MAM
Fight surfaces for top position in Hindi GECs
MUMBAI: A fight for the top spot in the Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) hierarchy is finally surfacing. The gap between the top two positions has come the closest this year with Colors just 12 GRPs (gross rating points) away from Star Plus.
The last time the race got any closer was in the week ended 28 April when Sony Entertainment Television was 15 GRPs away.
The threat, however, has been brief so far and Star Plus has surged ahead each time there is any kind of challenge. So it will be interesting to observe what happens next week.
Colors‘ march in the week ended 23 June has come on the back of its celebrity dance reality show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa as it gained 24 GRPs compared to Star Plus‘ loss of 17 GRPs. The 9 pm weekend show, which runs for 90 minutes each episode, has 11 more weeks to help Colors reach the milestone.
Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa is Colors‘ third top-rated show, behind Balika Vadhu (4.4 TVR) and Sasural Simar Ka (3.3 TVR). It, however, is pertinent to mention here that the debut rating on Saturday of Jhalak… was 3.1 (captured in week ended 16 June), marginally more than the Sunday TVR of 3 and Saturday (2nd week for the show) TVR of 2.6. Still, Colors posted 239 GRPs compared to Star Plus‘ 251, according to TAM data provided by GEC‘s.
“We will have to see how much extra ratings Jhalak can bring. The early trend indicates that it would be around 3 TVR. So will that be enough to take Colors ahead of Star Plus? It is very difficult to predict but surely there is a note of caution for Star Plus,” says a media analyst.
For the Viacom18 channel, it has been a long wait. The last time Colors was ahead of Star Plus in the ratings race was in the week ended 7 April of 2011 when it reached 300 GRPs while Star Plus had clocked 261 GRPs. However, it couldn’t sustain the momentum and fell to number two. Later, the closest difference between Colors and Star Plus was eight GRPs in the week ended 11 June 2011 when it pocketed 239 GRPs.
Star Plus witnessed a drop in the ratings of its top-rated fiction shows like Saathiya Saath Nibhana, Iss Pyar ko Kya Nam Du, Ek Hazaro Me Meri Behna Hai, Diya Aur Bati Hum and Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai.
Meanwhile, Zee TV is holding on to its No 3 position with the addition of two GRPs. It has ended the week with 214 GRPs and its home-grown dancing reality show DID Li’l Masters fetched ratings of 3.6 on 17 June and 4.4 TVR on 23 June, up from preceding week‘s 2.8 TVR, and higher than Jhalak‘s.
Set, which had gone below 200-mark last week, added 13 GRPs to close the week with 201 GRPs.
Sab continued to be fifth on the Hindi GEC ladder, though it lost seven GRPs to end the week with 109 GRPs. With the loss of 9 GRPs, Life OK closed the week with 97 GRPs.
Sahara One maintained the status quo with 36 GRPs.
MAM
The Merit of Madness: How AI is Changing the Game in Advertising
By Ritz Malik, founder, Ritz Media World.
MUMBAI: When it comes to growth in a competitive landscape, a businessman always has to be a firm believer in Darwinism. You either need to bring a better product, or a better price, or both to the table to get customers and scale. Without this value proposition, you remain unnoticed, and staying unnoticed is not something that a brand wants to do.
You have to do all this and also make sure that you stay cashflow positive at the same time. Otherwise, you’re at a real risk of becoming a large hollow balloon that your competitors are just waiting for to explode or implode under its own weight.
As we’ve entered the era of AI, the notion of a product’s efficacy, cost efficiency, marketability, workflow management, and logistics reliability has become increasingly relevant and prevalently impactful. None of this is background noise anymore. It is the difference between bleeding money on traditional media and actually engineering a profitable campaign.
For example, META’s AI Algorithm has finally given us the ability to measure the ‘CREATIVE’ for a business’s promotions. The best part is that we can do so organically. Content that is actually relevant to the target audience gets more views through reach. This tells us exactly how the audience is reacting before we even scale the budget. This is how we have been gifted the ability to provide merit to the madness of the creative process.
So, our process is as follows:
A set of creatives is built for social media
Their performance is closely monitored for reach and engagement.
Based on the best organic performance, we choose the creative.
Make micro adjustments to add a sales proposition and CTA (but keep it subtle)
Publish the modified creative as an ad.
There’s a lot that goes on in between, but this is the basic method for getting it right. And this is just the AI that’s being used by platforms across the world.
AI utilisation is something that has greatly made the creative process a lot easier. As an agency that thrives on coming up with ideas that are out of this world, we have made the most of leveraging AI to bring ideas to life without spending a fortune.
So, this way, the ability to create high-impact brand stories is no longer under the tyrannical gatekeeping of large budget organisations. It is now that merit solely falls on the storyteller.
Now, AI-powered content production and the AI algorithm on Social Media platforms are asking the question: Is your content compelling?. If yes, the audience will watch your content, share it, and engage with it.
And when it comes to keeping budgets down, we can surely say that it holds the capability to execute million-dollar shoots at a fraction of the cost.
For example, we recently came across a creative challenge by a major Real Estate Developer from Gurugram. They had signed a celebrity couple for their brand ambassadorship a few months ago. They were now about to launch their new project, but for some reason, they could not get their shoot done.
What we came up with was to use the likeness of this celebrity couple and place them throughout the project’s feature video. With the help of AI generation, we were able to rebuild a completely new feature video with their brand ambassadors in 2 days, and no additional physical shots were required.
Imagine being able to save 50-60 lakhs in production costs, 15-20 days in production time, and comfortably be ahead of schedule to launch the project.
This has changed the game entirely. With AI, you can now just acquire the likeness rights of celebrities, and you can just build environments and scenarios with them. The balance between creative and artificial intelligence isn’t a battle for control; it is simply the ultimate tool for survival and scale in a landscape that rewards the fastest and the smartest.
