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Sravanthi Challapalli
Sriram Srinivasan

Chennai , Aug. 1

THE torrential rain in Mumbai has affected advertising to some extent but the losses are being felt more in terms of loss of man-hours and work delays.

A quick survey of various advertising agencies by Business Line revealed that most people in the advertising industry foresee a time lag and some postponement in ad expenditure.

The fresh bout of rain and flooding, which resumed on Sunday and carried on into Monday, made for very poor attendance at virtually all the ad agencies.

"Most people who work in advertising live in the badly-affected Central and Western suburbs (such as Thane, Chembur and Andheri) and couldn't come into work last Thursday and Friday and even today," says Mr M.G. Parameswaran, Executive Director, FCB Ulka.

FCB Ulka, in Nariman Point, was working today, but many ad agencies in Lower Parel were not able to open for business. The rains have also affected other sectors associated with advertising, such as photography and film-making, says Mr Parameswaran.

According to Mr Ramesh Narayan, who heads Canco Advertising, local advertising has slowed down as people haven't been able to move about and there have been no deliveries of newspapers and periodicals. He sees a "marginal postponement" of ad expenditure locally but nothing more than that.

Mumbai alone accounts for 16 per cent of the over Rs 5,000-crore print ad spends in the country, estimates AdEx India, a unit of TAM Media Research. Television advertising is equally robust in Mumbai.

"A lot of decision-making happens in Mumbai, media-buying included, and many agencies handle clients from Mumbai — there will definitely be an impact for a few days but it may not be major," says Mr Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO, brand-comm.

Mr U. Jayraj Rau, Vice-President and Client Services Director, JWT, Chennai, doesn't see a big impact. Though a few finance company and automobile ads have been rescheduled for the local print editions, there won't be any significant cut in ad expenditure in the media, print or electronic media, he says. "I think everything will bounce back — the stock market isn't even affected by it," he says.

Also, most television channels based in Mumbai are national channels. So, this will ensure ad spends in that sector are not affected, adds Mr Rau. As many people were housebound during the floods, they served as a captive audience in areas where there was no power cut, he says.

Since many parts of Mumbai have been without electricity for a significant period of time, viewership would have taken a hit, says an industry official. But where there had been electricity, news would have been one of the top genres, as happens during such disasters, he says. "We work on elastic time, being a service industry," says Ulka's Mr Parameswaran. "It will take us extra hours in the next five to six days to make up for this backlog, but everyone working in this business is very professional, so we'll get through this."

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