Siyaram spends Rs22cr on 2-minute commercial

Source :  Economictimes    
Date     : 20 Jul 2001

 Chaitali Chakravarty

NEW DELHI.,This  will probably put showman Subhash Ghai to shame. Production costs of Indian commercials have started hitting the roof. Siyaram Silk Mills has just forked out Rs 22 crore for a 2-minute commercial of Siyarams Premium Suiting Blends which is set to hit the tube in August end.

The Rs 2.5-crore production cost apart, the company has earmarked Rs 20 crore for a media splash. The longest ever commercial will run on prime channels for 16 weeks after making a debut in 300 cinema halls.

``The launch budget is big, perhaps the largest spend by any Indian company,’’ said Raj Nayak, executive vice president of Star India.

Siyarams has just struck a deal with Star Network where the suitings company will spend Rs 3 crore in the first three days of the launch. The scheduling of the 2-minute commercial will be on an hourly basis, to be aired from seven in the morning till midnight across all star channels.

The ad has been made by Percept and features Dino Morea and Bipasha Basu. According to watchers, Indian companies are spending a humungous amount on advertisements. It is the multinationals which are going slow with their ad budgets.

Till recently, this kind of splurge was unheard of or could be expected from the likes of Coke and Pepsi. The duration of the Siyaram commercial has taken some admen by surprise as well.

``A two-minute commercial is the longest I’ve ever heard,’’ said Viren Razdan who handles the Coke account in McCann Erickson. The Coke commercial featuring Hrithik and Aishwarya is a 90-seconder and that’s considered quite long, he said.

Sources point out that the production cost of this particular commercial is way below the Rs 2.5 crore mark set by Siyarams.

The fad of Indian companies making big-budget ad films picked up only recently when Bharti Enterprises travelled all the way to Australia to shoot a Rs 2-crore commercial involving more than thousand people.

``The ad supposedly bombed but it set the ball rolling,’’ sources said.

But the marketing gurus of Siyarams think that the new commercial shot against the backdrop of the richness of Rajasthan will position the suitings brand on a global platform and also boost sales.

``The ad film, Coming Home to Siyarams, will have a good impact on our sales volumes,’’ said N Gangadhar, Siyarams’ marketing head.

However, there are others in the industry who believe that this kind of media splurge alone does not benefit a brand.

``Huge onetime spending during launches with an over emphasis on high frequency has no long term benefits if the brand does not have the right follow up in terms of right pricing and availability,’’ said CVL Srinivas, COO of Madison Media.