Mass
media as we understand today took roots with the establishment of Print media
in the
West during the 17
th
century., which offered opportunities to reach a large and dispersed audience
simultaneously.
It was East India
Company of the British Empire that brought this media to India and to
Chennai.
Evolution of Print media
Newspaper publishing started
in Chennai with the launch of a weekly, The Madras Courier, in 1785. It
was followed by the weeklies The Madras Gazzette and The Government
Gazzette in 1795. The Spectator, founded in 1836, was the first
English newspaper in Chennai to be owned by an Indian and became the city's
first daily newspaper in 1853.
Early
advertisements in Madras Courier were in
the form of classifieds.
In
1851 the Madras Almanac & Compendium of Intelligence carried public
auctions, theft, theatre, birth and death announcements.
In
1860 came the ‘Fort St. George Gazette and the Madras Times. And it was in 1870 that the Madras
Mail which occupied a pride of place on Mount Road was started.
In
the decades that followed several Tamil publications were launched: 1881 – Swadesamitran
(Tamil weekly), 1888 – Jana Vridhi, 1894 – Gnana Banu (religious
weekly), 1897 - Pariyan (A Dalit weekly) – all of which carried relevant
classified announcements. But the
history of journalism and advertising in
Madras, is very much linked to the growth of the MahaVishnu of Mount Road – The
Hindu. While in the early years Madras Mail ( later became The Mail) was
credited with introducing new printing technologies, Hindu, under G.Kasturi became a trend setter
in introducing several innovations not
only in terms of printing technology but also in terms of distribution. Hindu
was the first publishing house to own aircrafts to distribute the paper to
different cities and introduced facsimile editions of its paper printed from
different centres.
Started
in 1878 by G Subramania Aiyar as a weekly tabloid with M Veeraraghava Chariar
as partner Hindu became a daily newspaper in 1889 which was bought over by
Kasturi Iyengar in 1905.
It
is interesting to note that in the initial years the first page of the paper
was entirely devoted to advertising – mostly classifieds covering a range of
topics from ballroom dancing to widow remarriage!
Several
other publications followed , significant among them being Ananda Bodhini
(1920), Ananda Vikatan (1926) and Indian Express (1938) all of which were successful
in getting advertising support for their
publications.
Today, Chennai has six major print media groups that publish about
eight major newspapers and magazines. The major English dailies are The Times of India, The Hindu, The New Indian Express and The Deccan Chronicle;
evening dailies: The Trinity Mirror and The News
Today.
As of today, The Hindu is the city's most read English newspaper, with a
daily circulation of over 5.5 lakh copies. The major business dailies published
from the city are The Economic Times, The Hindu Business Line, Business
Standard,
and The Financial Express. The major Tamil dailies
include the Dina Thanthi, Dinakaran, Dina Mani, Dina Malar, Tamizh Ossai, Tamil Murasu, News Today, Makkal Kural and Malai Malar.
Chennai
was also a pioneer in starting free community newspapers. South Madras News by
Speciality Publications owned by R.Desikan was the first community newspaper of
India started in 1974. Today apart from the popular neighbourhood newspapers such
as The Annanagar Times and The Adyar Times there are a whole host
of neighborhood papers catering to particular localities all carrying local
news and advertisements targeted at specific
target audiences. Madras also has a fortnightly exclusively devoted to Madras
city & its heritage called Madras Musings - A Tabloid supported
by the leading corporates of Chennai and
edited by S.Muthiah the well know Chronicler of Madras and Heritage specialist.
Newspaper
representatives to advertising agents
Contribution
of the legendary S S Vasan (Gemini Film fame) and T Sadasivam in the growth of
the advertising business in Madras during the 1930s is significant. Vasan was into mail order and publishing
business. He started Vasan Advertising
Centre canvassing advertisements for various newspapers and getting commission
from them – one of the early representatives of advertising agency
business. He bought out Ananda Vikatan and also started Merry Magazine in English. Ananda Vikatan which was being edited by
another legendary Tamil writer- Kalki Krishnamurthy had T Sadasivam as the
advertisement representative charged with the responsibility of getting new advertisement
business. Sadasivam had a flair for
writing very persuasive direct mailers appealing for advertisements. It is said, thanks to Sadasivam’s efforts
advertising income of Ananda Vikatan went up from Rs.6,000/- to Rs.72,000/- in
six months.
Sadasivam
left Ananda Vikatan and started Kalki with Krishnamurthy as the Editor. The
magazine became a big success thanks to the popular historical novels penned by
`Kalki`and serialized in the magazine week after week.
Paper
advertisements in those days covered products like Keshavardhini Hair Oil,
Asoka Beetlenut powder, Amrutanjan, Narasus Coffee, Binny & Co, Westend Watch
Co., Himalaya snow, Horlicks Malted Milk, cars like Rover, Morris, Murphy
radio, Macleans toothpaste, Andrews Liver salt etc apart from advertisements
for announcing new film releases.
One
of the earliest full fledged advertising agency was started by P S Mani Aiyer
in 1939. Mr. Aiyar began his advertising career by canvassing
advertisements for Swadesamitran and the Hindu.
It is said that he got 25% commission from these newspapers for the ads he got for them. Simpson and Spencer & Co were two of his
well known clients. He had innovative
ideas. He hired artists to create
advertisements with interesting visuals. He is supposed to have persuaded
Simpson & Co, dealers of cars, to
offer cars on hire purchase. A car
costing Rs.3,500/- was available on a monthly instalment of Rs.100/-.
Later
V.G.Panneerdas & Co, popularly known as VGP made the hire purchase system
popular for all types of consumer durables among middle class households
making extensive use of Print and out door media.
It
was in the early 1930s that advertisements which were essentially classified
ads started getting a new look with the
introduction of visuals to support the catchy copy matter. Line drawings and half tone prints of human figures
were used to make the advertisements more attractive.
The 1940s saw a number of local agencies being started like United India Publicity Company(UIPC) (1939), Eastern Advertising(1944),
Elegant Publicities (1945), Federal Advertising and Criterion Publicities
(1946) . UIPC was perhaps the first among the Madras based agencies to get
accreditation from Indian Newspaper Society (INS). D J Keymer & Co. was the only multinational agency
headquartered in Calcutta to have a branch in Madras at that time. It was soon to be followed by F D Stewarts, Grant
Advertising (1954) with Lance Dane as the Manager and J Walter Thompson (1955)
with R K Swamy as its Manager. Umesh Rao, the art director who was working with
JWT Madras around the time is credited with creating the famous drawing of the `Maharaja`
mascot for AIR INDIA, conceived by Bobby Khooka of AIR INDIA.
Credit
for introducing professionalism into the advertising scene in Madras must go to R K Swamy. He not only used research for the first time
to develop effective advertising strategies
but also came out with some very
creative ads for his clients like TVS & T.I Cycles.
‘Set
your watch on the arrival of a TVS bus’; ‘You can trust TVS’; ‘Hercules Cycle – your life time companion` were headlines
of some of the famous ads he and his team created.
When
JWT denied Swamy the CEO`s post, he quit his job to start R K Swamy
Associates in 1972. In addition to walking away with some prestigious clients
of JWT Madras, he persuaded several large public sector undertakings to do
advertising for the first time to build a good image for themselves. Some of the ads that his agency created for
BHEL, ONGC and SAIL are trail blazing
efforts of the time. His son Srinivasan K Swamy as the current chairman
of the group has not only helped the group march forward with many
diversifications but is, like his father, doing his bit for the cause of
advertising through his involvement with several industry bodies. He has the distinction of being the President of
Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAof I), a premier industry body,
for three consecutive years.
Another
legend Mani (S R) Aiyar based in Madras
office of BOMAS in the sixties was a hard core professional who made significant
contribution to the Madras Advertising scene when he was in Madras.
Though
70s and 80s saw a steady growth of advertising business in Madras it was during the late 90s that Madras
gained greater importance in the world
of advertising thanks to the influx of a number of new MNCs like Hyundai, Ford,
Renault, BMW, Nokia, Citi Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and others. Even
software giants like TCS and Infosys established large bases in Madras – all leading to increased
advertising spend originating from Madras. It was also the time when a few
local brands like Cavin Care, the wellknown FMCG group, were putting their
roots in the marketing world which were to give a tough fight to the
multinationals in later years.
Meanwhile, Madras had already become a retail capital of India. Departmental
stores like Spencers and retail chains like Viveks, which had their origins in
Madras, inspired a whole lot of new groups to enter the field. New textile and
jewellery showrooms like Chennai Silks, Pothys, RMKVs, Saravanas, Princes and
Joy Alukkas appeared on the scene dominated earlier by Nallis, Kumarans,
Vummidis and Nathellas. These new retailers splurged big on media advertising, even
putting many of the FMCG brands to shame in terms of advertising spend.
The
1980s to 90s saw almost all leading multinational agencies opening their
branches in Madras. Thanks to the
efforts of some of the best creative
minds of these agencies, the standard of advertising, especially print & TV
advertising went up, reflecting in the
top quality of advertisements generated at that time. This was the period
when advertising business in Chennai was
at its peak..
Many
local agencies started by executives and creative heads who left the
multinational organizations to start on their own also contributed
significantly to the growth in the standard & quality of advertising. One
of the earliest was Gopulu, the well known cartoonist with Ananda Vikatan who teamed with Mrs Vimala to start an agency
called `Adwave advertising` which created
some interesting campaigns for the Madras based Shriram group.
Fountainhead,
Insight Advertising, Rubecon etc. not only created good advertisements which
won awards but also helped build brands.
Insights`
efforts for Solidaire TV, Reubicon`s efforts to build a national brand ‘Color
Plus’ a ready made garment unit operating from Ambattur near Madras are well
known case studies.
Thanks
to the growth of Television in the 90s, importance of print media for promoting
Fast Moving consumer Goods (FMCGs), Consumer Durables and other services
started going down from early 2000. Today print media is dominated by
advertisements from retailers (Jewellery / Textiles), Real estate promoters,
automobile companies apart from a whole list of educational institutions. Consumer durable companies use the media only
for promoting their discount sales during festival season or for announcing new
launches. The trend has definitely
affected the volume of business emanating from Madras for print media.
Radio advertising
Until
early 60s only print and outdoor advertising were popular. However, in the early 60s Radio Ceylon started offering commercial services to Indian
advertisers as AIR did not allow
commercials to be played. Radio Ceylon was represented in India by Radio Advertising
Services owned by the Sayani brothers (Hamid &Amin) with headquarters in
Bombay. S.V.Venkatraman ( father of actor S.V.Sekhar) was the manager of Radio
Advertising in Madras. In addition L.R.Swamy & Co was also allowed to
canvass advertisements for Radio Ceylon.
Thanks
to the wide coverage of Radio Ceylon across the length and breath of India
Mayilvahanan a popular Tamil voice and Amin Sayani of the Binaca Geethmala fame
became household names in the 60s & 70s. Some of the memorable radio spots
of the time were for brands like Gopal Tooth Powder, Ponvandu Soap & Woodwards
Gripe mixture apart from Tamil versions of the well known multinational brands
like Colgate Dental Cream, Lifebouy
Soap, Lux etc.
Though
Vivid Bharathi was started by AIR in 1967 as a commercial service to counter
the popularity of Radio Ceylon it never reached the heights of Radio Ceylon as
an advertising medium because of the restrictions the government imposed on the duration & frequency of commercials.
Radio broadcasting in Madras started from the radio station at the Rippon
Buildings complex, founded in 1930 and was then shifted to All India
Radio`s own premises
in 1938. The city has two AM
and fifteen FM
radio stations, operated by Anna
University,
Starting of the FM stations by AIR and opening
the radio medium to the private sector has favourably impacted this medium.
These FM radio stations operating out of Madras offer 24x7 interesting
programmes aimed at attracting a wide spectrum of audiences especially the
youth which is moving out of the Print medium. However Radio is more popular as
a mobile medium as people listen to it while they are commuting by bus, two
wheelers or four wheelers. The extensive reach of mobiles with radio listening
facility
has
certainly made radio more popular. Because of
the focused target audience it offers Radio as an advertising medium is
bound to grow as evident from the growing popularity of many of the FM channels
in Chennai.
Film / TV Advertising
Madras
in the earlier days was producing not only Tamil cinema, but was the hub of
Telugu, Kannada & Malayalam cinemas. And later it grew in to a big
industry. Cinema advertising, in the form of one minute ad films in all cinema
halls across Tamilnadu was started by
the founder of AVM studios operating under the name of Central Publicity which was later bought over by Blaze advertising,
Mumbai. Cinema was a leading advertising
medium of the time.
During
the 70s and 80s. film advertising in Madras , essentially consisted
of dubbed versions of Hindi/English spots produced in Bombay for famous brands,
played in cinema theatres. Many of these commercials did not connect with local
audiences because they not only featured
North Indian models but also the language used were totally outdated having
been translated by writers in Bombay who had moved out of Madras decades
earlier. To this scene entered S Krishnaswamy of Krishnaswamy Associates, the well known documentary producer and his
brother S V Ramanan who attempted to create some original commercials in Tamil
aimed at the Tamil audience.
Krishnaswamy even tried using puppetary animation for promoting MFL (Madras Fertilizers
Ltd.).
Asian
Games in 1982 opened up colour television and TV spots in colour came into
vogue. For quite some time even
television commercials beamed on local DD continued to be dubbed versions of Bombay
Production Houses.
Entry
of Jayendra Panchpakesan, an ex-copy writer and film writer and P C Sriram the
well known cinematographer / Director who together started J S Films, changed all that. As a team they came up with some good concepts
and executed the same to the demanding standards of the Bombay advertising
world. Their role in helping create famous brands like Rasna (I love you Rasna),
BPL (Home Alone), Regaul (Chottu Neelam)
is well known in the industry. At one
stage they were flooded with assignments from all leading advertising agencies from
Bombay handling a host of multinational brands.
Over
a period of time the team split and Jayendra started Real Image, India`s
leading provider of technology in the film, video and audio domains. He also launched QCN – a digital out of home
advertising solution provider with central
monitoring and control facility. Real Image also represents several
global players in the field in India and abroad
Another
Madras based advertising film producer who caught the imagination of the Bombay Advertising
world was Rajiv Menon who is also well known as a cinematographer and
Director. He produced some memorable ad
films for Asian Paints and Titan watches.
The Madras ad world can be
proud that it nurtured some of today’s celebrities during their days of
struggle. Today’s icon A R Rehman was popular as Dilip in his earlier avatar –
he used to compose advertising jingles for many products in his spare time. He
pioneered the concept of composing background music for a jingle on his Casio
keyboard and recording it with a dummy voice or his own, before calling a
professional singer to sing the jingle -- saving a lot of time and money in the
process.
Balakrishnan
(Balki) National Creative Director of Lowe Lintas is another contribution from Chennai to the national advertising
scene. He is also well known as a
Director of feature films having directed Amitabh Bachchan in his films- Cheeni Kum & Paa.
Senthil
from JWT Madras who conceived the Cannes Award winning Naka Mooka commercial
for Times of India is another Madras boy who is doing well on the national
advertising scene.
M.G.(Ambi)
Parameshwaran and Ramanujam Sridhar are the other Madras boys known for their intellectual contribution to
the advetrtising field in the form of books on Branding & Advertising based on their long association
with the advertising business.
Outdoor:
Madras
was well known for the huge, larger than life, hoardings on Mount Road
promoting new and old feature films. The
idea was first conceived by the legendary film director S.S. Vasan for the
block buster movie Chandralekha in the early 50s. The idea caught on and over the years not
only films but also products and services of all types started featuring their
messages on hoardings occupying every
vantage point on the roads of Madras, leading to mindless growth of the media. Many accidents later the State Government
passed a law in 2008 barring hoardings in public places.
For over four decades thousands of talented artists
made a living out of manually painting the big hoardings using miniature
drawings as reference. The advent of the
easy to assemble flexi sheets printed with the hoarding messages, threw those
talented people out of job. The banning of the medium completely in Chennai has left many people dependent on this medium
literally on the streets.
Technology
has opened up new avenues for outdoor display of advertising. The
ubiquitous giant-size hoardings have been replaced by a slew of other outdoor
media, now popular as OOH (Out-Of Home ) advertising. These include everything
-- posters, banners, kiosks, bus shelters, wall sites, hoardings, mobile vans,
all vehicles that move, dynamic display units in and outside the mega malls.
Satellite and Cable TV
It
was in mid 90s that the advertising through cable TV started penetrating homes in
Madras. The government`s decision to
allow private channels to enter the TV space dominated till then by government
owned DD, has led to proliferation of TV
channels. From just one TV channel in the early 80s, today nationally there are
nearly 700 channels. covering almost every language of the country.
In Tamil alone we have scores of TVchannels
offering a wide variety of programmes
catering to different tastes of audiences. Almost every political party has its
own TV channel Like Jaya(AIADMK), Kalaignar (DMK), Makkal
(PMK) and Captain (DMDK) to mention a few.
Leading them all
is Sun TV, one of the
most successful and profitable channels operating
out of Chennai that has today become a big
multimedia conglomerate.
The Sun Network, a Rs. 5000 crore public firm, is the country's
second-largest broadcasting company, in terms of viewership share. Some of its
TV shows have generated the highest television rating points in the country. In addition to owning 19 TV channels in all
major South Indian languages, the group owns FM radio stations in over eleven
cities and some Tamil
magazines and newspapers.
Sun TV was also a pioneer in promoting regional and retail advertising which not only
helped in their own business success but also in helping the explosive growth
of the business of regional brands advertised on its channel. Sun TV continues to be way ahead of its
competition, even today.
Rural Marketing:
Rural
Marketing – a buzz word for several decades now has become a necessity for many
brands of FMCG and consumer durable products. It has seen some pioneering initiatives emanating from
Madras. Though promoting products in
villages through road shows using vans was in vogue, right from the early 50s, by companies like the TTKs, it was Thomas Maliakkal a well known Madras based adman who started ORA( Outdoor Rural
Advertising) to offer a well planned audio visual van operation to reach the
villages of Tamilnadu. The idea of featuring multiple brands in every operation so that the cost of such an effort is shared by advertisers was a pioneering
effort of the time. After his demise R
Parthasarathy of Kripa Outdoor has been continuing to be an important player in
this field for the last 30 years.
Grant
Advertising and later Anugrah Marketing headed by R V Rajan pioneered several
rural communication programmes for their
agri input clients and later for all type of products leading to more and more
clients understanding the importance of rural marketing. Starting of the Rural
Marketing Association of India (RMAI) in 2005 was an initiative of Anugrah
Madison. RMAI continues to be actively
involved in disseminating new knowledge on Rural marketing to the industry.
Social Media:
Though
Corporates in Chennai have begun to use social media it is yet to get the
attention it deserves. There are a few Social Media specialists like Unmetric
and a few individuals who are advising clients on Social media. The best known
name ,ofcourse ,is Kirubha Shanker referred to as the Czar of social media by
the The Hindu ,is based out of Chennai.
Role of Advertising Club, Madras
The
Advertising Club Madras, which celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 2006 is the
third oldest Adclub to be started in the country, after Advertising Clubs in
Calcutta and Bombay. The Club has been closely associated with the evolution of
advertising in Chennai through its members who are a cross section of
professionals from the advertising agencies, advertisers and the media. With a
permanent Secretariat located in its owned premises in T.Nagar, Advertising
Club Madras is the only Club in the country which has been successfully running
a One Year PG Diploma course in Advertising for the last 20 years without a
break. The seminars, workshops, national and international conferences
conducted by the Club have brought to the city veterans in the field from across
the world and provided an opportunity for the members to learn from their
experiences.
Current Advertising Scene in Chennai
The
last decade has seen a steady decline of traditional advertising spend in
Chennai by FMCG companies ( like
Cavincare) and consumer durable companies (like Hyundai & Ford) many of whom have moved their marketing
departments to Mumbai or Delhi leading to a major setback for the Chennai branches of the established multinational
agencies. Though there has been a
tremendous growth in the advertising business from the Retail, Realty and
Educational sectors, it has not helped professional agencies because many of
the new generation advertisers representing these groups are not professional
in their approach and go for media agencies who are able to offer them lowest
rates. Many of them even negotiate directly with the media for rates based on
bulk booking, affecting the survival of many traditional agencies depending
solely on commission income. Besides technology has made it so easy for `hole
in the wall` design outfits offering
creative services to clients at low costs, that the big agencies find
themselves in a bind unable to compete with such outfits. Many of the
multinational agencies have either closed shop in Chennai or drastically cut
down their operations.. However for an adman who is willing to adapt to the
changing scene in Chennai the profession still provides enough opportunities.
As evident from the success of many local agencies.
Once considered an overgown
village that went to sleep by 9.00 pm, Madras during the past decade has
acquired a 24 x 7 reputation. The city has drawn people from all parts of
India. Result: This metropolis can offer anything that anyone wants! Be it the
choice of food, products, services or even entertainment!
Old, tradition-rich conservative Madras is today a vibrant cosmopolitan
Chennai. The young are willing to try out anything new! What better challenge
than that for the advertising professional? I am sure that the Chennai
advertising world will soon bounce back to its glorious
past!
Feedback welcome on
rvrajan42@gmail.com
