The Hindu Business Line : A year of upheaval

Nature asserted herself in ways rarely seen before, a runaway Sensex never made wealth creation seem so easy, print and electronic media proliferated and a male superstar modelled for a women's beauty soap.

WITH five days left to end 2004, the earth shook violently, the sea reared up like never before, and Nature showed a different side of herself to puny mankind. In just a couple of hours, almost everyone around the world was introduced to a rarely-used word ... tsunami.

The year 2005 was born to widespread death and destruction. This has truly been the year Nature decided to strike back. It was the year of upheaval. A killer quake in Kashmir (we call it Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, BBC persisted in calling it Pakistan-Administered Kashmir) succeeded in opening up the fortified Line of Control. Hurricane Katrina brought New Orleans and a shock-and-awe-struck US administration to its knees. A thundershower and a rampaging Mithi River (Mumbaikars never knew they had a river flowing through their midst) once again showed the resilience of a great city. It was decided that Asian hurricanes, called cyclones here, would be named in the region. Promptly someone thought of a name like Fanoos which threatened an already rain-battered Tamil Nadu.

The bulls went berserk on the stock markets heralding historic new highs, the Big B was admitted into hospital taking the great high of KBC 2 to an all-time low. A nation prayed for an icon's health, grieved in the memory of honest government officers who were sacrificed at the altar of corruption and exulted at the upswing in the fortunes of its cricket team.

As the economy decided that there was no stopping its relentless march northwards, consumerism acquired cult status, the great rural heartland of India and smaller towns became the battleground of future marketing wars and small and medium enterprises became the mantra for growth in the year ahead.

The communications industry consolidated, polarised (big business chased big agencies) and grew. As volumes spurted, media fragmented even more and margins for advertising agencies continued to be squeezed by unimaginative marketers and weak-kneed agency heads.

Hero worship was the order of the day. As cricketers led by Sourav Dada lost their sheen, Shah Rukh emerged as King Khan. Lux broke a 75-year-tradition and featured the well-manicured, pedicured, gelled, and probably waxed Shah Rukh in its advertising. The public, already used to the metrosexual male and looking forward to the new, improved uber sexual persona, loved the advertising. A young 18-year-old (who turned 19 this year) made all of India proud and contributed to a new cult worship called Sania Mania. If Zee TV cried "not sporting" at being denied the rights to telecast cricket, they decided that football was fair game. Mumbai led the media charge with three new newspapers, well two-and-a-half, to be precise. DNA was launched with a huge advertising campaign and the jury is still out with regard to its success in the market. Hindustan Times opted to be sophisticated and ended up being niche. Mumbai Mirror decided to be young and bold, and ended up being small and free. Media companies decided to cash in on the stock market boom with some of them, including HT and Deccan Chronicle, mopping up good sums of money. The reader, and the raddi market, never had it so good.

The NRS finally came out with its survey results and language newspapers were the toast of the party.

The electronic media continued to proliferate in every way. News seemed to be on everyone's lips with many new channels jumping onto the 24X7 news bandwagon. CNN-IBN and Times Now will only add to the plethora of news gatherers who do not think twice to organise a sting operation against our politicians, or peep into the ICU where an ailing superstar is recuperating. Nothing is sacrosanct any more. The powers that be in the TV industry decided to get real in more ways than one. Reality shows became the flavour of the day. Indian Idol, Fame Gurukul, Nach Baliye and the like raked in mega bucks for their channels. The telecom industry went along for the ride with Nokia's Hindi SMS for Indian Idol, and Airtel's for KBC2. In fact, the telecom industry that saw a huge increase in market size decided it was time to stoop to conquer. Forgetting any airs of image and status for mobile telephones, Airtel showed off the assistant to a paanwallah, and Tata Indicom showcased a Bhaajiwallah as its target audience.

Advertising grew wings as companies decided to either don new make-up or change their names and identity. Air India performed cosmetic surgery on its logo. Indian Airlines went in for major surgery and re-christened itself Indian just in case you thought they were something else. Orange, in Mumbai, pulled out all the stops and the little pug dog's pink tongue to tell you they were now pink, and Hutch.

If you thought Fair & Lovely was exploiting the `dark-skin complex' that Indian women laboured under, Emami decided that being sexist is bad, and one should equally exploit the `dark-skin complex' of the Indian male. They even thought of a great new original name, Fair & Handsome.

Airlines fuelled traffic in the skies and growth in ad spends on the ground. Go, Spice Jet, Paramount and Kingfisher joined the battle for the Indian skies adding colour to the overall advertising scene.

The advertising industry went on with its merry ways. Mohammed Khan sold his stake in Enterprise, Ashok Kurien his, in Ambience, WPP continued on its normal acquisitive ways and Omnicon threw its hat into the buying arena as well.

The year ended on an intriguing note when a senior Havas functionary said that media planning and buying should come back into the fold of the advertising agency once more. So are we now in a "bundling" mode again?

Don't ask the leaders of the advertising agency industry in India the answer to that one. Nobody asked them when they were being unbundled earlier.

Tune in to London or New York to hear what will happen to the Indian advertising agency industry in 2006. They're the ones who know.

Happy New Year!

(The writer heads Canco Advertising.)