Stratagem Media hosts Media RHYTHM III

The 2-day training program media sellers saw participation from 7 leading media houses.

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | August 16, 2011

Stratagem Media Pvt. Ltd. – an independent media services company held its 3^rd training program of the The Media RHYTHM series, in Mumbai. It was a 2-day affair, for media sellers, with 32 participants from 7 media companies, with an average experience of about 7 years.

RHYTHM is an acronym for Realizing Higher Yields thru' Talent Harvesting in Media. The purpose of the program was to enable participants to channelize the thought processes that govern modern day practices in media selling.

Participating media houses included Sakal, Colors, Star TV, Spenta Multimedia, Vijay Karnataka, and Hello FM.

The theme of this 2-day program was “How to understand the marketing needs of a brand and devise a suitable media solution with available inventory”.

The program was flagged off by media veteran, Pradeep Guha, (ex-business head TOI and Zee Network). Over 2 days, the participants listened to industry stalwarts from both sides – the buying and the selling side, of the media business. Facilitators included Bharat Kapadia, Amit Ray, Kunal Jamuar, Suresh Balakrishnan, Jairaj Padmanabhan & Neeraj Manchanda.

The modules were conceived and anchored by Sundeep Nagpal – the Founder-Director of Stratagem Media Pvt. Ltd.

The topics were about behavioural aspects and about industry issues, including

-          Recognizing the need to create a brand out of 'oneself'

-          Identifying and using the communication objective of a brand to devise a media solution

-          Adopting a story-telling approach to develop an innovative idea

-          Innovating with a vision – with hands-on exercises

-          Channelizing the powers of the mind in media sales

-          Strategically alternating between volume and yield to achieve revenue targets

Nagpal, who believes that such open programs are an opportunity for media companies to harvest talent of select ad sales personnel, in batches.

He adds “As it normally happens, different parts of the program content prove useful to different participants. But, as a whole, the program also orients the line of thought and helps to condition the mind”.

The topics of this program were designed after some research with media owners, in order to increase their relevance. Also, this was followed by close consultation with the facilitators.

Pradeep Guha lamented the commoditization of the media business, which he said could only be overcome by differentiation. Mr. Guha was emphatic about the lack of attention to brand building, that media titles suffer from. He felt that this was ironical, given that the very same media brands / titles are instrumental in building other brands.

Neeraj Manchanda, a behavioral training specialist, spoke about adding value for the individual 'self'. He felt that this would automatically lead to a benefit for the organization/ media brand. Mr. Manchanda also administered a questionnaire designed to enable the self-realization of in-built, natural qualities / abilities, the outcome of which, was then presented and discussed in detail.

The next 2 sessions were by Mr. Suresh Balakrishnan, (who has 25 years of experience with companies like Hindustan Times, DNA, Mail Today, Initiative Media), & Mr. Jairaj Padmanabhan (with about 16 years of media strategy for advertisers).

They show-cased a completely new dimension to media sales, with striking case studies of media usage, which amply demonstrated how the communication objective of a brand can be the basis for integrated media usage for both, large & small budget brands. Participants got an insight into how to create brand value with limited resources and yet offer more than just ad space/ time.

According to Suresh Balakrishnan, “These programs are a tailor made for the media industry. Considering the pressure on top lines, The Media RHYTHM initiative is a great step in bringing some basic inputs to a training starved industry. Media companies don't have a structured training program or calendar for most employees as a result there is absolutely no investment in individuals. Such programs help organizations to provide a window into the media world, and take the onus of training away from the companies”.

He adds “I think Stratagem Media has identified the need to help develop talent in an industry which is always looking for it. I think these initiatives should be more frequent so as to really benefit this industry as a whole”.

Jairaj Padmanabhan said that “Given the dynamics of the media industry, there' s an increasing need for harvesting talent. A learning oriented series like Media RHYTHM strives to strengthen foundations as well as kindle new learnings. With speakers specializing in behaviour & domain skills/ knowledge, it's an ideal back-to-school experience”.

On day 2, Bharat Kapadia ignited the creative spark amongst participants, by making them realize their ability to think differently. He defined the framework for innovating with a vision, and then administered a group-wise exercise as a preliminary practical experience.

In the 2^nd half of the day, Amit Ray, started by establishing that the power of the mind is the primary differentiator between success and failure, and then followed it up by demonstrating how this power can be harnessed.

In the last session of the program, Kunal Jamuar started by demonstrating how to utilize the traditional brand purchase funnel in day-to-day media selling. Later, he also presented the methodology & interpretation of an analysis that could determine how & when media companies can oscillate between concentrating on volume v/s yields.

Over the 2 days, participants were therefore given varied insights, not only  into the media sales process, but also into the media business.

Stratagem Media, which conducts this Media RHYTHM series, has been in the media sales training space for more than 15 years. It has, under its belt, a plethora of customised and open programs on a variety of issues that media sellers are faced with. It has built a formidable set of resources in the area of training for media sales teams, and by now, Stratagem has trained more than 3000 ad sales people of all types of media houses, over the last 15 years.

Stratagem Media began as a media planning hub for medium-sized ad agencies in the early 90's and somewhere along the mid-90's, it morphed into a media services company mainly in the area of ad sales.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com