The Patent Act 1970, India

What is patent?

Patents protect inventions and improvements to existing inventions.

Patent is a monopoly right granted by the Government to exclude others from exploiting or using a particular invention.
In India the law which govern patent right is "Indian Patent Act 1970". This exclusive monopoly granted by a Patent is provided in return for the inventor disclosing the details of the invention to the public. Therefore, the patent is a monopoly right which offers exclusivity to the patentee to exploit the invention for 20 years after which it falls to the public domain. In case of inventions relating to manufacturing of food or drugs or medicine it is for seven years from the date of patent.

While filing a patent for your invention, there are several critical aspects to be followed especially in drafting the claims, which define the scope of the invention. Drafting patent specification is an art by itself, and requires the expertise of skilled professionals in this field.

Under these Acts, there are six types of patent applications in India :
1. Ordinary Application
2. Convention Application
3. PCT International Application
4. PCT National Phase Application
5. Application for Patent of Addition
6. Divisional Application

1. Ordinary Application
It refers to a patent application which doesn’t claim any priority of application made or without reference to any other existing application under process with the Patent office.

2. Convention Application
Refers to the application filed by an applicant claiming priority date based on a similar application filed in one of the convention country. The applicant should file the application in an Indian Patent Office within twelve months from the date of first filing of a similar application in the convention country
The applicant of convention application shall furnish when required by the Controller, copies of specification or documents certified by the chief of the Patent Office of the convention country. A translation of the said documents has to be furnished if the same is not in English.

3. PCT International Application
In this, the applicant gains an international filing date in all the designated countries conferring the late entry (upto 31 months) to the national offices without affecting the priority date. This is the best and most comprehensive method for those applicants seeking protection for the inventions in many countries.
The Indian Patent Office is a receiving office for international applications too.

4. PCT National Phase Application
An international application, as mentioned above, can enter the national phase within 31 months from the international filing date. Called the PCT National Phase Application, this application filed before the Controller in the Indian Patent Office claims the priority and international filing date. The title, description, drawings, abstract and claims filed with the application shall be taken as the complete specification for the purposes of filing in India.

5. Application for Patent of Addition
Application for Patent of Addition comes into play when an applicant feels that his/her invention is a slight modification on the invention for which he/she has already applied for/has patent in India. There is no need to pay separate renewal fee for the patent of addition during the term of the main patent and expires along with the main patent unless it is made independent.

6. Divisional Application
In certain cases, either on his own request or on request of the Controller, when the application made by the applicant claims more than one invention, he may divide the application and file two or more applications as applicable for each of his/her invention.
The priority date for all the divisional application would be same as the one claimed by the parent application.

Aspects:-
Indian patent law tells the important aspects of Indian Patent Act, 1970. India patent Act, 1970 differentiates patentable and non-patentable inventions. It means distinction is made between invention and process of invention. Person should have been true inventor of the product in order to be eligible under Indian law. Person whom patent right has been granted is known as patentee. Patentee has monopoly right over creation, right to surrender, right to give patent to some other person. This right is given by a state in order to safeguard and protect his invention. Under Patent Act, right to prevent others from making any use, selling or distributing the invented patent without any permission from patentee. In case there is an infringement of the patentee's law then a suit may be filed for infringement.

All inventions are not patentable under the Indian Patent Act. The Indian patent act requires the invention to be new, useful and Non-obvious. Besides the invention must pass through certain parameters prescribed by government of India, such as inventions that are frivolous or claims anything obviously contrary to well established natural laws, or where primary or intended use, or commercial exploitation of invention could be contrary to public order or morality or causes serious prejudice to human, animal or plant life, or health, or to the environment or mere discovery of scientific principle or formulation of an abstract theory or discovery of any living thing or non living substances occurring in nature etc.

Classification:-

1) Ordinary Patent- The first application for patent filed in the Patent Office without claiming priority from any application or without any reference to any other application under process in the Patent office is called an ordinary application.

2) Patents of addition- Patent of addition is an application made for a patent in respect of any improvement or modification of an invention described or disclosed in the complete specification already applied for or has a patent.

In order to be patentable an improvement, should be something more than a mere workshop improvement and must independently satisfy the test of invention. The major benefit is the exemption of renewal fee so long as the main patent is renewed. A patent of addition lapses with the cessation of the main patent.

3) Conventional Patent- When an applicant files a patent application, claiming a priority date based on the same or substantially similar application filed in one or more of the convention countries, it is called a convention application. To get a convention status, an applicant should file the application before any of the patent offices within 12 months from the date of first application in the convention country.
Amendments:-
1856
THE ACT VI OF 1856 ON PROTECTION OF INVENTIONS BASED ON THE BRITISH PATENT LAW OF 1852. CERTAIN EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGES GRANTED TO INVENTORS OF NEW MANUFACTURERS FOR A PERIOD OF 14 YEARS.
1859
THE ACT MODIFIED AS ACT XV; PATENT MONOPOLIES CALLED EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGES (MAKING. SELLING AND USING INVENTIONS IN INDIA AND AUTHORIZING OTHERS TO DO SO FOR 14 YEARS FROM DATE OF FILING SPECIFICATION).
1872 THE PATENTS & DESIGNS PROTECTION ACT.
1883
THE PROTECTION OF INVENTIONS ACT.
1888
CONSOLIDATED AS THE INVENTIONS & DESIGNS ACT.
1911
THE INDIAN PATENTS & DESIGNS ACT.
1972
THE PATENTS ACT (ACT 39 OF 1970) CAME INTO FORCE ON 20TH APRIL 1972.
1999
ON MARCH 26, 1999 PATENTS (AMENDMENT) ACT, (1999) CAME INTO FORCE FROM 01-01-1995.
2002
THE PATENTS (AMENDMENT) ACT 2002 CAME INTO FORCE FROM 2OTH MAY 2003
2005 THE PATENTS (AMENDMENT) ACT 2005 EFFECTIVE FROM Ist JANUARY 2005

1. The first legislation in India relating to patents was the Act VI of 1856. The objective of this legislation was to encourage inventions of new and useful manufactures and to induce inventors to disclose secret of their inventions. The Act was subsequently repealed by Act IX of 1857 since it had been enacted without the approval of the British Crown . Fresh legislation for granting ‘exclusive privileges’ was introduced in 1 859 as Act XV of 1859. This legislation contained certain modifications of the earlier legislation, namely, grant of exclusive privileges to useful inventions only and extension of priority period from 6 months to 12 months. This Act excluded importers from the definition of inventor. This Act was based on the United Kingdom Act of 1852 with certain departures which include allowing assignees to make application in India and also taking prior public use or publication in India or United Kingdom for the purpose of ascertaining novelty.

2. In 1872, the Act of 1859 was consolidated to provide protection relating to designs. It was renamed as “The Patterns and Designs Protection Act” under Act XIII of 1872. The Act of 1872 was further amended in 1883 (XVI of 1883) to introduce a provision to protect novelty of the invention, which prior to making application for their protection were disclosed in the Exhibition of India. A grace period of 6 months was provided for filing such applications after the date of the opening of such Exhibition.

3. This Act remained in force for about 30 years without any change but in the year 1883, certain modifications in the patent law were made in United Kingdom and it was considered that those modifications should also be incorporated in the Indian law. In 1888, an Act was introduced to consolidate and amend the law relating to invention and designs in conformity with the amendments made in the U.K. law.

4. The Indian Patents and Designs Act, 1911, (Act II of 1911) replaced all the previous Acts. This Act brought patent administration under the management of Controller of Patents for the first time. This Act was further amended in 1920 to enter into reciprocal arrangements with UK and other countries for securing priority. In 1930, further amendments were made to incorporate, inter-alia, provisions relating to grant of secret patents, patent of addition, use of invention by Government, powers of the Controller to rectify register of patent and increase of term of the patent from 14 years to 16 years. In 1945, an amendment was made to provide for filing of provisional specification and submission of complete specification within nine months.

5. After Independence, it was felt that the Indian Patents & Designs Act, 1911 was not fulfilling its objective. It was found desirable to enact comprehensive patent law owing to substantial changes in political and economic conditions in the country. Accordingly, the Government of India constituted a committee under the Chairmanship of Justice (Dr.) Bakshi Tek Chand, a retired Judge of Lahore High Court, in 1949 to review the patent law in India in order to ensure that the patent system is conducive to the national interest.

6. The committee submitted its interim report on 4th August, 1949 with recommendations for prevention of misuse or abuse of patent right in India and suggested amendments to sections 22, 23 & 23A of the Patents & Designs Act, 1911 on the lines of the United Kingdom Acts 1919 and 1949. The committee also observed that the Patents Act should contain clear indication to ensure that food and medicine and surgical and curative devices are made available to the public at the cheapest price commensurate with giving reasonable compensation to the patentee.

7. Based on the above recommendation of the Committee, the 1911 Act was amended in 1950(Act XXXII of 1950) in relation to working of inventions and compulsory licence/revocation. Other provisions were related to endorsement of the patent with the words ‘licence of right’ on an application by the Government so that the Controller could grant licences. In 1952 (Act LXX of 1952) an amendment was made to provide compulsory licence in relation to patents in respect of food and medicines, insecticide, germicide or fungicide and a process for producing substance or any invention relating to surgical or curative devices. ress for the consideration of the bill and it was allowed to lapse.

8. In 1957, the Government of India appointed Justice N. Rajagopala Ayyangar Committee to examine the question of revision of the Patent Law and advise government accordingly. The report of the Committee, which comprised of two parts, was submitted in September, 1959. The first part dealt with general aspects of the Patent Law and the second part gave detailed note on the several clauses of the lapsed bills 1953. The first part also dealt with evils of the patent system and solution with recommendations in regards to the law. The committee recommended retention of the Patent System, despite its shortcomings. This report recommended major changes in the law which formed the basis of the introduction of the Patents Bill, 1965. This bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 21st September, 1965, which however lapsed. In 1967, again an amended bill was introduced which was referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee and on the final recommendation of the Committee, the Patents Act, 1970 was passed. This Act repealed and replaced the 1911 Act so far as the patents law was concerned. However, the 1911 Act continued to be applicable to designs. Most of the provisions of the 1970 Act were brought into force on 20th April 1972 with publication of the Patent Rules, 1972.

9. This Act remained in force for about 24 years without any change till December 1994. An ordinance effecting certain changes in the Act was issued on 31st December 1994, which ceased to operate after six months. Subsequently, another ordinance was issued in 1999. This ordinance was subsequently replaced by t he Patents (Amendment) Act, 1999 that was brought into force retrospectively from 1st January, 1995. The amended Act provided for filing of applications for product patents in the areas of drugs, pharmaceuticals and agro chemicals though such patents were not allowed.

10. The second amendment to the 1970 Act was made through the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2002 (Act 38 0f 2002). This Act came into force on 20th May 2003 with the introduction of the new Patent Rules, 2003 by replacing the earlier Patents Rules, 1972

11. The third amendment to the Patents Act 1970 was introduced through the Patents (Amendment) Ordinance, 2004 w.e.f. 1st January, 2005. This Ordinance was later replaced by the Patents (Amendment) Act 2005 (Act 15 Of 2005) on 4th April, 2005 which was brought into force from 1-1-2005.

Patent Grant Procedure:
A. FILING
1. Applicant : An application for a patent  can be filed by the true and  first inventor. It can also be filed the by the assignee or legal representative of the inventor. If an application is filed by the assignee, proof of assignment has to be submitted along with the application. The applicant can be national of any country.

2. Form of Application: Every application shall be accompanied by a provisional or complete specification. Provisional applications are generally filed at a stage where some experimentation is required to perfect the invention.

Filing of a provisional specification allows the applicant to get an early application date.

A Provisional Specification shall contain:

a. Title,
b. Written Description,
c. Drawings, if necessary and
d. Sample or model if required.


The complete specification shall contain:

a. Title,
b. Abstract,
c. Written Description,
d. Drawings (where necessary),
e. Sample or Model (if required by the examiner),
f. Enablement and BestMode,
g. Claims and
h. Deposit (Microorganisms)

a. Title
Title is generally a word or a phrase indicating the content of the invention.
b. Abstract
It is a short paragraph describing the invention in a precise manner.
c. Written Description
This is an important part of the specification. It contains the complete and elaborate description of the invention.
Written Description generally starts with a background of the invention. The written description explains the invention clearly and comprehensively, with the help of examples, drawings and models, where and when required.
d. Drawings
The written description might be supplemented with drawings, where and when required. The drawings should be clearly labeled.
e. Samples or Models
On initiative of the inventor or when required by the patent examiner samples or models might be submitted to the patent office. Such samples or models will provide a better understanding of the invention.



f. Enablement and Best Mode
The applicant has to enable his invention in order to allow a person with ordinary skill in the art to make and work the invention. He should not only enable, the applicant should also describe the best mode of carrying out the invention.
g. Claims
Claims define the metes and bounds of the invention. They are the most important elements in a specification.
h. Deposit
If an invention involves microorganisms, which cannot be described by writing. A sample of the microorganism has to be deposited at an internationally recognised depository. There is an internationally recognised depository at Chandigarh
A provisional specification cannot be filed if an application has been filed in a foreign country (Convention country) before the Indian filing and if the application is a PCT application. A complete specification has to be filed within twelve months (extendable to fifteen months) of filing the provisional specification. Each specification should contain only one invention. If there is more than one invention in a specification, separate applications have to be filed for each invention.

3. Priority Date
Priority date is the date of first filing allotted by the patent office to an application. If a provisional application is followed by a complete application, the priority date shall be date of filing of the provisional application. If an Indian application is filed after a foreign or PCT application, the priority date shall be the date of filing of the foreign or PCT application. If an application is divided into two applications, the priority date shall be date of filing of the parent application.
Priority date is the date of reference used by the patent to determine the newness of the invention. If the claimed invention is part of public knowledge before the priority date, it will not be eligible for a patent. Under US Law, priority date is pushed back to the date of conception for determining novelty and Non-obviousness.




4. Place of Filing

Patent Application can be filed at any of the four patent offices in India. Patent Offices are located at Kolkata, New Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai.

5. Documents to be submitted at the time of filing.
The following documents have to be submitted at the time of filing a patent application:
a. Form 1 - Application for the grant of patent.
b. Form 2 - Provisional or Complete Specification.
c. Form 3 - Statement and undertaking by the applicant.
d. Form 5 - Declaration as to inventor-ship.
e. Form 26 - Authorization of patent agent or any other person.
Priority document details have to be filed for a Convention application.

B. PUBLICATION

A patent application will be published on expiry of eighteen months after the priority date. It can be published earlier, if such a request is made by the applicant. The application will not be published if directions are given for secrecy, until the term of those directions expires. It will also not be published if the application is withdrawn three months before publication date.

On publication, specification including drawings and deposits shall be open for public inspection. The rights of the patentee start from the date of publication but they cannot be enforced until after patent grant.
C. EXAMINATION

1. Request for Examination

The process of examination starts with a request for examination. The request has to be made within 36 months from the date of priority or filing. However, if secrecy directions have been given for the application, the request can be made six months after the directions are revoked or thirty six months from the date of priority or filing, if that date is later.
2. Examination
On receiving the request, the controller shall direct the patent application to the Examiner for examination. To start with, the examiner makes a formal examination by verifying the propriety and correctness of all documents filed with the application. Later, he verifies the patentability of the application. The patentability analysis includes all patentability requirements.

After confirming that the application falls within the scope of patentable subject matter, the examiner conducts a prior art search to check if there is prior art, which anticipates the invention claimed. Prior art search for anticipation includes search for anticipation by publication, filing of complete specification, etc. He then verifies the existence of inventive step, Industrial application, and Enablement and Best mode.

The examiner will give the examination report within 1 month from the date of reference by controller and that term shall not exceed three months. If the examination report is adverse, the controller sends a notice to the applicant and gives him an opportunity to correct and if necessary an opportunity of hearing. The Controller might ask the applicant to amend the application in order to proceed further. If the applicant does not make such changes, the application might be rejected.

The Controller has the power to divide the application, post date the application, substitute applicants and reject the application. An order of division will be given if the application contains more than one invention and if it is required to file separate applications for each invention. The application might be post dated to a period of six months if requested by the applicant. Substitution of inventors is generally done if the inventor has been wrongfully mentioned or if a joint inventor has not been mentioned in the application.
The controller has the power to reject the application, if the applicant does not comply with his requirements.


D. OPPOSITION

1. Pre-grant Opposition

Any person can file an opposition for grant of patent after the application has been published. Opposition may be filed on any of the following grounds:
a. Non compliance of patentability requirements.
b. Nondisclosure or Wrongful disclosure of genetic resources or traditional knowledge.

2. Post-grant Opposition

Any person can file an opposition within a period twelve months after the grant of a patent. It can be filed based on the following grounds:
a. Wrongful obtainment of the invention by the inventor.
b. Publication of the claimed invention before the priority date.
c. Sale or Import of the invention before the priority date.
d. Public use or display of the invention.
e. The invention doesn’t satisfy the patentability requirements.
f. Disclosure of false information to patent office.
g. Application for the invention is not filed within twelve months from the date of convention application.
h. Nondisclosure or wrongful disclosure of the biological source.
i. Invention is anticipated by traditional knowledge.

3. Process of Opposition
On receiving a notice of opposition, the controller notifies the patentee. He then constitutes an Opposition board to deal with the opposition. The Opposition board decides the issues after giving reasonable opportunity of hearing to both the parties. The Opposition board might invalidate the patent, require amendments or maintain the status quo. If amendments are required, they have to be made within the prescribed period in order to maintain the patent.


E. GRANT

If the application satisfies all the requirements of the patent act, the application is said to be in order for grant. An application in order for grant shall be granted expeditiously. A granted patent shall be published in the official gazette and shall be open for public inspection.  Every granted patent shall be given the filing date. The patent will be valid throughout India. A granted patent gives the patent holder the exclusive right to make, use, sell, offer for sale and import the product or use the process. However, the government can make use of the patent for its own purposes or for distributing an invention relating to medicine to hospitals and dispensaries. Furthermore, any person can make use of the patent for experiment or education.

Limitations:

• An invention which claims anything obvious contrary to well established natural laws
• An invention the intended use of which can be injurious to public health
• The mere discovery of a scientific principle or the formulation of an abstract theory.
• The mere discovery of any new property of new use for a known substance or of the mere use of a known process, machine or apparatus unless such known process results in a new product or employs at-least one new reactant.
• A substance obtained by a mere admixture resulting in the aggregation of the properties of the components thereof or a process for producing such substance.
• Those which are not inventions
• Invention relating to atomic energy. The mere discovery of a scientific principle or the formulation of an abstract theory or discovery of any living thing or non-living substances occurring in nature.

Psychology

Fellini

8½ (Italian title: Otto e mezzo [ˈɔtto e ˈmɛddzo]) is a 1963 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini. Co-scripted by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director. Shot in black-and-white by cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo, the film features a soundtrack by Nino Rota with costume and set designs by Piero Gherardi.

The title is in keeping with Fellini's self-reflexive theme. Its title refers to Fellini's eight and a half films as a director. His previous directorial work consisted of six features, two short segments, and a collaboration with another director, Alberto Lattuada, the collaboration accounting for a "half" film (His previous six feature films included Lo sceicco bianco (1952), I vitelloni (1953), La strada (1954), Il bidone (1955), Le notti di Cabiria (1957), and La Dolce Vita (1960). With Alberto Lattuada, he co-directed Luci del varietà (Variety Lights) in 1950. His two short segments included Un'Agenzia Matrimoniale (A Marriage Agency) in the 1953 omnibus film L'amore in città (Love in the City) and Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio from the 1962 omnibus film Boccaccio '70). The working title for 8½ was La bella confusione (The Beautiful Confusion) proposed by co-screenwriter, Ennio Flaiano, but Fellini then "had the simpler idea (which proved entirely wrong) to call it Comedy".

8½ won two Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design (black-and-white). Acknowledged as an avant-garde film and a highly influential classic, it was among the top 10 on BFI The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time, ranked third in a 2002 poll of film directors conducted by the British Film Institute and is also listed on the Vatican's compilation of the 45 best films made before 1995, the 100th anniversary of cinema.

personal story: memories of childhood, present troubles, relationship with producers. Many fictional films have been made about the process of  film production. Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 concerns itself with  the preproduction stage of  a film  that is abandoned before shooting starts. In more strongly psychological films, such as Fellini's 81/2, the search and the investigation become internalized when the protagonist, a noted  film director, attempts to discover the source  of his creative problems.

8½ is about the struggles involved in the creative process, both technical and personal, and the problems artists face when expected to deliver something personal and profound with intense public scrutiny, on a constricted schedule, while simultaneously having to deal with their own personal relationships. It is, in a larger sense, about finding true personal happiness in a difficult, fragmented life. Like several Italian films of the period (most evident in the films of Fellini's contemporary, Michelangelo Antonioni), 8½ also is about the alienating effects of modernization. The fantasy sequences in Fellini's 8 1/2  yield information about the protagonists' traits and possible future actions that would be less vivid if presented objectively. most  films take objective narration as a baseline  from which we may depart in search of subjective depth but  to which we will return. There are, however,  other films  that refuse this convention. Fellini's 8l /2, Bunuel's Belle de jour  and Haneke's Cach6, Resnais's Last Year at  Marienbad, and Nolan's Memento  mix objectivity and subjectivity  in ambiguous ways. Here, as elsewhere, the manipulation  of story information is not  just a matter  of what action takes place in the film. Any choice about range or depth affects  how the spectator thinks and feels about the film as it progresses.

Costumes can  play important motivic and callsal roles in narratives. The  film director  Guido in Fellini's 81/2 persistently uses his dark -glasses  to shield himself from the  world.

According to Italian writer Alberto Arbasino, Fellini's film used similar artistic procedures and had parallels with Musil's 1930 novel The Man Without Qualities.

1. 1am not a ‘therapeutic’ artist, my films don’t suggest solutions or methods, they don’t put forward ideologies. All I do is bear witness to what happens to me, interpret and express the reality that surrounds me. If, through my films - that is, recognising themselves in them - people come to an equal awareness of themselves, then they have achieved the state of clear-sighted detachment from themselves which is essential in making new choices, in bringing about changes.
2. My films don’t have what is called a final scene. The story never reaches its conclusion. Why? I think it depends on what I make of my characters. It’s hard to put it - but they’re a kind of electrical wire, they’re like lights that don’t change at all but show an unchanging feeling in the director from start to finish. They cannot evolve in any way; and that’s for another reason. I have no intention of moralising, yet I feel that a film is the more moral if it doesn’t offer the audience the solution found by the character whose story is told. In other words, the man who has just seen a character sorting out his problems, or becoming good when he started off bad, finds himself in a much more comfortable situation. He is going to say quietly to himself: ‘Well, all I have to do is carry on being the creep I am, betraying my wife, conning my friends, because at a given moment the right solution will turn up, just as it does in the films. . .‘ My films, on the contrary, give the audience a very exact responsibility. For instance, they must decide what Cabiria’s end is going to be. Her fate is in the hands of each one of us. If the film has moved us, and troubled us, we must immediately begin to have new relationships with our neighbours. This must start the first time we meet our ftiends or our wife, since anyone may be Cabiria - that is, a victim. If films like I vitelloni, La strada and 11 bidone leave the audience with this feeling, mixed with a slight uneasiness, I think they have achieved their object. I feel, and I can even say today, unhesitatingly, that whenever I think up a story it is in order to show some anxiety, some trouble, a state of friction in the relationships that ought normally to exist between people. If I were a political animal, in order to explain this I should hold meetings or join a political pIty; or go out barefoot and dance in the streets. If I had found a solution, and if I were able to explain it convincingly and in good faith, then of course I should not be a story-teller, or a film-maker.
3. Good intentions and honest feelings, and a passionate belief in one’s own ideals, may make excellent politics or influential social work (things which may be much more useful than the cinema), but they do not necessarily and indisputably make good films. And there is realty nothing uglier or drearier - just because it is ineffectual and pointless - than a bad political film.
4, Commitment, I feel, prevents a man from developing. My ‘anti- fascism’ is of a biological kind. I could never forget the isolation in which Italy was enclosed for twenty years. Today I feel a profound hatred - and I am actually very vulnerable on this point - for all ideas that can be translated into formulas. I am committed to non-commitment.
I love becoming committed to frivolous things. In fact, I am wholly committed to everything I do.
5. I am against things that try to define themselves too precisely, and against people who do the same. The word ‘committed’ irritates me. I react in a childish, exaggerated way tothose who profess to be committed. People who are over forty-five today, you see, grew up in the shadow of fascism and the Church. All through my childhood, I heard things spoken of in terms of duty. Idealised commitment. Now, when I hear today’s I see in it a threat to true freedom. That is, authentic individual growth. What on earth is the ‘committed cinema’ committed to do? This kind of Marxist or Chinese terminology makes me very suspicious. Not because of what you might call individual anarchy, but because of what is really a personal experience.
Fascism meant omnipotent stupidity and ignorance. I cannot say that I ever fought in the anti-fascist ranks; that would not be true; I have never played at politics.
6. After the war, our subjects were handed to us, ready-made. There were very simple problems: how to survive, the war, peace. These problims were set before us, in an immediate, brutal way. But today the problems are different, Of course the neo-realists were not hoping that war and poverty would continue because they found their best subjects in them . . . but it sometimes seemed as if the neo-realists thought they could make a film only if they put a shabby man in front of the camera. They were wrong.
7. To me, neo-realism is a way of seeing reality without prejudice, without conventions coming between it and myself - facing it without preconceptions, looking at it in an honest way - whatever reality is, not just social reality, but spiritual reality, metaphysical reality, all that there is within a man. . . In telling the story of particular people I always try to show a particular truth.
8. Realism is a bad word. In a certain sense everything is realistic. I see no dividing line between imagination and reality. I see a great deal of reality in imagination, I don’t feel it’s my responsibility to arrange everything neatly on one universally valid level. I have an infinite capacity for amazement, and I don’t see why I should set up a pseudo-rational screen to protect me from being amazed.
9, Realism is neither a tight enclosure nor a one-dimensional panorama. A landscape, for instance, has a number of layers, and the deepest, which only poetic language can reve3l, is not the least real. What I want to show beyond the outer surface of things is what people call ‘unreal’. They say I have a taste for mystery. If they liked to give the word a capital M, then I would be glad to accept it. To me, mysteries belong to man, they are the great unreasoning lines of his spiritual life, love, health . . . At the centre of successive layers of reality, God is to be found, I think . the keyyoung people putting forward an4 developing the same sort of idiocy as Mussolini and the bishops, it really makes me mad.
to the mysteries. I would add that if neo-realism is called ‘social’, as it is by certain Italian critics, then it is limited. Man is not just a social being, he is divine.
10. I am not yet humble enough to make myself an abstraction in my films. I try in them to throw light on what I don’t understand in myself, but as I am a man, other men can no doubt see themselves in the same mirror too. What is autobiographical is the story of a kind of call that pierces the torpor of the soul and wakes me. I should very much like to stay in that state, in those moments when the call reaches me. I feel, then, that someone is knocking at the door and I don’t go and open it. Of course I shall have to make up my mind to open it, some day or other. Basically, I must be a spiritual vitellone.
11. In my way of thinking, there do not exist humorous themes or themes which are not humorous. Humour, just like the dramatic,
to evaluate should make us withhold judgement, or anyway should prompt us to give up our old points of reference and try to find new ones more suited to the new context.
In conclusion, it seems to me that what deludes and irritates us in the cinema, in literature and the theatre and in the figurative arts, is the limitedness of what they produce. A remarkable sort of limitedness which condemns no-one, not even the authors that express it, but rather shows how today’s people are more individual, and culturally, spiritually and socially more evolved than they were. Until now, artists have always been the high points that burst out of a shapeless, passive mass, the common denominator in which others recognised themselves and from which they drew nourishment. Today, this denominator is rather less common because the more highly developed personality of each individual limits and reduces it, and the high points do not burst out at so high a level because the average, in the mass of people, is higher than it was. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t know. Perhaps we are destined to become a whole human race of artists, each producing and nourishing himself on what he produces. Perhaps art, in the sense we know it, will no longer be neèessary. These are utopian ideas, of course; but one thing we ought to bear in mind. We tend to say that men are the same and will always be the same, but what we really know about men goes back only 10,000 years. If you consider that the human race is millions of years old and will go on for as many million more, then every judgement, every assertion and every forecast is lost in the mists of time.
15. I have always thought that the cinema is a means of expression, an entirely original language that owes nothing, and bears no relationship, to any other art form. As far as literature is concerned, admittedly the cinema has borrowed a good deal from it, but this can be counted as normal interdependence between the arts. More important is the fact that whenever a literary work is godmother to a film, the result is always mediocre, disappointing and entirely to the disadvantage of the film. This may be the definite proof of the cinema’s originality, showing that it cannot bear graftings or overlappings of any kind. Everything that connects the cinema with literature is the result of laziness and sentimental whim, when it is not actually due to brutal calculation. It is a case of doing something arbitrary and unnatural, like sticking four car wheels on to a horse, or cutting a steak into the shape of a cod-fish.
16. 1 feel that decadence is indispensable to rebirth. I have alreidy said that! love shipwrecks. So I am happy to be living at a time when everything is capsizing. It’s a marvellous time, for the very reason that a whole series of ideologies, concepts and conventions is being wrecked. Man went to the moon, didn’t he? Well then, to keep talking of iron curtains, frontiers and different currencies is completely absurd. We’ve got to overthrow all that.
This process of dissolution is quite natural, I think. I don’t see it as a sign of the death of civilisation but, on the contrary, as a sign of its life. It is the end of a certain phase of the human race. But the process of dissolution is too slow and must be hurried. We must start from scratch. Make a clean sweep of everything.
Is our society waiting for what is going to happen to it? Not at all. Force of circumstances causes society itself to generate what happens. There’s no solution and no continuity. . . The young are aware that a new world is beginning. But it is very hard to speak of this without becoming rhetorical. The dawn which is coming moves rue.
17. As a man 1 am interested in everything, and as far as what you call problems are concerned I go in search of them, because I am curious, and anxious to learn. But as a film director, I am quite indifferent to abstract problems, those which are now called ideological. For an idea or a situation or an atmosphere to kindle my mind or my imagination, to amuse me or to move me, it must come to me as a concrete fact. This may be a certain person or character that comes out to meet me; it may be the memory of a particular adventure or of a particular coincidence of human beings in a landscape or a situation. Then my imagination is kindled. If I were a composer I would then start writing down notes, if I were a painter I would scribble on the canvas. As a film director, I find my means of çxpression in the film image. I am a story-teller in the cinema and I can’t honestly see what other qualification can be attributed to me apart from this - which may seem modest but, to me, is terribly demanding.
18. I believe - please note, I am only supposing - that what I care about most is the freedom of man, the liberation of the individual man from the network of moral and social convention in which he believes, or rather in which he thinks he believes, and which encloses him and limits him and makes him seem narrower, smaller, sometimes even worse than he really is. If you really want me to turn teacher, then condense it with these words: be what you are, that is, discover yourself, in order to love life. To me, life is beautiful, for all its tragedy and suffering, I like it, I enjoy it, I am moved by it. And I do my best to share this way of feeling with others.
19. Evety period of stolid materialism is followed by times of spirituality. We are now living in a kind of dark tunnel of suffering unable to communicate with one another, but I already feel I can see a gleam in the distance, a sense of new freedom: we must try to believe in this possibility of salvation.
20. If I say that I am fairly confident, I don’t want to seem like a butterfly flitting carelessly from flower to flower, but like a person who feels alive, who has not yet exhausted his human adventure. Really, I like everything about life, and sometimes I feel electric with curiosity, as if I had not yet been fully born. Yes, I haven’t yet lost faith in the journeyc even though it often seems dark and desperate. -
The important thing for man today is to hang on. not to let his head droop but to keep looking up along the tunnel, perhaps even inventing a way of salvation through fanta’ or will-power, and especially through faith. For this reason I think that the work of artists is really needed today.

breathless

Jean Luc-Godard’s first feature, Breathless (A Bout de Souffle, 1960), was not the first French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) film, but it soon became its signature work.  Made on a low budget and shot entirely on the street and in urban locations, the film proved to be a box-office sensation and had over two million admissions in France alone. Not only that, it made the New Wave an international brand and catapulted Godard and others associated with the film’s production, such as Raoul Coutard and Jean-Paul Belmondo, to worldwide stardom.

In fact much of Breathless’s fame today is tied up with its New Wave origins, a major current of which came from a clique of ambitious young critics writing for the anti-establishment film commentary magazine, Cahiers du Cinema [1,2].  These critics dismissed mainstream French studio films of the day and championed, instead, film noir, a term they gave to moody B-Grade American crime films of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, which they felt had more panache and psychological authenticity.  This group – which included Godard, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette – then went about putting their critical theories into practice by making their own independent and “rebellious” feature films.  (Other young French filmmakers of that period who were not part of the Cahiers du Cinema clique but who came to be associated with the New Wave included Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville, Agnes Varda, and Jacques Demy.)

Of all those Cahiers du Cinema critics, Godard was probably the most argumentative and uncompromising, so it is perhaps not surprising that his film stood out and was even more distinctive than those of his colleagues.  Thus Breathless is often seen today as a historical landmark that affected the course of cinematic expression.  Nevertheless, the film is not just of historical interest, in the fashion, say, of The Birth of a Nation (1915), but still has an electric vitality when viewed today.

Although the New Wave critics were avowed auteurists, I believe that the success of Breathless is not solely due to Godard’s undoubted abilities. There was a fortunate concurrence of disparate talents that helped make the film the masterpiece that it is [3,4,5].  For one thing, there were contributions from his Cahiers du Cinema colleagues.  Claude Chabrol, who had already had success with two features, served as a technical advisor for the film.  In addition the original story and treatment came from Francois Truffaut, who was then a good friend of Godard’s and was fresh off the success of his own debut film, The 400 Blows (1959).  Truffaut’s scheme told the noirish story of a young criminal’s desperate efforts to avoid police pursuing him and gather up his girlfriend in Paris so that the two of them can make a getaway to Rome.  This treatment provided Godard with a basic narrative structure for the film – which was not the kind of thing, it seems, that naturally emerged from his own inspiration and was not so apparent in his subsequent films.

Also noteworthy, and crucial to the film’s dramatic impact on audiences, was its gaudy cinematography.  The first thing that stands out is the proliferation of jump cuts – jolting cuts without changing the frame – that would normally be regarded as film-editing faults in other contexts.  Here, however, the jump cuts work to positive effect, and help give the film a sense of a hectic, out-of-control haste that is constantly jumping the story forward.  This is presumably what is alluded to by the film’s French title, “A Bout de Souffle”, which literally in English means: “Out of Breath” and which would probably have been a better English title for the film.

Further accentuating the nervousness created by the jump-cuts were opposing moments of slowed-down pace due to long-duration tracking shots of conversations mostly between the  two main characters.  These slow-moving passages in the middle of hectic circumstances with the clock ticking made for a maddening stop-and-go tempo that makes the viewer even more mindful of the criminal’s dire situation.

Now you might say that this back-and-forth temporal movement between skittishness and languor represented a brilliant piece of mise en scene on Godard’s part; but I wonder if perhaps this ingenious effect was actually an accident of Godard’s somewhat ad hoc production circumstances. Although Godard was writing the script each day as the film was being shot, the shooting was carefully planned and all the dialogue was pre-specified and not extemporaneously created.  In fact the film was shot without sound, and all the pre-specified dialogue was dubbed in later.  Godard was fortunate to have hooked up with the resourceful young cinematographer, Raoul Coutard, who came up with practical ways to photograph Godard’s scenes in crowded locations.  Now while it is known that Coutard made innovative use of hand-held photography (not common in those days with the relatively heavy equipment in use), this does not mean that Godard and Coutard were winging it as they proceeded filming the script.  In fact the moving camera shots appear to have been carefully planned, with some of them lasting as long as three minutes.  These moving camera shots appear when the two main characters are engaged in key conversations.

However, during the final editing stages of the film, as Roger Ebert has pointed out, Godard discovered that the film was 30 minutes too long and needed to be shortened [6].  Godard couldn’t go ahead and cut up the lengthy moving-camera shots – they needed to be retained intact.  And he didn’t want to remove the dialogue that he had written.  So he was left with cutting a lot of the film’s transitions, creating all those jump cuts.  If Ebert is correct, then we are led to believe that the film’s nervous back-and-forth tempo was something of an accidental creation.

However, we shouldn’t let Breathless’s innovative cinematography, whether accidental or planned, dominate our perspective on the film.  The really fascinating thing about this work  is not so much the cinematography but more the edgy and winding romantic relationship of the two main characters.

Breathless was not the first film depicting the always fascinating situation of a romantic young couple on the run from the law, but it may have been the most inspired.  Its predecessors in this camp include Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night (1948) and Joseph H. Lewis’s Gun Crazy (1950).  And we can see strong traces of Breathless in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1966), Terrence Mallick’s Badlands (1973), Steven Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express (1974), and Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us (1974) [7].  In all these films there is a sense of fatalism and romantic desperation.  One of the two romantic characters in these narratives is totally reckless, with the partner helplessly following along and unable to prevent their ultimate destruction.

In Breathless the romantic couple is played by Jean-Paul Belmondo (in the role of Michel Poiccard) and Jean Seberg (as Patricia Franchini), and the personae of these two actors very much dominates the film’s presentation.  Belmondo was 26 years old at the time, and his expressive face and sinewy physique gave a kinetic and emotional image to his character.  Seberg was only 21, but already a Hollywood star.  Her cool beauty and impenetrable innocence provided the perfect foil for Belmondo’s romantic shadow boxing.  One of the film’s strong points is the way Godard visually dwells at length and in repeated closeups on Seberg’s paradoxical allure.

In fact it is worth discussing their two characters a little further.

Michel Poiccard.
He is perpetually rehearsing small narratives that he imagines to be glamorous decorations to his character.  In this connection he likes to mug and make outlandishly emotional facial expressions, in the fashion of how a teenager might make faces while looking at his or her image in the mirror.  As part of his attempts at self-glorification, he admires film noir and the screen personality of Humphrey Bogart, as well as gaudy, gas-guzzling American sedans.  His daredevil self image leads him to hot-wire and steal cars whenever he needs some transportation.  This recklessness makes him attractive to girls but is also fatally self-destructive.  Despite his adolescent and self-indulgent behaviour, though, Michel has the capacity to feel love and jealousy.  His braggadocio posturing is a cover for his personal insecurity, and he cannot help revealing his emotional vulnerability.

Patricia Franchini.
As played by Jean Seberg, who was born and grew up in Iowa, Patricia is very much a US Midwestern girl – in fact Seberg’s Midwestern accent calls attention to her distinctively non-European character.  By this I mean that Patricia is friendly and easy to approach, but difficult to know well.  Emotionally, she remains aloof even while she engages in friendly interactions.  She is looking for someone to capture her, to conquer her, and until then she is just along for the ride and can detach herself from a relationship at a moment’s notice.  In fact at one point she tells Michel,
        “I stayed with you to see if I was in love with you. . . .
        and since I’m being cruel to you, it proves I’m not in love with you.”  
The story of Breathless proceeds through three main stages.

1.  Michel Comes to Paris

In the first sequence the viewer is introduced to Michel Poiccard, a low-level hoodlum in Marseilles who hot-wires a parked Oldsmobile and heads north.  On the way driving while toying with his pistol, he talks to himself about his plans to head for Paris and pick up some money owed to him by someone, and then convince a girl, Patricia, to run away with him to Rome.  Along the way some highway cops start chasing him for speeding, and Michel shoots and kills one of them when he is approached.  This is all told visually with jump-cuts and at breakneck speed.

Upon arriving in Paris, Michel first steals some money from a casual girlfriend.  Then he tracks down Patricia, who is hawking the International Herald Tribune along the Champs Elysees, and as they talk, the pace dramatically slows down.  There is a long 3:20 tracking shot of the two of them talking, as Michel tries to convince Patricia to run away to Italy with him.  It seems that they had recently had a brief affair in Nice and slept together for a few nights.  Patricia clearly finds Michel to be cute, but she is noncommital.

Things speed up again as Michel attends to the matter of picking up some money owed to him by a person named Berruti.  While moving about the city, he also notices a newspaper headline reporting that the road cop-killer has been identified as Michel Poiccard.

2.  Michel and Patricia Together

Patricia goes back to her hotel room and discovers that Michel had stolen her room key at the front desk and is waiting for her in the room. Now the pace slows down again. This is a 23-minute scene in the small hotel room, which despite the cramped dimensions, features a series of long tracking shots – one of them a 3:20 shot of the two of them talking on the bed.  Most of this scene is small talk, but it importantly reveals the evolving relationship and the disparate personalities of Michel and Patricia.  At one point she mentions that grief is better than nothingness (i.e. death), and he responds by saying that he would choose nothingness: “I want it all or nothing”.  They make love that night, and the next morning attend to their respective obligations – he has to get his owed money, and she needs to conduct an interview for a journal she sometimes works for.

3.  To Get Away

Patricia’s immediate assignment is to attend a press conference held for a trendy novelist, Parvulesco (played by noted film director Jean-Pierre Melville). This interview scene serves as something of an intermezzo in the film and gives Godard the chance to offer up some of his provocative bon mots about the world through the mouth of the novelist. While Patricia offers up some sensible queries, the other interviewers only want to ask the novelist titillating questions about how men and women posture towards each other.  Parvulesco pontificates that  men want only women, and women want only money.  When Patricia asks him what is his greatest ambition, he answers that it is "to become immortal and then die".

Now the pace quickens again. After her interview assignment, Patricia is approached by the police, who inform her that Michel is a wanted murderer.  As with other such dramatic moments in the story, Patricia shows very little emotion upon hearing this. She soon helps Michel elude the cops, and as they drive away in another stolen car, she is surprised to read in the newspaper that the cop murderer Michel is a married man.  When she blithely asks him about this, he responds with equal equanimity,
“She dumped me. . . Or I dumped her, I can’t remember.”
They eventually find Berruti for Michel’s money, but the cops are closing in.  All the way along, Patricia has been agonizing over whether she really loves Michel or not. The closing sequences provide for an answer to that question.

Of the comparable lovers-on-the-lam films, perhaps the closest match to Breathless is Bonnie and Clyde. This is not too surprising, since Bonnie and Clyde's script writers, David Newman and Robert Benton, were fans of Breathless and even approached Godard about directing their script. And we can see definite traces of Michel Poiccard’s (Jean-Paul Belmondo’s) boastful vulnerability in Clyde Barrow’s (Warren Beatty’s) personality in Bonnie and Clyde.  But I think an even closer overall character match might be with the Kit and Holly characters of Badlands.  In that latter film, Holly is closer to Patricia’s personality than Bonnie is.

Many people have been attracted to Breathless’s hip references to American culture and general self-parody. They see the film as Godard’s taking the opportunity to call attention to how media inordinately shapes modern culture and its increasing tendency towards cliche and vicarious disengagement.  In addition to cultural references, there are celebrity cameo appearances. Besides the already-mentioned participation of film director Jean-Pierre Melville, there were several other figures in the cast from general French New Wave circles, including Philippe de Broca, Jacques Rivette, Jean Douchet (a Cahiers du Cinema film critic), and Jean-Luc Godard, himself, who briefly appears as a pedestrian that fingers Michel to the police.

All of this puckish cultural referencing was presumably part of Godard’s evolving and not entirely clear criticism of cinematic narrative, itself.  When Godard was asked at the time of this film’s production how he felt about cinema, he replied [1],
"I have contempt for it [the cinema]. It is nothing. It does not exist. Thus I love it. I love it yet at the same time I have contempt for it."

Godard was vigorously opposed to the traditional conventions of studio-based narrative films.  Over the following few years Godard made a succession of films that displayed a progressive retreat from cinematic narrative and looked more like cinematic essays concerning a theme, an aesthetic evolution that he explicitly embraced in an interview during that period [4].  In fact after the 1968 political events in France, his movement from dramatic narrative to visual political tracts became even more pronounced.

However, this evident retreat from narrative (in general) may have been an effect of a more specific, but deeper, underlying cause: the fact that Godard was clearly a frustrated romantic.  In most of Godard’s movies, starting already with Breathless, there is a depiction of the romantic narrative being crushed by an unfeeling world ruled by capricious, uncontrollable forces.  Of course some cynical hedonists might well be perfectly happy with that state of affairs.  Why subject yourself to the fantasy-laden constraints of selfless love?, they might ask – just seize whatever pleasures may be at hand.  But Godard is not one of these types.  He is clearly frustrated, and he forcefully expresses his frustration, it seems to me, over the fact that the romantic narrative is ultimately false – it is only short-lived and inevitably doomed to fail.  He tells us this over and over in his films.

In this regard of romantic narrative, it is interesting to compare Godard with filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, who also depicted the sadness of failed, unattained romance. Wong, the Master of the Broken Heart, often presented impassioned yearning for romantic fulfilment and the pain that comes from unrequited love. But Wong clearly believes in love, indeed he celebrates it with his visual poetics. He simply shows the inconsolable anguish that comes from the beloved’s being unattainable.  Godard, on the other hand and unlike Wong, had lost his belief in the possibility of love, and he expressed his unhappiness about it.  He did this best in Breathless.

ADVERTISING RESEARCH

We have to understand what makes the consumers buy. We will have to find out whether the right audience watches our sponsored programme. What is the effect of ad on sales? These are the questions which advertiser faces everyday. While deciding about such questions, advertisers need inputs of some research. Mostly they rely on Marketing research (MR) which is systematic collection, processing and interpretation of data regarding any problem of marketing ranging from product, distribution, price and promotion to customers, markets and forecasting. Marketing research includes advertising research and media research.

SCOPE OF MEDIA RESEARCH 

Media research is used to find solutions to any problems of marketing. Media research for the purpose of advertising and other marketing decisions generally cover the following areas.

1. Advertising Research 

2. Product Research 

3. Consumer research 

4. Sales Research

5. Corporate research

WHY RESEARCH?

Research makes advertising more efficient and effective.

DATA FOR RESEARCH

Research is based on data. These are basic facts, figures and ideas. When organized in a meaningful way, it becomes information. Data collected for the first time is called primary data. Whereas the secondary data are already available and published data collected for some other purpose. A research project requires both the types of data.

TYPES OF RESEARCH

Research is put into three broad categories. We must first know what we should investigate. We must define the problem correctly. That could lead to further research.

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Research sequence is as given here. 

1st Define the problem and set the research goal 

2nd Identify source of data 

3rd Analyze Secondary Data

4th Identify the Sample

5th Collect Data 

6th Analyze the Data and Present the results.

PROBLEM DEFINITION AND RESEARCH GOALS

Some typical research goals are: 

1. To measure awareness about our product in the target audience after 2 months campaign

2. To assess attitudes of consumers to rival products so as to know their brand’s vulnerable points

3. To assess which ad concept is more effective out of the two developed. 

SOURCES OF INFORMATION 

We can collect our data from our internal records, library, directories, literature etc. 

Primary data can be collected by our own research department or by an outside research agency.

Analysis of secondary data

This step consists in analyzing the secondary data to throw light on the problem on hand. 

Identification of sample: 

The sample must be representative of the overall population. There are two categories of samples. 

Probability sample provides a chance of being included to all members of the population. Simple random sample is an example. Here each member of population has an equal chance of being included in the sample. Another probability sample is a stratified sample in which a population is put into several strata e.g. doctors are put into GPs. Specialists, surgeon categories. 

Non probability sample does not give a chance of being included to all members of the population. For many problems sample data need not be projected to the entire data population. The quality of the research depends upon the selection of the sample.

DATA COLLECTION

Data can be collected either by a quantitative or qualitative technique. Quantitative data put responses in numbers and statistics. They answer questions like how many, how much and how often. Qualitative research looks for in depth answers beyond the realm of quantitative research. It examines attitude, motivation and behaviour. Depth interviews are used to allow people to open up and reveal their attitudes and opinion.. Focus group is a group of respondents who is subjected to probing

questions. Projective techniques provide an opportunity to provide answers to vague questions by rationalizing.

DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULT PRESENTATION

Whatever data we collect from the sample is not in a usable form. These data must be processed. They must be then analyzed and interpreted. Several techniques are available for analysis of data. Tabulation is a useful technique at this stage.

RESEARCH APPLICATION

Advertisers use research to know the right thing to do, to know the right way to do it and to assess whether our ads were effective. Research can be used in each of the following three stages.

OPPORTUNITIES AND GOALS 

Advertising research helps us understand where we stand currently. And what our marketing opportunities are, based on this, we can set our goals, Research covers in the scope consumer behaviour, segmentation, positioning, product research, brand awareness, attitudes, perceptions and psychographic profiles.

Such studies let us know our strengths, weakness and competitive advantages. While assessing opportunities and setting goals, we can make use of perceptual map which positions products on two dimensions or attributes.

PLANS AND MESSAGES

Market analysis and positioning research were the first applications of research for advertising. Once we set our advertising goals, we can design an advertising programme or campaign.

ADVERTISING EFFECTIVENESS 

Once the ad campaign is run, we do post testing of the ads. When such studies are conducted over a period of time, they are called tracking studies. In post testing we test communication effectiveness by recall test.

RESEARCH QUALITY

Research quality is a result of systematic research design, expertise and judgment. 

Research quality is tested against the criteria of reliability. 

Reliability means that even if the research is repeated, it shows the same results. 

Validity means research measures what it purports to measure. 

What affects the reliability and validity of research? 

There are five set of factors

faulty research design, 

sampling errors, 

faulty questionnaire, 

and wrong interpretation of answers. 

When research is commenced, the researcher must have an open mind. He otherwise, might try to interpret the research data the way he holds his beliefs.

CONSUMER RESEARCH

Even while doing product – led answers research, the focus should be on consumer. Our USP and positioning should be consumer- driven. It is also necessary to redefine the research function to make customer segmentation effective.

INDIAN MARKET RESEARCH SCENE

In 1960 an audit research was set up in India. In 1983, a custom researcher MARG was set up in India. ORG and MARG merged together in 1997 to gain leadership of the Indian market research industry. In 2000, the Netherlands –based VNU takes over ORG-MARG. In 2001, VNU takes over audit major AC Neilson World wide. CAN-ORG-MARG is India’s sole supplier of retail audit data.

MARKETING AND ADVERTISING PLANNING

The company generates sales only through marketing, and as such it is the most important plan. This plan contains information about four important aspects of the organization. An organization’s advertising plan is drawn from its marketing plan. It also decides the allocation of advertising budget.

ELEMENTS OF THE MARKETING PLAN:

1. The situation analysis: Here the organization’s current situation is considered and is related to its past activities.

2. The marketing objectives: The objectives flow from the company’s current situation and management vision of the future.

3. The marketing strategy: It spells out how a company plans to realize its marketing objectives. Objectives lead to strategies. In the marketing strategy, we have to select the target market, determine the marketing mix for this market, and position the product in each market, and

4. The action plan.

BRANDING POSITIONING: Positioning is a creative exercise which starts with a product. Positioning is not what you do the product but it is what you do to the mind of the prospect. The shortest route to the heart is through the mind. Positioning may lead to cosmetic changes in the product’s name, price and packaging but far more important is the psychological positioning of potential products. The consumers mentally rank the products in their mind, along one or more than one dimensions. The consumers tend to remember number one.

MEANING OF THE PRODUCT POSITIONING: Product positioning is an attempt to create and maintain in the mind of the target audience the intended image for the product, relative to other brands so that the target audience perceives the product as possessing the attributes they want. There are two sides of the positioning.

(a) Market Positioning: There are three steps of Marketing Positioning.

1. Explore the market

2. Segmentation-Targeting

3. Competitive Strategy

(b) Psychological Positioning: It is a communication exercise that follows AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) Model.

PERCEPTUAL MAPPING FOR POSITIONING: Perceptual Space Map (PSM) shows the perceived relative positioning of products along different dimensions. The attributes or dimensions of a product are identified by qualitative research like depth interviews. Statistical techniques are used to reduce a very large number of dimensions to a few significant dimensions.

ADVERTISING AND POSITIONING: According to George A. Miller, Harvard psychologist, the average person can rarely name more than seven brands. The set of that the consumer has in his mind during the purchasing process is called “evoked set”. This is where the positioning comes in. advertising has to establish the brand in a commanding position in the mindsets of consumers. The image and appeals must be related to the way consumers possibly think about a brand and thus position it in their mind.

RESEARCH FOR POSITIONING: Positioning research starts with the study of the market to identify the factors, which are most important to various users of the product category. First, investigate what the consumers do with the products. Secondly, attitudinal information should be developed according to the purpose for which the brand is to be used and not just for any two brands. Thirdly, it is important to ask why a brand or a product is not being used. Fourthly, it is important to identify the existing brands where they are placed in the consumer’s mind. Lastly, positioning is creative. It helped by complete information. The position of a brand is the perception it brings about in the mind of the target consumers.

BRAND PERSONALITY: Brand image is broader than brand personality because by the time we enter the personality realm; we are dealing with feelings and emotions that the consumer takes away from communication. A well-established brand has a clear brand personality. Closely positioned brands may also acquire distinct personalities as a result of exposure to the product, packaging, service, word - of- mouth and advertising.

Brand personality should not be confused with the description of target audience. Brands are much like people. They have certain physical characteristics, certain skills and abilities and certain associations and attitudes. The brands therefore, appeal to senses, to reason and to emotions.

ADVERTISING PLAN: Advertising plan sets out the advertising objectives and advertising strategy along with details about messages design and media plans, sales promotion and event management tie-up. It also considers the advertising budget, and schedule.

ADVERTISING OBJECTIVES: advertising is expected to improve sales but the effects of advertising on sales are not measurable precisely. Many other factors simultaneously influence sales. Sales objectives are relevant in the context of advertising only.

(i)             Advertising is the only variable in the marketing equation

(ii)           Advertising is a predominant element of the marketing mix

(iii)          Advertising is supposed to generate an instant response

HIERARCHY OF EFFECTS: It is based on the assumptions that people first learn something from advertising. Later they develop feeling for it and are finally led to action. This sequence is called cognitive-affective-action sequence. The various stages in this sequence are awareness, comprehension, conviction, desire and action.

DAGMAR APPROACH: Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results, where to establish an explicit link between ad goals and ad results colley distinguished 52 advertising goals that might be used with respect to a single advertisement, a year’s campaign for a product or a company’s entire advertising philosophy. The goals may pertain to sales, imagine, attitude, and awareness.

According to DAGMAR approach, the communication task of the brand is to gain

(a) awareness

(b) comprehension

(c) conviction

(d) image

(e) action

Thus DAGMAR treats an advertising goal as a communication task, to be achieved among a defined audience in a given period of time.

ADVERTISING STRATEGY: It is basically a blend of the advertising message and the communications media. While do so, it also considers the target audience and the product concept.. Advertising message spells out what the company plans to say.

ALLOCATING FUNDS FOR ADVERTISING: It drives both the marketing and advertising plan. Advertising must justify the expenditure it makes. Advertising is an investment in future sales. As sales are affected by a variety of factors including advertising, it is difficult to determine allocation of funds. Before making allocations, the business environment is considered in its totality. A number of methods like,

Affordability method, Percentage-of –sales method, competitive method, objective and task method etc. are used to determine how much to spend on advertising.

ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN: It is used to mean organized and planned use of advertising for accomplishing a definite purpose. A campaign is a co-coordinative effort of promotion of a particular product/service during a particular period of time to attain pre- decided objective. Buyers are forgetful, often due to a clutter of large number of advertising messages; they over look several of them. It is therefore better to approach them in the form of a campaign. The factors, which affect the duration of campaign, are the type of product offered, the nature of advertiser’s marketing programme, seasonality of sales, media policies and the competitor’s advertising, and the geographical spread of a campaign can be the basis.

CAMPAIGN PLANNING: The basis of any campaign is the consumer behaviour and the market profile. The demographic and the psychographic study of consumers constituting a market is a must to create advertisements for the right target audience with the right type of appeals. Media planning is the selection of appropriate media or a combination of media for placement of advertisements. The points to be kept in mind while planning an advertisement are, Identify the Problem, The Budget, Pre-Testing, Target Audience, Media Selection, The language, The Visual and the Copy, Timing and Duration, Post –Testing and Effect on Sales.

WHY TO PLAN CAMPAIGN:

(i)             To determine the market and its potential

(ii)           To obtain the consumer profile

(iii)          To study the consumer psychology

(iv)          To know the frequency or size of buying

(v)            To decide about the channels and their satisfactory operation

(vi)          To bring about the product modification

(vii)         To determine the geographical scope of the campaign

(viii)       To do the media planning

(ix)          To determine the fundamental human desire to which the advertisement will appeal

(x)           To determine the scheduling and space buying.

BASIS OF CAMPAIGN PLANNING:

The three-word recipe for a good campaign as given by Sir William Crawford is Concentration, Domination, and Repetition.

THREE PHASES OF CAMPAIGN CREATION: There are three phases involved in the creation of any campaign:

1. Strategy development

2. The Briefing Phase

3. The creative Phase