Mumbai: The Marathi TV language landscape presents a stark contrast to the regional TV landscape in the southern states where the regional language is almost a necessity to communicate and connect with the viewers. Over 70 per cent of Maharashtra's TV viewership overlaps with Hindi TV channels, while only 30 per cent of viewers opt for purely Marathi entertainment and news.

Amid all this, is the vernacular language still the most important medium to communicate with the Marathi speaking, urban populace of television viewers in Maharashtra? This was one of the key questions debated at the recently concluded Tele-Wise Marathi, a virtual summit organised by Indiantelevision.com and presented by COLORS Marathi.

“Most people in Maharashtra, not just Mumbai are multi-linguistic and comfortable watching Hindi entertainment also,” said Godrej Tyson Food Ltd CEO Prashant Vatkar. “So, there is not so much of a need to create Marathi-exclusive advertising content, as long as the consumer is comfortable.”

Edelweiss Asset Management Ltd head -product, marketing & digital business- Edelweiss AMC, Niranjan Avasthi concurred. However, he added that one can definitely have a higher impact and reach if one customises the content in the local language. “The authenticity of the message being conveyed will also increase. So while it is not a necessity as far as Maharashtra is concerned, it definitely is an add-on, which can be an advantage for the marketers,” he added.

Over 45 per cent of the Maharashtra population lives in urban areas, as against the national average of 31 per cent, observed Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, executive director - marketing & sales Shashank Srivastava, adding that the state also has several independent urban centres apart from Mumbai, such as Pune, Nashik, Kolhapur, Nagpur, Solapur.

Recent data from Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) however, suggests that the ‘spillover’ viewership in Maharashtra has really reduced with regional channels seeing an uptick in numbers, especially in the last few months, as was pointed out by Madison Media Sigma- Madison World CEO Vanita Keswani, who was moderating the panel.

“Even in the urban centers, the viewers’ market share for Marathi content is actually higher than the non-urban areas of Maharashtra. So, there is no way a marketer can afford to ignore it, especially when it comes to the auto sector TG, the affinity for local content is pretty high,” said Srivastava indicating the continued need for specific investments in regional content.

Maruti continues to invest in regional markets along with Hindi and English content. The auto-maker uses digital for the lower end of the funnel, but television reigns supreme when it comes to brand building, reach and awareness and in TV it is the GEC and news genres, even in the vernacular belt, shared Srivastava.

According to RamBandhu (ESFL) director, Anand Rathi, when it comes to genres within the Marathi content, more regional news was consumed, especially during the pandemic when people were more curious and anxious to know local news. “The pickle and papad brand has targeted audiences across all classes. Pre-Covid there was a leaning towards GEC content, but all that changed with the onset of the pandemic and regional news channels took precedence over regional GECs for hyper-local reach,” he added.

Being more of an urban-centric brand selling to higher socio-economic class consumers, Godrej’s Vatkar shared that the brand uses more of digital and OTT to reach out to their specific and well-defined target audience. For this, they used experiential content by roping in celebrity chefs along with micro-influencers. The flexibility offered by digital platforms worked well for the brand, while regional language content did not play a big role since food is not so much language-oriented as much as it is an experiential concept, he pointed out.

While agreeing to food being more experiential in nature, Rambandhu’s Rathi had a different point of view when it came to the importance of regional language in Maharashtra’s food segment. “Language plays a crucial role in Maharashtra, for me to have a strong connect with my consumer. If I’m able to talk in the language that my consumer wants to hear, he would probably give preference to my product," Rathi said.

The brand has recently launched a TVC campaign with celebrity brand ambassador Madhuri Dixit-Nene for its papad and pickle category, who’s the new face for the brand.

Rathi said that the actor, for the first time, has done a commercial in the Marathi language, while stressing on the importance of the local language’s connect with the consumers.

Srivastava agreed that if the integration with the local content is strong, the brand connect can be good. “Our internal research has found that consumers actually look at brands differently if they find that connect- and the connect need not be based on just the product characteristics or the message- it is also the language in which it is being conveyed," he said.

Marathi language channels have the highest viewership share in the HSM (Hindi Speaking Market) after Hindi language channels. Talking about the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) when it comes to television as a brand vehicle, Srivastava shared that the reason the brand continues to spend heavily on the medium is that TV has performed convincingly on all its KPIs - both on the brand salience as well as the consumer conversion parts.

Keswani noted that, interestingly, the bulk of Marathi TV advertising is occupied by national advertisers, and not regional players, as would be expected. One of the reasons for this, RamBandhu’s Rathi shared, could be the high costs of regional GECs today from an advertiser’s point of view. Talking about the brand’s advertising journey from scratch, he said that since their product targets households across categories, they felt TV was the way to go, right from the starting point. So, while other mediums like hoardings and OOH helped, the kind of reach that TV gives would be difficult to emulate on any other medium, said Rathi.

With 115 million TV viewers, the Marathi TV language landscape is certainly not losing ground to newer kids on the advertising block, like digital. As per a Nielson study, television gives a whopping 83 per cent reach in Maharashtra, as against 51 per cent with digital. Television as a medium cannot be ignored when it comes to mass reach to a wider audience, regardless of the product category, it was roundly agreed by the panelists.