ANALYSIS / FILM REVIEW
PR agencies and clients FILMREVIEW: reshuffle strategies in 2009 Slumdog Millionaire
Ever since the economic downturn rang the alarm bells, companies have
sought to cut costs, slashing HR, marketing and advertising activities, along with trying strategies of restructuring businesses. Meanwhile, they still hope to make a profit. Some of the PR agencies affected told Business Review how such firms are coping with the industry slump.
Final answer? Dev Patel and Frieda Pinto
By Magda Purice
Danny Boyle’s 2008 smash hit Slumdog Millionaire is what kind of film? A. An uplifting rags to riches tale of a street child made good. B. Poverty porn, which shamelessly cashes in on the deprivation of Mumbai’s slums. C. A beautifully shot homage to India. D. A facile and predicable love story. Is that your final answer? There can be few people left who have managed to avoid the Slumdog buzz, especially since it swept the board in February with eight Oscars. The story, in case you are one of the three people who haven’t heard it, follows young Jamal (Dev Patel as an adult) on his journey from the Mumbai slums of his childhood to the precipice of a great fortune, courtesy of TV game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? But how can an uneducated pauper, a mere slumdog, possibly have correctly answered a series of tough questions? Slippery host Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor) smells a rat, and the Mumbai police haul Jamal in for what the Bush regime might euphemistically have termed “enhanced coercive interrogation techniques” (viewers of a sensitive nature may want to cover their eyes for the early scenes). Once unhooked from the electrodes, Jamal starts to explain that he got the answers right not through cheating, but because various episodes from his past, shown in flashback, each coincidentally corresponded to a question. It’s a novel premise for a film, and one that works well, largely because the flashbacks are such cracking stories. Humour, horror, love, crime and high drama are dished up in bite-sized chunks, against a colourful Indian backdrop. Whether it’s the young Jamal burrowing out
Firms delivering communication policies and advertising fear of an average loss of around 35-40 percent of their annual turnover due to clients’ low budgets for this year. According to First Impression agency, the main changes will be seen in BTL and outdoor. Print and TV are also in the firing line, as they involve high costs for campaigns that are not certain to deliver fast results. At end-2008, agencies identified a shift in their client briefs for this year, with more precise targets and faster and clearer results for public communication. Judging by the agencies which agreed to reveal their strategies, it seems that PR and internet advertising, through their small decreases, will take up the slack left behind by cuts in marketing campaigns and the advertising mix of TV and print.
CHEAP
BUT CREATIVE STRATEGIES
A study by Anteea Consulting, which specializes in delivering marketing and business solutions, found that the worst falls have hit the mass market events segment, large advertising campaigns and business events. According to the agency’s data, clients have been advised to switch their advertising or image campaigns to social marketing and creative events, as well as PR campaigns. The agency said the only firms to have entirely ceased to outsource their advertising and communication services to it are the big real estate accounts. “Clients from the real estate and automotive industries have significantly shrunk their project volumes, while the ongoing ones are strictly planned and approved quarterly. Pharmaceutical and retail clients have kept up the steady trend of the last few years, with no big 16
changes,” added Dan Florescu, consultant media and partner at Sound Communications. The loss in Agama’s portfolio took the form of a Romanian company (e.n: from the healthcare field) which decided to cancel its partnership with the agency and hire an internal junior PR. Representatives of First Impression said, “Stopping outsourcing may balance the books but only if the substitute is well trained and experienced.” Bianca Iuga, associate partner of Agama Consulting notes the danger of substituting a specialized service from a senior consultant or an agency for a junior who only executes and does not deliver communication strategies. On a challenging year for most industries, Saatchi & Saatchi still intends to make a profit at end-2009. After making a loss in 2007, the next year will be profitable for the agency, according to MD Mona Opran. “Even though the market is tipped to freeze, the agency’s business will surely grow. Even now, company revenues have already exceed the forecasts from early 2008, and next year is expected to bring even higher growth with the focus on the new-business segment and the improvement of our creative product. Most clients have cut their media budgets but, even so, the creative component will bring revenues to the agency and clients as well,” said Opran earlier this year. In 2008, the agency grew organically by 15 percent. Although its representatives do not foresee concrete problems for 2009, they are not ruling out difficulties which could lead to budget costs or downsizing. “I think that a bright idea sells better than a good one. In the next year, we will have to calculate 10 times and cut once when spending money, but we also have to understand the way that our consumers think with the right message,” Opran said. ■
of the business end of an outdoor toilet to get his favourite Bollywood star’s autograph, or a tense race-against-time reunion with his long lost love at a railway station, the vignettes are always gripping, even if they test the bounds of credibility too often. Accompanied on his travels by his double-crossing brother Salim (Madhur Mittal), Jamal’s goal is to find his childhood sweetheart Latika (Frieda Pinto), from whom he becomes separated in some of the most shocking scenes of the film. His nemesis is gangster Maman (Ankur Vikal), a recurring figure in the trio’s lives. With its extremes of poverty and riches, broad-stroke archetypal characters and reliance on coincidence, there is something enjoyably Dickensian about Slumdog. Its good old-fashioned melodrama and thrills and spills galore make it hard not to be drawn in by this eminently likeable movie. But eight Oscars? More than the Godfather and Godfather II? More than Casablanca? For all that it is an excellent piece of entertainment, Slumdog has a trite and predictable plot, one-dimensional characters and appeals entirely to the heart without troubling the head. If this was the most Oscar-worthy movie made in 2008 – and it could well have been – it does not say much for the current state of intelligent film. On the ethical side, the spectacle of the child actors involved being paraded at the Oscars’ ceremony then shipped back to the slums in which they live was discomfiting – although the picture celebrates India as much as it censures it. Such is Slumdog’s charm, that it feels churlish to make such comparisons or criticisms. This is cinematic comfort food of the highest order. Debbie Stowe Director: Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan (co-director India) Starring: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, Ankur Vikal On at: : Hollywood Multiplex, Cityplex, The Light, Movieplex BUSINESS REVIEW / April 6 - 12, 2009