Can Television Advertisements get sensible ?? Are the Ad makers listening

Consumerism in India is being taken for granted. Ad makers and companies have the belief that anything and everything they manufacture and distribute can be sold. TV Ads are mostly being used as a medium to create awareness of the product existence. Ads no more communicate the value of a brand to its target audience. We are being subject to meaningless ads that we are forced to view painstakingly amidst our favourite television programmes. Today i was watching an ad on AVT premium tea..there was no mention about the product or its quality..its lineaments or how it satisfies the sense buds of an individual consuming tea. The couple buy a few sachets of the product just lured by the prospects of finding a gold coin in the satchet, a sales promotion offer the company has recently brought out. We all know that AVT is not a big brand in India. Many people up north dont even know the existence of such a company.

In such a scenario shouldnt the company focus on building its brand value rather than resorting to cheap sales gimmicks like these to fool the already gullible indian consumer. "Once u build a brand, u do not need ads"..The visionary JRD Tata's oft repeated talisman to corporate india..almost everyone seems to have forgotten this proverb.
The average indian consumer of today, to me, resembles an "Onyx dustbin" (this garbage collector is very famous in chennai) that gracefully accepts all that is thrown into it.

However there are a few rays of hope in the advertising field ..lets take the Bank of India ad..it has such a simple format but conveys such a huge meaning on customer service to the audience. AD managers like these are the crème de la crème of this industry, who should continue to be the bellweathers who can act as the change or catalyst in making ads more sensible and appealing to the target audience/ultimate customers of corporate India.

In the author's humble opinion, even marketing research agencies like AC nielsen can play a major role in reforming the institutional AD space given the fully integrated operation of the research agency. They have the pulse of the audience as well as consumers and keep a continuos tab on the changing tastes and fashions of consumerism in India.

Corporate India spends thousands of crore on selling and distribution expenses of which Media Ads form a significant proportion. In an era where Indian companies are doling out billions, making major large outbound deals in the M&A space at the click of a mouse through numerous power point presentations(PPT's sounds better), they cant even buy themselves a good script locally to promote their business models.

Listing Price for Motilal Oswal

The company is fundamentally strong and its fortunes are linked to the performance of the stock markets and continuation of the bullish phase of corporate india earnings. Probable listing price would be in the range of 900-950 in a supportive market condition. Investors can follow a simple strategy of comparing the peer performance of India infoline to profit from this stock

My article in hindu business line...it fetched me a book on "Information technology"

check out my article in Business line on "Investors biggest challenge in stock markets in six yrs" at the link below
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/mentor/2007/08/20/stories/2007082050151200.htm

Clinical trials

Clinical trials by biotech companies are the next catalyst for growth of the pharma sector in India. With margins from generic drugs getting lower by the day, the pharma sector is all set to become an outcast as far as the stock markets are concerned. Only those companies which do high end CRAMS work (Contract research and manufacturing) will survive the profitability conundrum. Under these circumstances, clinical study, research and trials in the bio pharma and life sciences space has come as a blessing in disguise for Indian companies which are nowscaling up rapidly to meet the outsourcing demand. Yes outsourcing of clinical trials is here to stay in India. IT companies have become so synonymous and addicted with the term "outsourcing" that they too are jumping into the fray. Companies like Infosys, IGATE global have opened up separate verticals in clinical research to work in areas of bioservices and bio informatics. India with its vast demographic profile in terms of its population provides a large pool of samples for clinical trials apart from the low cost advantage. Clinical trials can fetch anywhere between Rs.10 lakh to Rs.25 lakh per volunteer tested depending on the nature of the product tested on human body. Research and development costs for clinical trials alone cost 70% of the total cost of bringing a product to the market. With most pharma companies both within India and outside facing pricing pressures, the emphasis will be on cost management and control which is facilitated by outsourcing to low cost destinations with the requisite talent pool and resources.

Biocon and many other MNC pharma companies have already started outsourcing work to niche small bio pharma companies to undertake clinical research and study. Biocon derives 10% of its total revenue from clinical research work being a fully integrated bio technology player.

The potential for clinical trials are huge in segments like cardiovascular therapy, nutritional therapy, anti cholestrol, diabetes and cancer therapy etc. Niche small players in bio pharma/ bio services/ bio informatics space should focus on client retention, timely delivery and better turnaround time for clinical studies, widening the product and services profile, effective cost management to offset negatives like lack of earnings visibility in this space, thereby attracting investor attention in future. Atleast one or two interesting players are expected to emerge in the next decade or so on the Indian bourses in the biotechnology space apart from biocon. Celestial Labs is one such stock with an interesting story which gives it the potential to come on top. We will have to wait for the story to pan out positively.