How tech, telecom woos Indian media
By Ravi

IT-ITES and Telecom majors are well aware that one positive or negative article in the national media can win or lose deals and make or harm careers.  So these companies use every trick in the book to get positive media attention including free trips for journalists for a week or more, with a bagful of freebies thrown in. Some tech firms have mastered this art of seduction.

Not surprisingly, some Indian media persons succumb to such temptations. One of the most powerful tools in the art of media management is the junket where big business has a captive media audience and they can sell their message while flying together to Europe or when sight seeing in USA.

A Media Junket is not a new phenomenon. Movies like America's Sweethearts (2001) starring Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, John Cusack, and Catherine Zeta-Jones simply proved how effective these junkets are in branding and marketing.

Though entertainment sector has been leading in conducting media junkets, Information Technology companies are not far behind. They earmark some amount from the annual budget especially for media junkets.

According to media insiders, product companies are keener at such programs than IT services companies. Some of leading names that have excellent relationships with the Indian media are - SAP, Verisign, Blackberry, Cisco, Symantec, Google, Juniper networks, Philips, HP and IBM.

As a rough estimate, IT companies spend around Rs 20-30 million on media. There are various names given to this exercise, from media-involvement activity, annual media conference to just media junket. Many large companies on an average organize two such junkets in a year. One is generally conducted to the Headquarters of the company, and at the city which hosts global exhibitions.

Some examples. Cisco had conducted a media tour to Singapore around two months back.  Blue chip Blackberry took Indian journalists to USA one and half month back. The latest of all is the Hyundai Junket to Korea which happened roughly a month ago. A couple of years ago, Bharti Airtel broke all Indian media junket records by conducting around 8-10 such trips in one year. Not surprisingly, many media journalists have a soft corner for Airtel.