Bindu BalaKrishnan, Country Head, DCMN shares her story from Netherlands to Goa and back to Bangalore
- From Healthcare and Bio-Care to SaaS and Technology and then from Goa to Netherlands and then back to Bangalore, tell us something about this super fantabulous journey of yours?
It has been challenging and exciting at the same time, but, adjusting wasn’t a big issue for me. As I have been traveling from my childhood days because of my father’s transferable job, and, when you keep relocating, adjustment comes naturally to you. When I was moving to Netherlands, people kept asking how I will adjust in Europe. But the biggest barrier was language for me which I was keen to learn. So, I took a language course in Dutch. I have a notch for languages, I know around five of them now including Marathi, English, Konkani, Hindi and Dutch. It has been quite a journey.
2. Is the DCMN rebranding only cosmetic or has the DNA been tweaked too? What was the need to do so and why at this moment?
Rebranding of DCMN happened because in a very short span of time we were three times the people. We have offices in New York & London. Cape Town is a recent develop whereas India was set up two years ago. We realized we grew really fast and we felt the need to create a new identity, prioritize things and making it more clearer and structural. We stand by the same values, but along with our continuous growth we thought of taking a step back and set our priorities clear and convey to our clients and employees about what we stand for. Our new logo also shows a wave which keeps changing. And that’s what we are about. We are not static, we keep on moving and that’s what our logo says.
3. Can you briefly tell us how efficient is your TAT, do you promise any ROI to the clients?
As we touch all kind of communication mediums like TV, Digital, Print and Radio, one thing that separates us is we do everything data driven. So data is very centeric to who we are. Since data is important, it varies from brand to brand, like if we go for old and traditional brands, it’s a lot about branding more but to the new brand it’s about ROI and you can’t measure performance if you don’t have data to back it up. Hence, we introduced TV attribution. And to keep it going, we need to maintain transparency and possibility to run offline campaigns. If you are able to measure the impact of TV, it helps the brand. And that’s what TV Attribution Technology (TAT) does through which we collect data and optimize it.
4. Traditionally companies like Nielsen has been measuring household viewing and purchase behavior but the problem with that is of sample size. It’s basically an extrapolation of a small data which is not accurate. How are you making sure that the data you offer is accurate and dependable?
We are not taking sample size. We are measuring the traffic that comes in and measuring it each time, to see weather it has increased or decrease and by what amount. Suppose. We see the difference of people and how they operate.
5. With complete digitization of cable TV in India, how is your data & analysis different from set-top box data?
Set – top box measures the audience, what audience is watching, they use something called people meter, and whoever is using the remote, set top box can figure out what they are watching, so this is for audience measures and not for brands and it is available to all of them and agencies like us. But we measure the uplift, increase in traffic and download of a particular brands. But the major difference between us and the set top box is we get more accurate brand. They collect generic data whereas we get the specific data to the clients which is more useful to clients and brands.
6. TV traditionally has been a reach medium, with a smart technology like TAT, marketers will obviously become smarter and the TV advertising game will go through a shift which it hasn’t seen in a long time because now marketers will be able to measure performance of their TV ads too like Digital. Is this going to impact digital ad spends, as it is, the current average ad budget for digital is between 8-10% only.
Of course, TV is going through a shift with a lot of platform and usually in this US is ahead, then comes europe in next 3 to 4 years and then comes India. Even in the US linear tv is still powerful. Also there a question of reach and the kind TV gives currently to urban and also rural especially in India. No other medium can give right now. If you look at the spends that goes on TV,radio, print and digital. TV is a huge currently among all. And we can see that from the shift, like few years ago, we had very few digital brands who were doing advertising on TV like Flipkart but now there are people who are doing it more like Nestaway, Make My Trip. It is considered to be one of the important medium but what brands want is transparency and measurability. If that stays for long time then TV isn’t going anywhere for few more years.