For Better or For Worse

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: supplier, is the most important objective. Opportunities to optimise these initiatives are the focus of our buying strategies at Lintas.”

In other words, innovation—whether in planning, buying or execution—seems to be the name of the game. According to Natrajan, Lintas Media’s clients like ITC really push the agency to the edge to innovate. “Such clients encourage us to look for more differentiated, more impactful and emerging media options,” adds Natrajan.

Citing the example of ITC’s Bingo, Natrajan says that Bingo’s association with Fever 104—at the time of its launch in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore—and the creation of the property Bingo Tick Tock Boing for radio has worked well for the brand. “We will continue to look for new initiatives in an aggressive manner,” she adds.

Across the road, Optimum Media

Solutions is making huge investments on research and on developing proprietary tools to derive greater value for its clients’ budget. “We believe that the future of media business belongs to those who continuously invest on tools and researches that help in using scale to drive competitive edge,” says

Chandradeep Mitra, president of Optimum Media Solutions. OMS has a dedicated knowledge team whose job is to create new knowledge products for its clients and develop tools and processes that help stand out in the clutter. “Our agency has senior level technology and people to champion this cause,” says Mitra. “Being among the Top 5 agencies of the country by volume we have the necessary buying clout in the market,” he adds.

Starcom’s Kiran strongly believes that in future, the single scarcest resource will be consumer attention and companies will survive and grow or perish depending on how well they attract and hold consumer attention. “Our network is committed globally to emerge as the leader in the consumer attention economy. That will be our real competitive advantage. Plus we don’t think our industry can be defined as media buying any longer, since buying is only one of several things we do,” elaborates Kiran. Clearly, it’s survival of the smartest in the Indian media buying industry.

So what are the major challenges that Indian media agencies face today? According to Arumugam, the biggest challenge lies in leveraging the boom in the mobile and social networking space to build a connect between the brand and consumer. “As you know, the use of conventional media is on the decline across the globe,” she points out.