Entertainment Network’s Radio Mirchi recently gave a major overhaul to its brand identity by pivoting to just ‘Mirchi’. Capturing the essence of the company’s transformation in its campaign — ‘Sirf radio nahi, har entertainment mein Mirchi hai’ — the brand has dropped the word radio from its logo and name. The change in the branding strongly reflects Mirchi’s hyperlocal, multiformat and multi-platform content & solutions capabilities that can cut across digital, live and FM.

To know more about Mirchi’s move, the impact on advertising revenues of the radio industry and its recent trends BW Marketing World spoke to Prashant Panday, MD & CEO, Mirchi.

Excerpts:

How has the radio industry dealt with the anxious times of the pandemic?

The pandemic posed several challenges to industries, including the radio industry, which led to disruptions across advertising, and particularly retail advertising. As a result, ad volumes saw a dip in Q1 and Q2 of FY21, putting pressure on ad pricing. While in Q3, the tide has turned for ad volumes, the ad pricing continues to remain low. I believe it will take another 2-3 quarters for pricing also to turn the corner. In the meanwhile, radio broadcasters have done several things to contain the damage to their businesses.

The sales teams lowered prices, and chased a newer set of advertisers like pharma companies, SMEs, etc., as well as a few traditional sectors like banks and internet companies who continued advertising. Broadcasters put a halt to on-ground events and instead started offering their digital assets like social media, YouTube channels, RJs as influencers to advertisers. Additionally, we have also invested heavily in training our members. We have not only re-organised our company structure in line with our transformation strategy but are also ready to return to our growth path, as the market revives.

How has Mirchi transformed from being just a radio channel to a multi-platform and hyperlocal approach?

For at least a decade, Mirchi has been focusing on providing ‘solutions’ to advertisers, rather than just selling them their ad inventory. As a part of our strategy, we recommend advertisers to share their marketing challenges, and allow us to come back with suitable solutions for those challenges. In FY20, nearly one-third of Mirchi’s revenues came from the delivery of such solutions.

Typically, solving challenges require big and bold ideas, and a multitude of media options to execute. And in the past, we have developed solutions, which have relied on on-ground activations, digital videos, social media, print, TV and OOH advertising. We have also created podcasts for advertisers and developed content, which has been deployed on the plain old telephone system.

Given we were already treading on the path towards becoming an all-encompassing entertainment company with an unparalleled multi-channel, multi-platform and hyperlocal reach, in August-September 2020, we took steps towards giving our transformation a big thrust. First, we re-launched our brand, by taking the very bold decision to drop ‘Radio’ from ‘Radio Mirchi’. We figured that the consumer’s connect is with Mirchi, not necessarily with Radio Mirchi and that is why consumers supported our non-radio products in such a big way. Our second step was to redesign the organisation structure. We created a much more detailed structure to handle the digital business, and added a lot of heft to our creative services team that develops and executes solutions. Today, this team has been rebranded as ‘Brewery’, because its mandate is to brew solutions!

In line with its new brand identity, take us through Mirchi's roadmap for 2021?

In 2021, Mirchi will continue on the path of its transformation. We are looking to transform this traditional media company into a digital powerhouse, and add a lot of headcount in this digital team. With the launch of several new videos, audio and web products, we aim to grow our reach from the present 60 million-odd to more than 100 million people. At the same time, we will strengthen our Brewery team and will strongly grow our solutions business in terms of revenues.

We will also ensure that radio bounces back as much as possible in the coming years. With a big network, radio continues to be our mainstay in terms of revenues and has great potential especially with the Phase 3 stations. So, in all, we will step on the digital and solutions accelerator, whilst ensuring radio grows as well.

What are some of your strategies to make sure that advertising revenue is sustained?

The strategy that we have believed in for several years, and will continue chasing in 2021, is the ‘solutions’ strategy. This is because we believe that advertisers want solutions to their challenges, they are not looking to buy inventory. When an advertiser buys ad inventory, he keeps the risk of achieving results with himself. But if an advertiser buys solutions from Mirchi, he shares his risks with Mirchi. Thus, we will continue offering better and bigger solutions to advertisers, and push them towards demanding the same from all their media partners.

Tell us some of your key learnings of the year 2020 and what will Mirchi's plan of action be to win over listeners in the post-pandemic era?

The one good development of 2020 was that radio listenership actually went up! In-car listenership went down in Apr-Jun 2020 due to the initial lockdown, but it has returned in an even bigger way in subsequent months as more people took to private transport. However, what is more exciting is that in Apr-Jun, people started listening to radio on their mobile phones and on other devices (since their cars were off the roads).

The key learning for Mirchi was that it forced us to ask ourselves the values we added to our advertisers. Did we sell inventory to them? If so, what was the value we were adding? Of course, we gave them 40 million weekly listeners, and these listeners bought their products. Or did we understand their business, and offer solutions? In which case, we worked as part-consultant-part-media. I think 2020 proved that solutions are far more effective than selling inventory. This was the biggest learning. It gave our strategy a big thrust, the results of which we will see in the years ahead.

What is your vision for Mirchi for the year 2021?

Our vision statement is very clear – ‘To be India’s number 1 city-centric media and entertainment company’. City-centricity is at the core of our being. Mirchi does not compete with big TV companies, OTT platforms or digital companies; rather we operate at a city-centric level, competing if at all with print and OOH players.

Also, we have specifically outlined our goal to be a ‘media and entertainment’ company. Twenty years ago, when we started, we used to just say ‘media’ and we have been leading in that space since 2000. The ‘entertainment’ is what will shape our destiny in the years ahead. Specifically, in 2021, and by 2025 latest, we will see Mirchi transform into a bigger digital solutions and entertainment company, rather than just radio. While all businesses – radio, solutions, digital will grow, growth in solutions and digital will be much more rapid. By 2025, we believe that solutions and digital will become more than 50% of our revenues.

According to you, what are the upcoming trends of the radio industry?

The long-term trend in radio has been that the definition of listeners is changing. Earlier, women at homes and students were the core listeners. However, for the last few years, we have seen in-car listenership (mostly young and middle-aged males) shooting up, while students continue to hold strong. In relative terms, the share of women listeners has been reducing, and the share of male in-car travelers has been increasing. This is very good for radio because these in-car audiences are mostly in bigger cities and advertisers are very keen to connect with this audience. As a result of this, the profile of advertisers is also changing. We are seeing that the share of advertising from FMCG has been reducing, while more male oriented products like auto/BFSI/real estate have been rising, and we expect this trend to continue.