Are there enough innovations happening in India as far as media buyers/planners are concerned?
Frankly, no. I believe that the understanding of innovation as a media concept by our market is rather primitive. As a result, we have a blinkered way of looking at media innovations. We think that the only role of media innovation is to cut through media clutter and increase pure visibility. Therefore, some of us feel that sponsoring any show, or running a few crawlies, can be called an innovation. Some others think that anything done in cricket beyond taking spots is innovation. As a result, we have a strange situation of ‘innovation clutter’. We need to constantly remind ourselves that ‘innovation’ is different from ‘irritation’. If our so-called innovations alienate the viewer, we would have achieved nothing. So we should work together with the channel programming folks in conceptualizing and implementing innovations rather than force our so-called ‘innovative’ ideas on them. After all, they are much more interested in keeping the viewers on their channel than any media planner or
