MUMBAI, December 23: Bad news continues to flow out of Asia. According to e-Asia, an electronic mail newsletter brought out by FT Media and Telecoms, Asia's medium-term advertising prospects have been downgraded in Zenith Media's latest Advertising Expenditure Forecasts. The loss of consumer confidence in Southeast Asia as a result of the currency crisis has led the media services agency to forecast a drop in Asia's global adspend share from the 27 per cent it previously predicted for 1999 to 25 per cent in 2000.

Despite this, the report says Asia Pacific will remain the fastest growing media market of the big three (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific), with 5.3 per cent expansion at constant prices forecast for 1997, slowing to 3 per cent in 1999. A recovery to 3.5 per cent in 2000 is expected as the region's economies settle to renewed growth with more sustainable expectations. Japan is expected to account for 57 per cent of Asia-Pacific's adspend in 1997. However, the country's healthy 1996 economy proved unsustainably good, and growth has slowed to almost nothing, the report says. Without Japan, Australia and New Zealand, the region spent about $26 billion on advertising in 1997. This is down almost half the 26 per cent growth recorded in 1994, but is expected to remain at 14 per cent growth a year until 2000. The report says emerging Asia remains the most important growth market and should reward investors with strong nerves.

MGM Gold not to buy stake in Home TV

The market has been abuzz with rumours that MGM Gold is likely to take an equity stake in Home TV buying up the stakes of Pearson and TVB who want to sell out. That buzz is likely to remain just buzz if one goes by MGM sources who say that they have no interest in investing in Home TV because it is losing too much money. A source said that MGM did take a look at the proposal but decided against it as it is a losing proposition.

Ads with a purpose

What strikes a visitor to Singapore is the plethora of social ads. The ads are across billboards, posters, and even on television. While their number is not as much as in Hong Kong or in India, they measure up to to those in Hong Kong and over those in India in terms of creativity. Campaigns against smoking, creating AIDS awareness, decreasing the crime rate are too common. Most of the ads play heavily on emotions and in that they beat some of the work that has emerged from India. A daughter's gratitude because her father has stopped smoking on hearing of the death of a friend's father due to cancer is the storyline in one of the ads. The narration by a youth who went out on a partying binge with friends, landed up in bed with a strange woman, and finally with AIDS is the story line of a TV commercial. While the ideas may not be new, what really makes you sit up and look is the production values of the ads and the single-mindedness of the message of the ads. It would be wise if the Indian ad industry would come together and select a handful of issues they would like to address and work single-mindedly on them instead of frittering away money on fragmented social communication. A stress on better production values would go a long way towards communicating the message more effectively. Issues such as hygiene, driving without driving, a more wholesome family and crime need to be tackled and in a much more effective manner.

Economy crisis pose threat to ad industry

Everyone in the media business knows that 1998 is going to be a tough one. But the crisis in the region is going to send a lot of business plans awry, according to Singapore-based ESPN Star Sports managing director Alexander Brown. Where earlier industry professionals used to say that it would take about five to 10 years to make a business in Asia and markets like India, Brown says the equation is likely to change to something like 15-20 years possibly. The currency crisis, the economic downturns and the political upheavals in various Asian countries are factors that are consistently going to throw a spanner in the works. But that doesn't mean that companies should throw in the towel. "Some may. You may see a few mergers and acquisitions among the entertainment channels in Asia in 1998," says Brown. "The years ahead are going to be times of belt-tightening, cost controls and head count control. And they are going to be very testing."