Hasta La Motion!

Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) is the technology arm of Prime Focus, which serves the needs of the media and entertainment industry services. PFT attempts at bringing together a unique blend of Media and IT skills backed by a deep understanding of the global media and entertainment industry. 

CLEAR™, PFT’s award-winning Hybrid Cloud technology enabled Media ERP platform and digital content services help broadcasters, studios, advertisers, sports bodies, news agencies, the government and service providers drive creative enablement, enhance ecosystem efficiencies and sustainability, reduce cost and realise new monetisation opportunities. 

PFT, VP advertising & head of media library Zenobia Noshir Sanjana over an e-mail interaction with AnimationXpress.com’s Sidharth Iyer expounds the benefits of using CLEAR™, how is it going to revolutionise the way digital advertising works and leveraging the new media, among other things.

Excerpts:-

What are your views on the rise of advertising across TV, Cinema and Digital?

With the advent of digitization, the advertising industry is expected to expand through online and offline platforms. While the longevity for offline platforms is high, and the interaction is low, the reverse trend works for online advertising. The latter is a more effective way to virtually connect with every corner of the country. Given the agility of the online platforms, content, too, has evolved overtime, and focus has shifted to localisation and targeted advertising so as to cater to regional tastes and needs. While print and television will continue to be popular with the masses, digital advertising is making place for itself in the advertising space.

In 2013, the total advertising spend from various sectors across all media was estimated at INR 362.5 billion, within which digital advertising revenue grew by 38.7 per cent, occupying a market share of 8.3 per cent; this trend is expected to continue in 2014. (Source: FICCI-KPMG 2014) 

Cinema advertising has gained in appeal due to digitization. What is the real opportunity? 

Prior to digitisation, advertising was restricted to the main 600 centers across the country. The digital era has truly transformed cinema. With digitisation, almost 100 per cent of all screens across India get access to content on the day of the release. This has brought about a huge opportunity for advertisers in theatres. Now, all 8,000-odd digital screens across India are available to advertisers who can use cinema to reach out not only to the audiences in metros and Tier 1 cities, but across Tier 2 and 3 cities of the country. And they can do so without the prohibitive cost of additional prints and with the greatest flexibility in scheduling. Cinema advertising revenues have grown by at least 35 per cent year on year for almost every major theatre chain in India touching roughly Rs 550 crore in 2013-14.

Can you give an overview of how Prime Focus Technologies’ solutions are helping the advertising industry?

The advertising industry deals with multiple challenges, including last minute deadlines that leave little time for shoots and editing process, followed by time-consuming delivery of tapes, and ultimately, a cumbersome process to distribute the content; all these factors often impact the final product.

Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) has made content management a very simple process by enabling advertising agencies and brands to shift from a tape to a tapeless environment, thereby dismissing one of the major problems in the ad industry. PFT’s hybrid cloud-enabled Media ERP technology, CLEAR™, helps reduce the duplication of effort and resources associated with physical media, manpower, logistics and administration – all of which add up to huge costs for managing tape-based deliveries.

Imagine a brand powerhouse like Unilever, GSK, Nestle or Dabur, where each brand runs numerous spots in different media formats in each market, in different languages, every day. Managing movement of content from provider to broadcaster in tape format is laborious, costly, unsustainable and time consuming; and in case you need to reuse the content or to make local versions, for every extra step of the content lifecycle, tape-based delivery is adding to irrecoverable costs. In an increasingly agile world, these processes are still in the primitive tape-mode.

In all this chaos, the CLEAR™ Spot Distribution solution facilitates acquisition and delivery of files from/to the ecosystem. The CLEAR technology platform automatically optimises bandwidth usage, and provides effective transmission.

What’s also important is that content that is being created needs to be platform agnostic. Quality conversion for broadcast and cinema at competitive price and maintaining image quality is key; we specialise in conversion of SD to HD digital formats and use industry standard conversion equipment.We also support aspect ratio corrections and multi-format up conversions, down conversions and cross conversions from any HD format to any HD format including support of resolutions up to 1080p.

How different is advertising on new media? What is PFT’s contribution in bringing a change?

New media brings along an array of platforms of visibility for our clients. It has already shown tremendous progress, and is poised to grow steadily over the next few years; and this growth will be faster than any other category. Traditional advertising channels such as print and TV will soon be outgrown by digital.

PFT has the most comprehensive set of integrated services built around clients’ needs. Our services span the entire marketing communications cycle covering creative concepts, production, versioning, logistics and fulfillment across channels, platforms and regions. We manage both online and offline assets.

Production: We pre (shoot) and post produce all types of Audio Visual advertising and communications across all media. We produce over 3,500 unique content pieces every month which then is published across broadcast, radio, outdoor and online. We can take brand engagements live to audiences through our Live Streaming production services.

Versioning & Transcreation: We can help tailor brand messages for specific target audiences. A full range of culture and legal consulting, local consumer insights and multiple language services capabilities are offered by us. We produce the VOs with native speakers and post produce the individual language versions in a timely and cost effective manner.

Digital: We can create optimised digital brand experiences with our suite of services spanning web development, mobile and tablet integration, SEO, digital publishing, email and campaign management, social media and app development. PFT is a YouTube certified partner for Audience Development.

Distribution Services: Leveraging CLEAR Media ERP platform, PFT delivers spots and marketing/media materials to major media owners across broadcast, publishers, online, outdoor and radio.

Cloud Digital Services: PFT has the most comprehensive suite of technical services including Archiving, Metadata creation, and Content Preparation Services like QC, Mastering and Bulk Digitization.

Can you explain how the entire spot distribution ecosystem works with broadcasters / cinema and advertisers?

PFT has revolutionised the way TV spot transcoding and distribution process works.

CLEAR™ Spot Distribution workflow is orchestrated to facilitate collection of tapes or files from content providers, followed by QC, digitisation and transcoding in the apt format for final delivery to channels. A low resolution copy is made available on the CLEAR™ Media ERP platform for preview, creative review, cataloguing and Standard & Practices (S&P) reviews. Direct digital delivery of files is facilitated by a network of edge servers located at the broadcasters’ premises. The files are delivered digitally from the CLEAR™ server to the play-out location. Sending large files quickly, reliably and at a lower cost makes CLEAR™ a perfect choice for the advertising, and video production communities.

CLEAR™ Spot Distribution can be integrated with the agency’s order management system and can collect media delivery advice on the back of media release orders. CLEAR™ works on a white box approach. A customer is notified when content is being delivered at every single stage through e-mail and SMS.

CLEAR™ enables to push commercials, promos, trailers, film rushes, long-form and other media locally and internationally. It also enables approval of digital content to media players. Security tools include user authorisation and authentication, session management, token-based UR authentication and integrated digital rights management (DRM) support. Comprehensive reporting happens on all digital deliveries through the system. CLEAR’s intuitive UI makes it easy for even non-technical savvy users to receive and distribute content. The technology is agile in deployment and offers a scalable ‘Pay-as-you-Grow’ option. It saves infrastructure costs, avoids expensive VTRs, software, servers, network equipment and bandwidth infrastructure.

How is CLEAR’s spot distribution different from traditional or other spot distribution solutions?

CLEAR’s spot distribution infrastructure offers the most comprehensive set of integrated services built around clients’ needs. PFT’s services span the entire marketing communications cycle by providing a one stop solution by covering creative concepts, production, versioning, logistics and fulfillment across channels, platforms and regions. Another defining differentiator is that we are equipped to manage both online and offline assets.

Running global campaigns in regional markets effectively – is intelligent, but how will it be executed, is Versioning the answer? 

Brands and service providers face innumerable uncertainties when deploying campaigns in global markets. Versioning is the obvious answer to make a communication market sensitive but it should ensure that language and visual transcreation stays true to the brand’s strategy.

With targeted advertising and localisation services, campaigns can be focused on a city or even a specific locality in a city. Due to these changing trends, media planning for a campaign is more relevant than before. With the number of channels in India alone crossing the 700 mark, the reach of an ad campaign can be phenomenal for building or maintaining a brand. Versioning or language dubs for an advertisement in local/regional language and weaving the same with an outdoor and/or print media campaign is a trend, which is increasingly seen in the country and will be targeted to garner maximum recall amongst the masses.

What are PFT’s credentials in creative Versioning and Adaptation?

PFT’s hybrid cloud-enabled Media ERP technology, CLEAR™, enables the most comprehensive portfolio of integrated services and solutions to brands. Whether it is production, adaptation or distribution of advertising materials, across different media and languages, brands rely on the PFT ecosystem.

As global brands resort to creating local connect in their ads, tailored brand messages for specific target audiences are the way to go. PFT’s range of culture and legal consulting, local consumer insights and multiple language services capabilities help global brands address their local needs effectively. At PFT, voice overs are done with native speakers and post production of the individual language versions are completed in a timely and cost effective manner. Moreover, PFT’s virtualised content workflows across enterprise and supply chain enables 99.9 per cent control and brand consistency and lowers cost by 30 per cent.

Can you name few of your clients / customers?

As a trusted partner of many of the world’s most recognisable brands, CLEAR™ Spot Distribution transforms brand delivery processes for clients across five countries (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka & South Africa), and in 20 languages. More than 900 brand marketers and agency partners access PFT’s services and technology each and every day.

We collaborate with clients across verticals, to streamline their advertising processes and create a digital workflow. Our esteemed clientele includes names such as Unilever, GSK, Nestle, Dabur, Kellog’s, Vodafone, TATA DOCOMO, Micromax, and TVS, among others.

PFT also works with major content owners like Bloomberg, Disney, Warner Bros., News Corporation-owned Star TV, Zee TV, Eros International, Sony Music, Viacom 18, Sony MSM, BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India), IPL (Indian Premiere League, The Associated Press, A & E TV Network and Schawk!

What is your market share in India and globally? Can you mention some of your competitors?

We are one of the largest players in the sub-continent. Annually, we deliver more than 60,000 spots for Linear TV to more than 500 locations and over 10 million files for TV Everywhere.

Can you elaborate on your expansion plans? 

We are certainly looking at South East Asia, countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. We are a big presence this year at Broadcast Asia in Singapore in June. The Middle East especially the GCC market is also on the cards.