There may be no finesse in their ads, but a several hundred-crore industry has spawned around Mom-and-Pop brands that use M-and-P agencies to advertise on regional channels.

By Debojyoti Chatterjee & Vinod Mahanta

Sandeep Bhatia & Vivek Sethi Prime Time Communications Theirs is a television production house, spot-marketing organisation, and ad agency rolled into one. And they are not short on jargon either.

The office of sweet advertisers is a one-room cubby hole on the 13th floor of a high-rise building in New Delhi's crowded Tolstoy Road. It is from this strategic-bunker that Rajender Nanchahal, a portly 50-year-old who looks more like the owner-manager of a neighbourhood store of the kind that are ubiquitous in India, rules over his establishment of three, a peon, a receptionist, and a creative executive (the appellation is a noun, not an adjective). Nanchahal's desk is littered with prints of the ads he has made for the small screen: Taj Reetha detergent, Mugli Ghutti 555 (a tonic for children), Haridarshan Dhoop incense sticks, and Simco hair fixer.

Nanchahal doesn't know it-and he probably couldn't care less, as the fact that follows is of little utilitarian value-but he is representative of a growing breed of advertising entrepreneurs. Like Sumitava Ghosh who runs Ghosh Publicity in Kolkata, Lekha Ratnakumar of Lekha Productions, in Chennai, Vandana Banerjee who owns Hyderabad-based Aakarshana Advertising, and a couple of hundred others.

Nanchahal, Ghosh, and Ratnakumar don't gripe about the slowdown in the advertising business; they are busy counting their profits. The first is reluctant to talk numbers, the second doesn't need much persuasion to boast that he nets between Rs 14 lakh and 16 lakh a year (not bad for a one-man operation), and all the third will say is that he releases Rs 3 crore worth of ads to one Tamil media-vehicle every year. Says Amitava Basu, marketing head of CTVN, a local Bengali channel: ''Around 75 per cent of our revenue comes from local brands. And most of it is in the form of retail advertising-anything from a saree shop to private tutorials.'' And the bulk of such advertising is done by local agencies.

Rajender Nanchahal Sweet Advertising Head of a three-man agency, Nanchahal is part of an invisible Rs 500-900 crore industry

Kanchan Datta is one entrepreneur who anticipated the trend. In 1997, Datta, then 30, and a manager at Saatchi & Saatchi's Bangalore-office handed in his papers and decided to start his own agency, Inner Circle in Kolkata. His peers mocked him, but four years down the line Datta has a 10-man operation, billings of Rs 2 crore and his feet firmly on terra firma. ''I felt that if one had to do something (on one's own in advertising) it would have to be regional; the signs that big-time ad spending was slowing down were clear even when I started out.''

Agencies like Inner Circle owe their existence, and sustenance, to vernacular-language television channels and the local print media. Between 1996 and 2001, the number of these channels has increased from 5 to more than 20. And advertising rates have dropped, from a few thousands (for a 10-second spot) for popular vern channels like Sun and e-TV, to a few hundreds for those like CTVN and Tara. ''Small-time advertising agencies feed off vernacular television channels; they simply create an ad, and let the client negotiate the rates with the channel,'' says Pravin Tripathy, the head of Starcom India, Leo Burnett's media arm.

Not all agencies of this kind are content to merely create the ad; some do offer media-planning and media-buying services to their clients. And not all are pure-advertising agencies. Some like Delhi-based Prime Time Communications are TV production houses, spot-marketing organisations, and advertising agencies bundled into one. All types of agencies belong to this genus, though, slip under the radar of the advertising industry in all its organised glory. Most agencies like Sweet Advertisers aren't accredited with ins (Indian Newspaper Society); few are members of AAAI (Advertising Agencies Association of India); and it is a rare representative of this species that makes an appearance in A&M magazine's annual advertising survey, a numerical-weathervane in an industry where most people hate numbers.

Conservative industry-minders put the size of the unorganised advertising business at Rs 500 crore. Others believe it could be as high as Rs 900-odd crore. But, as Tarun Rai, Senior Vice-President and General Manager, HTA admits, there's no denying the existence of this industry. ''The number of agencies making a living from producing ads for small companies could range from 100 to over 400. But they are out there.''

Plainspeak, ageing starlets, and focussed clients

The names David Ogilvy, Jean Noel Kapferer, and John Philip Jones mean little to Ghosh, Rajkumar and their peers. Some, like Sudeep Bhatia of Prime Time do take a stab at mouthing impressive sound-bytes. ''The advertising plan (for a local brand) has to be unique (Sic), keeping local nuances in mind.'' Or, ''The logic behind using starlets in ads is that some products have no differentiator (Sic), so a known face becomes the differentiator.'' The majority, though, is under no delusion about what it does. ''I'm not into advertising; I'm into publicity,'' confesses Sumitava Ghosh of Ghosh Publicity. ''All I need is a couple of actors from the sitcom circuit to endorse the product. And lining up a guy with a video camera is neither difficult nor expensive.''

The starlet, and her male equivalent, whatever he be called, are recurring themes in this genre of advertising. Prime Time had Deepti Bhatnagar in the Shimla Paan Masala ad and Sweet Advertisers roped in Dara Singh and Rajeshwari for a commercial for Shaktibog Atta. ''These people work for between Rs 15,000 and Rs 30,000 a shoot,'' says Nanchahal. ''People like seeing these stars and starlets, and the companies believe they get their money's worth.''

That most clients certainly do. Santoshi Kanjilal, the owner of Mohini Mohan Kanjilal, one of Kolkata's oldest garment retail outlets believes simple ads on local channels are just what the marketing maven ordered. ''We cater not to the sophisticated customers, but to those from semi-urban Bengal. In fact, a sophisticated ad might actually frighten my customer away.''

Then, there are companies that insist there are several advantages to actually using smaller agencies. Ashwani Subba Rao, the managing director of Ashwani Homeo and Ayurvedic Products, a Hyderabad-based company that owns the best-selling Ashwani brand of hair oil (promise, no more Ashwanis) is one such. ''We don't go for the larger ad agencies, because they do not think we are big enough for them. All they are worried about is monthly billing.'' Vuyyuru Satish, the managing director of an eponymously named beverage company that makes and sells the Biky's brand of club soda popular in parts of Andhra and Orissa, quantifies that billing. ''We spend between Rs 50,000 and Rs 60,000 a month on ads, but a bog agency will not work for any company that offers them billings less than Rs 300,000 a month.''

Small agencies focussed on regional brands can work for less because their overheads are lower. Ratnakumar-purely for kicks, one of his large clients is a lingerie/night-wear brand called Rasathe Darling-employs three people, his daughter, and two other relatives. J.A. Khan, runs Media House Advertising & Marketing (2000-01 billings-Rs 1 crore), a one-man outfit. ''My only investments have been in a car, a mobile phone, and a computer. I put in between 15 and 18 hours a day.''

Limited aspirations, size-related issues, and an uncertain future

None of these smaller agencies have larger ambitions. Vimal Anand of Bigdot, an agency with billings of Rs 5 crore is pretty clear about his agency's place in the advertising food chain. ''Large companies have two agencies, one for brand-advertising, and another, like us, for below the line activities. We have our limitations; we don't talk strategy to clients, and we don't have the media-clout the biggies do; but what we do, we do well.''

There's little these agencies can do, however, when the brands they handle become large enough to attract the attention of bigger agencies. For instance, Look Ads, which handled Sumangal, a leading men's store brand, for atleast eight years creating major brand awareness for the store in Kolkata lost the account to HTA, once the brand became bigger. Worse, larger agencies in the quest for growth may think it worth their while to take on smaller regional accounts. ''What is small today may be big tomorrow,'' says Aditya Atri, a Vice-President at McCann Erickson. ''We have to convince this client that we wish to partner him and (that we are) not one of those agencies chasing billings. Only then can we succeed in the lesser metros and other towns.''

That puts a question mark over the future of small agencies surviving off regional and local brands. Right now, though, all's well in the lower reaches of India's advertising industry. Air-play on vern channels is still going cheap, clients still think loud music, bright colours, and happening starlets will sell their product (as long as the cost involved isn't too high), and there are enough small-time agencies to fulfil this need. Their work may never win a Golden Lion at Cannes but what the heck, it is advertising too.

additional reporting by E. Kumar Sharma and Nitya Varadarajan 

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