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Nithya Subramanian

New Delhi , Sept. 14

TELECOM, insurance and petro products have emerged as the darlings of media planners and television channels. Talk to anybody in the media business and they would vouch that these are the categories to look out for.

According to data collated by media tracking outfit - Current Opinion Future Trends (Coft) - the three categories have already spent about Rs 118 crore on television alone, while about Rs 236 crore was spent by them in 2002. While Reliance, Hutch, AirTel, Nokia are active telecom brands, ICICI Prudential, OM Kotak Life Insurance and public sector insurance companies are aggressive advertisers.

Among the petro products, Servo, Castrol, BPCL and HPCL use television in a big way.

"These three sectors have emerged as big spenders this year and we are expecting them to become even more aggressive," Mr Rohit Gupta, Executive Vice-President, Sony Entertainment Television, had told Business Line.

The reasons for these categories to become big spenders are the nascent stage of the industries and the need to build brands. Mr Sandip Vij, President, Optimum Media Solutions, the media specialist division of Mudra Communications, which also handles the Reliance Mobile account said, "The telecom market is the largest growing and with the existing pricing strategy volumes become very important. The sector is very much like the FMCG sector, hence advertising plays an important role."

Internationally too, telecom has emerged as the top most spender. But, Mr Praveen Kumar, Head of Coft, said that the reasons for telecom spending big money in the US is different from the country. The US is a matured market, while the Indian market is not. Also, most telecom majors are facing financial crunch there and hence use advertising to keep the business going.

On the insurance front, public sector companies are working towards increasing awareness too. Also, spends in the second half of the year were almost double the budgets of the first half. Mr Saugata Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, said, "Yes there is seasonality of spends due to tax reasons. Also, as you expand your distribution, TV becomes a more cost effective medium compared to print."

But the surprise package is the petro products segment. A Mumbai-based media planner said that the petroleum sector also increased its levels of spends in anticipation of privatisation. "They are trying to move out of the public sector image," she said.

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