The Vinod Gupta School of Management had the privilege of hosting Mr. G. G. Jayanta, National Marketing Head at Radio Mirchi on 21st March 2018 under its guest lecture series, Pratyaksh. An alumnus of the esteemed IIM Bangalore, Mr. Jayanta has handled several exciting positions of responsibility at Radio Mirchi in the last decade. He used live case studies from his plethora of experiences to deliver a lecture on “The Radio Industry and The Media Market in India: Strategies and the Way Forward” to an eager bunch of MBA students.
The session started with an insider's introduction to the company, wherein the audience clearly understood the structures of Times Network, Entertainment Network India Limited, Radio Mirchi and Mirchi Love. Mr. Jayanta also lucidly explained how the Media and Entertainment industry controls its ad-spend, earns ad-revenues and determines ad budgets for advertising on 5 major advertising platforms.
Next, the students were educated on the evolution of FM Radio and how it went from being a "dead industry" to "infancy", then to "growth" and finally went on to give birth to "internet radio". Mr. Jayanta explained the profitability of the radio business owing to minimal top-line spending and operational costs. He shed light on how ad planning is done such that incremental reach is achieved with minimum overlap. He also illustrated Radio Mirchi's use of classical marketing through Airport Radio, Mirchi Concerts, Mirchi Freshers and Mirchi Music Awards amongst others.
The job of marketing, effectively, is to maximize sales. Revenue comes from and is directly correlated with market share, and this market share is determined by listenership in the radio industry. Mr. Jayanta elaborated all these concepts and highlighted the fact that "media markets are unforgiving, and the winner takes it all" as this is particularly important, since, marketing is B2B but sales are B2C in the case of media markets.
The lecture concluded with Mr. Jayanta offering the students a peek into the Mirchi brand experience. He illustrated how an enabling environment is created and the right talent is identified at Mirchi and used 2 real-life case studies to exemplify the strategic choices and decision-making situations faced by companies like Mirchi from time to time. We hope to have such engagements in the time to come as well.