advertisements for?" asks Subrato Chakraborty, the Delhi head of RMG David, an outfit of O&M, "A method to communicate to and come in contact with the consumer. TV channels may have been one such contact point. Whenever and wherever there is an opportunity to come in contact with the consumer it can be exploited. It can be through his mousepad or the club he frequents. So, the liquor companies have options and will go in for that increasingly, including community marketing too."

Though Chakraborty did not seem to be unduly worried, he did admit that the ad spend of liquor and tobacco companies may come down with the ban on TV ads. RMG David handles two liquor brands, Officer's Choice whisky and Rosy Pelican beer, through its Mumbai office.

Media planners and advertising agencies may try to downplay the effect of the government initiative on surrogate ads on TV channels, but there is definitely an element of worry. A media planner with an MNC advertising agency, on condition of anonymity, admitted that such government moves can be a damper not only for liquor companies, but for advertising and media buying agencies too.

So, what do the TV channels think? Will they end up with a bottomline hangover?

Well, it really depends on who you're talking to. For Star India executive vice-president Raj Nayak, ad revenues from liquor and cigarettes are quite an inconsequential part of his TV network's bottomline so it will hardly make a difference in the long term. Nayak estimated annual revenues from surrogate advertising for the television industry as a whole to be about 4 per cent of total ad spends - between Rs 1250 million and Rs 1500 million.

Rohit Gupta, executive V-P, sales and revenue management Sony Entertainment Television, was not quite so nonchalant. "In the immediate term there will not be any significant effect but for the full year there would be some impact," Gupta said.

SAB TV vice-president marketing Sandeep Singh, said that there would be hardly any impact on his channel because ad revenues from liquor brands were insignificant.

One TV channel executive said it was niche channels that would be affected more than general entertainment ones. In the first place the categories of advertisers were limited as the viewer profile was either upmarket or youth-specific, he said. Movie, sports, news and music channels were the channels that he felt would be impacted most.

Looking abroad for parallels though, India seems to be working in the reverse.

In the US for instance, while beer ads have been a regular feature of the TV advertising milieu, when it comes to hard liquor, the spirits industry has lived under a voluntary ban on the placement of ads on TV for the past 50 years.

But with declining revenues over the past two increasingly health-conscious decades, the industry has begun cautiously testing the regulatory climate by placing ads on some local TV or cable stations.

There is a heated debate going on in the US over the wisdom of this reversal, especially after NBC announced towards the end of last year that they would allow liquor commercials to run during late-evening programming, making them the first national network to do so.

Coming back to India, as the government tightens the screws and takes the fizz out of the liquor companies' blast, the affected ones are re-drawing their strategies. But they can draw solace from what Lodestar's Jain has to say. "The restriction put by the government can be termed a non-option because it applies to the competition too," she explained.

Hence, all the constituents affected by the liquor crackdown have to take cognisance of the fact that the tipplers' party is over. If they don't fall in line they may end up with a hangover. That's if the government acts on its threat. With a determined information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj putting her weight behind the liquor ad ban move, it is quite likely that it is dry days for television channels.
(Picture Courtesy :www.agencyfaqs.com)


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