He must be one of the few media professionals who regularly makes it to the page three columns of prominent publications in the country. Meet the flamboyant Andre Nair!

Nair's flair for numbers was evident since the time he decided to trade the couch for the calculator nearly 22 years back. Soon after graduating with a masters in Psychology, he joined the Ogilvy & Mather group in Singapore.

During his stint with O&M, Nair worked in a variety of countries including New York, Malaysia, Hong Kong. He was elevated to the post of the Asia Pacific president of Ogilvy's media operation "The Network".

Nair became co-CEO of MindShare Asia Pacific at its formation in 1997. He then launched Maximize as CEO Asia Pacific. He was appointed WPP marketing communications South Asia CEO in 2001. Currently, he is responsible for all WPP media operations in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

When he gets the time, Nair is a keen squash player. A train buff he plans to travel the world by train in instalments, having already crossed four continents - Europe, Australia, America, Asia (suffering the Trans Siberian Express from Beijing to Moscow & luxuriating on the Palace On Wheels in India).

In a tête-à-tête with indiantelevision.com's Thomas Abraham, Nair speaks about the media scene in India, in this the first of a two-part interview.

Before we proceed, I think a question needs to be put about the US-led invasion of Iraq. Whether the war is relatively short or long-drawn out, how will both these scenarios play out as far as the business climate in India is concerned?
In the US almost every major advertiser has backed out or has gone back to the drawing board to redraft their strategies. We won't see this activity happening in India.

Firstly, you have to understand that India by virtue of the unique nature of its economy is fairly well insulated from the rest of the world economy.

There are three key things that affect India in terms of whether the war is short or long.

The first is domestic oil prices. Second is inbound tourism. Thirdly are the reactions of multinational companies.

I will work backwards. There are not that many multinationals in India. Those that are here are fairly independent. So the net result of this is that unlike other markets in the world like Europe or Asia, they are less likely to be given or follow worldwide directives like "stay out of advertising."

The issue of oil prices doesn't affect advertising per se. It impacts all businesses. The real issue is how much will the rise in oil prices add to the cost of the business for advertisers.

The second part, inbound tourism is definitely going to suffer. After 9/11 it got whacked on the head and then rebounded. While this is not September 11, various countries have put out travel advisories. We will see a slowdown in inbound tourism though not to the extent that we saw after September 11. Of course, it is still very, very early days.

Hopefully, the higher cost of oil will adjust or compensate itself in some way or form over the next two months. The other oil producing markets may compensate to some extent. So the impact of the war won't be large. At least that is my view. But then again you never know these days.

Sticking with the business climate, keeping the US putsch out of it, are we out of last year's recession or not? Are things looking up?
As I mentioned earlier, the Indian market is pretty well insulated from the rest of the world. I honestly feel we talked ourselves into a recession last year. And while there might have been business issues, marketing issues, it had less to do with any worldwide recession as a result of September 11 and more to do with domestic issues.

We talked ourselves into a reduction in ad spend at the end of 2001. Our gloom became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Looking at our own performance, Maximize & MindShare had moderate growth last year. The scenario this year we're forecasting is also modest growth. I am talking about real, not nominal growth.

As to the industry spend, we forecast either flat or marginal growth. But keep it in mind that advertisers are finding more advertising routes to communicate and sell their products. These are channels that are not measured in the traditional manner. Some people can call them below the line and so on and so forth. While the marketing spends may have risen, what is not being captured on the advertising expenditure measurement side is the total marketing expenditure dealing with communication and selling.

I know this from some of my clients that marketing budgets have gone up substantially. And so I don't think that we can go by pure advertising measurements to suggest an indication of the health of the ad business.

You need to speak to heads of advertising agencies and media specialist companies to get a more representative view. And it is going to be more anecdotal than measured. You will get two varieties of answers. Agencies that have no capability outside of advertising are going to say business has gone down or remained flat. Agencies that have a much more broader capability are going to say it's held steady or grown.

Any other important factors that you believe may affect this year's business?
What is also significant is that the oil price rise is coming at a time when VAT (value added tax) has been introduced. Therefore the advertisers cost of business will rise and the FMCG sector will be most affected.

When VAT was introduced I am not sure how many people took note of it and when I say how many people I refer to producers, manufacturers, retailers. The retailers are the ones who I think are really clueless. This year is unique as we are coming into the last quarter when people are essentially trying push stock out of retail. They don't want to be holding reserves of stock as they have targets in mind. So the short-term effects are a bit of a question mark. Most people don't know what to do or what is going on, as it has not been properly explained to them.

Mid to long term it will affect the cost to marketers, especially of FMCG marketers. The question is whether they will take this out of advertising. It is very hard to judge that.

It's been just over a year since the media buying operations of (HTA), Contract and O&M, were consolidated under MindShare in India. Then, you reportedly had a 40 per cent market share in the Rs 90 billion industry. Have you increased your market share since then and if so by how much?
It has actually been 16 months. We are not a media buying operation by the way. We are a strategic planning, buying, media research company. We are media specialists. We are not MindShare. We are the WPP group of media companies that comprise MindShare, Maximize & MindShare Fulcrum.

I can say that WPP media are the leading media specialist agency in India by far. In fact on size, each of our three operating units is in the top five media agencies of India. We have increased our market share while many clients cut their budgets last year. And while we had an incredibly successful new business run, (we won 45/53 new businesses that we pitched), a portion from the new business went towards filling the holes created by the budget cuts.

We had moderate top line growth but we grew our bottom line very significantly. We rationalised our internal operations and made our processes more efficient.

This throws up the inevitable issue of a monopolistic behemoth. Your comment?
A monopoly implies that you restrict or stop your competition from operating. We have not done anything like that. Yes we have a large market share but that is akin to saying that Star or MAX recently because of cricket is a monopoly as they have the largest market share. What is important is what we do with our size. We are certainly competitive. Are we restrictive in any way? The answer is an absolute 'no'.

The creation of MindShare was to maximise operational competence, which it has done. At the same time you've been on record as saying you will not pressure media owners (on rates), as you did not want to destroy the goodwill created over the years. But that's not the feedback that's coming from the market. How do you respond to such carping?
MindShare and Maximize were created to bring a new order of accountability to marketing investments.

While operational efficiency is definitely one route, better buying and planning that build brands are the others. Let me take each while answering your question.

I mentioned that we have maximized operational efficiency. To do so we internally rationalised operations, and leveraged the scale and size of our business. The net result was to realise a greater degree of focus on media and to increase self-investment back into our product through training, proprietary research. Benefit to client is obvious by way of tools and resources at a value others can't provide.

On buying, of course, we get the best rates for our clients. I think a number of people mistook the fact that just because we were large that was our single focus. We see strategic planning and efficient buying as equally important.

In the area of buying, our objective is not to go out and simply get the cheapest rates for our clients. Our aim is to go out and do the most effective, relevant strategic media plans for our clients' brands and then to purchase those plans at the most efficient rate.

We don't want to go out and simply screw media owners to get the cheapest rate. There are many aspects to what is a good deal. However, we do recognise that in whatever we do and whatever our definition of the best deal is, we are looking at sustainable relationships, sustainable deals. There is no point in getting the cheapest rate today and killing the media owner who may not be around next year. Competition in the media market place is to our benefit. We have a vested interest in making a competitive media market place.

If all the media in India came down to one medium there would be no competition.

There are many ways to make a good deal with a media owner including cross media packages, bundled deals, long term deals, deals that go beyond a 30-second television commercial or a half page newspaper ad. If it's Mid-Day, how can we also use their outdoor and radio media for example. Therefore best deal does not necessarily imply cheapest rate.

I believe you have reservations about "too much research". Where do you draw the line?
We have a lot of media research in India already. I think we need to prioritise what we need and what we do not.

The second thing is that people aren't even using some the research we have today in the most appropriate and relevant manner.

The third point is that I get worried for younger people when research becomes a crutch or a substitute for thinking. All research can do is guide our thinking or offer directions. One still has to think. Too much research and too many tools are being used as crutches. If we are not careful we will trivialise our profession. If everything is a magic black box who needs us?

Media vehicles on offer have become so diverse that the work of a media buyer-planner has become extremely complex. What will be the near term impact of it all?
It is because it has become so complex that we are all in business. We have inherent skills, training, tools, research. Whether it's our competitors, or us it gives us a reason for being that cannot be reproduced cost effectively anywhere else.

What it does mean is that we need to change our focus from just thinking about TV. I hate to use these words but channel agnostic, channel neutral, 360 degrees, whatever phrase you want to use, into going back to marketing objectives and communication objectives. And saying any media can help fulfill these objectives. The difference is the way we use each of those media to fulfill those objectives and the employment of our efforts and our budgets across the spectrum of media.

From our perspective that is a function of three things. A process that is channel neutral. Secondly, proprietary research that goes beyond television, that goes beyond the syndicated TV research that we have. And thirdly appropriate tools and applications that aid us in the deployment of media budgets. And right at the start of all this, is actually appropriate training.

Our philosophy is that there is no such thing as bad media. There are only inappropriate uses of media. As to whether FM for instance, is a good medium or a bad medium, all media have their strengths and weaknesses. They depend on a brand, the market situation and whether the communication is relevant to that task.

What will their impact be in the near term? I think we are going to see a broadening of the consumer media repertoire, which will be used in a variety of ways.