Does a new brand stand work media magic?

BY admin

Many media brands have chosen to re-package themselves over the last two years. Dipali Banka takes a close look at the new avatars and analyses their overall effect.

Content is no longer the supreme ruler in the media and entertainment domain. All big companies today face an identity crisis and a branding dilemma. They are all scratching their heads on how to increase consumer and stakeholder value in order to stand out in this cluttered environment. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a spate of re-branding exercises across the media community. According to the FICCI-KPMG report, 2011, “With increasing fragmentation and intensity of competition, deeper understanding of cultural and social references through focused study groups will enable players to target their consumers specifically and build loyalty.” But does the company really change its values with the rebranding exercise or is it merely a change in logo and tagline? Does a refreshing or re-branding exercise always work for a media brand? What points do they have to keep in mind to ensure it works?

Change and its reasons

MG Parameswaran, Executive Director & CEO, Draftfcb + Ulka says, “All brands need to refresh themselves at regular intervals, in today’s nanosecond world. Unfortunately if you drift too far away from what your consumers see you as, you run the danger of alienating your core group of consumers. So brand marketers have to do the fine balance of providing change (which will attract new consumers) while providing a sense of continuity (to ensure the current customers stay on).”

Media brands have a bigger challenge because unlike a soap or a car, their product is constantly changing; the content they beam out shapes their brand personality and the consumer is watching the brand, or at least the logo for several hours every week, if not every day. “A media brand, when it goes through a brand refresh, needs to do an even finer job of brand-balance, as I call it. Changing the logo is one part of the job. But the more important job is to refresh the positioning and to follow that with new content that is in line with the new mantra,” he adds. 

Draftfcb + Ulka gave creative inputs for the most recent re-branding exercise undertaken by the Zee group of channels with a new tag line ‘Umeed Se Saje Zindagi . Designed by ZEEL’s (Zee Entertainment Enterprise Limited) internal team, the group’s new logo, an abstract form of ‘Z’ and aqua blue colour, is supposed to bring in modernity and freshness to the brand. According to the company, the new age design with its upward flourish signifies the upward movement of desires and wishes. Punit Goenka, MD and CEO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. says the new look and identity is the company’s objective to take forward a progressive outlook. “We believe the time is right to infuse renewed freshness into the brand and reflect an identity that truly articulates our spirit. The new positioning is about a celebration and vindication of a woman’s emerging beliefs and a reflection of her changing  hopes, dreams and optimism.”

Commenting on the new brand identity of Zee TV, K V Sridhar, NCD, Leo Burnett India (also known as Pops in the industry) said, “I do not know how much Zee has achieved from the re-branding exercise but from the look of it, it does not seem too world class to me and it particularly does not convey anything which is special or made me notice the change.” According to Pops, it is very important for any brand to hang on to the values which they have built and then incorporate newer values when they get the opportunity in order to attract a newer target audience. “In strategic terms, the new identity must have some continuity and at the same time add a new dimension for the people to notice it. If you do not strike a balance between the two, there will be issues. When Star plus changed their identity, they really grabbed the size, they modernised, used much bolder colours and went on to lots of bold things to make people notice their change,” he said.

Star Plus went in for re-branding a year ago. With the top space in the general entertainment channel domain becoming cluttered, Star took a larger stance with the re-branding and spruced up its prime time line-up to come back to the numero uno position. “The business context was the need to heighten differentiation and more clearly articulate our brand promise to viewers. So we did a number of things starting from defining the brand promise ‘Rishta Wahi, Soch Nayi’, creating a new visual identity, creating a content line-up that mirrored the promise to finally delivering the most effective marketing and communication strategies that reiterate our promise every single time,” said Sanjay Gupta, COO, Star TV. The new Star Plus logo was designed by a London-based Brand Solutions company called Venture three. The broadcast design was developed in-house by the Star Plus team and a team of animators from Hong Kong. Ogilvy and Mather developed the brand communication campaign.

Awareness of the key insights of the target group and spotting the underlying trend of the consuming audience is the key for re-branding. The channel Fox History & Entertainment changed itself to Fox History & Traveller as its travel shows received a very good response and the channel found travel being untapped and unexplored in incumbent channels. “Initially on Fox History & Entertainment we had created a space called My City, My Street where we had lot of young people writing to us about the life in cities and culture and heritage within those cities. We went out to some of those cities and explored them and the whole show came out like a travelogue and was pretty well received. We even had an offshoot of that show called ‘It Happens only in India’ and the audience loved these shows and requested more. We were also simultaneously strategising our business and we found that travel was viewed through an experiential lens and had a lot of potential,” said Keertan Adyanthaya, MD of FOX International and National Geographic channels in India.

Some brands were compelled to change their positioning as their current stand did not match market requirements. FM radio brand ‘Meow’ is one such example. Part of the India Today group, ‘Meow’ was initially launched as a for women only talk radio station. In September 2010, the company made it mass appeal by positioning it as ‘sabse filmi’ and rechristening the station ‘Oye!’. 

Discovery India renamed their channel Discovery Travel & Living to TLC as part of a global re-branding process. “TLC was listed in the US but everywhere in the world the name of the channel changed to TLC, accompanied with new shows and a completely new packaging. “If the global channel runs with the same branding and the same brand identity, then it gives us economies of scale and we do not have to create different elements for different markets. We can just customise them and it helps. Also a lot of people around the world would work on the same brand. So since they know the brand identity and the brand attributes that they are working on, it results in a consistent product coming out from everywhere,” said Rahul Johri, Senior Vice President and General Manager, South Asia, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific.

“The re-branding exercise had to be backed up with an extensive marketing campaign as for six years, viewers were used to a name called Travel & Living and if they didn’t know that the channel had changed to TLC, they would come looking for travel & living and not find it,” he added.

Execution of change

Media brands form a relationship with the viewer and hence when they change, it has to be executed seamlessly and by ensuring continuity just like a friend who has grown up and matured with you rather than meeting a different person altogether. According to Ashish Bhasin, chairman India and CEO South East Asia, Aegis Media, there are three phases of communicating this change to the target audience. First is the pre-change phase where you communicate to the target audience that you are about to change, and a logical reason as to why it is happening. “People sometimes have a natural resistance to change, they want to know the logic for the change and that is why the pre-launch communication which needs to be there right up to the point that you are changing. Then there is that period where you have announced the change and how you can get your audience to be comfortable with that change. So what you are aiming to do, what your look and feel is doing plus the actual impact you make, must all be in sync. For example, if my content is all about violence and my brand concept and stand is different, then it won’t work. And once the relationship is established, the next phase is the endorsement phase, where you have to remind the audience of the values that you had brought with the change and stay in touch with your audience,” he said.

A good example of a seamless execution is Nickelodeon, which changed its brand image to be in line with the global branding. “We moved from a splash logo to a bolder orange one to make our channel relevant to today’s kids. We tried to make it happen in a very interactive, engaging and exciting way,” said Nina Jaipuria, VP & GM Nick India, part of the Viacom 18 group. Three weeks before the channel was to change its identity on June 26, 2010, the brand launched a campaign called Mission Orange, publicising the colour of the new logo. “Mission Orange essentially informed kids that Nickelodeon was to change its logo and was collecting a lot of orange for it. It asked kids to send anything orange coloured online or by post. We got a lot of stuff from kids like orange toys, pencils, erasers, stickers, etc. In the middle of the campaign, the stuff that was received was actually shown on the channel. That campaign ended with us thanking kids for sending orange things and saying here is the new logo,” explained Nina. The campaign was quite successful in the sense that it was not just informing the audience about the change, but making them a part of it.

Following up its repositioning in June 2010, Star Plus announced in January this year the launch of a new content line-up. During the announcement, Uday Shankar, CEO, STAR India, told exchange4media, “When we revamped the channel’s strategy last year, I wondered what would happen six months down the line. It would be forgotten by the viewers and by us as it would become a regular feature of our lives.

This is a way to remind ourselves that there is a philosophy we must live up to and to tell our viewers that this channels stands for a certain philosophy and we are very committed to it.” The new content was well received by the audience and Star Plus maintained its lead on the ratings in the GEC space. But Multi Screen Media’s (MSM) GEC channel Sony Entertainment Television (which undertook a re-branding and makeover in 2009) could not take a lead on its ratings as the content wasn’t well received by the audience. The channel launched new graphics, brand imagery and a signature tune along with seven new shows to mark the change. However, according to reports, except for celebrity reality show Dus Ka Dum hosted by Bollywood actor Salman Khan, all of them failed to succeed and were soon taken off the air.

On October 6, 2009 MSM announced an exclusive content deal with Yash Raj Films, who would produce five shows for the channel from January 2010, but most of them debuted with lower TRPs than expected and failed to attract viewers. Media planners attributed the low numbers to consecutive launches of all the shows and ‘not- so-powerful’ content.

Music channel MTV has managed to stay true to its positioning of ‘Stay Raw’- adopted in November 2010 changing the earlier ‘Enjoy’ - with shows like Roadies, True Life, Stunt Mania and now Coke Studio. “In order to stay true to our positioning, the entire graphics and interface of the channel was based on raw materials. We launched several programmes that stay true to ‘Raw’. ‘Roadies’ obviously was very raw in itself. We launched an international reality series called True Life which is the raw side of life. We launched Coke Studio which is the raw side of music recording, and our programme Stunt Mania became deeper and darker with harder stunts,” said Aditya Swamy, Channel Head, MTV India.

The Print Factor

In case of satellite television, the big brand wave came only around 1998-2000 and most of the brands today are only about eight to 10 years old. And since they are now maturing, refreshing and overhauling their image becomes imperative. However, the overhaul in print media brands is happening increasingly because of competition and pressure to differentiate. “In the Indian print media, re-design of brands appears to be happening at a startling frequency. That’s understandable, as the increasing competition increases the pressure to differentiate. But that’s also dangerous. Because the frequency of re-design seems to be far greater than the frequency of restructuring of the product,” said Gourav Jaswal, founder of Synapse, which gives clients communication solutions for business goals.

Hindustan Times did a major overhaul of their 85-yearold newspaper in July, 2009. They implemented a redesign done by Mario Garcia with plenty of colour all over the pages (including headlines) and several new features. “The objective was to expand our youth reader base and actively engage with them. We saw that while 20-29-year-old people formed the largest demographic group, they were spending less time on newspapers (or not reading at all) because they were more familiar with other sources of news. Our objective was to get more readers in this age group and to make existing readers spend more time on the paper,” said Shantanu Bhanja, VP Marketing of Hindustan Times Media Limited, talking about the reason behind the redesigning of the publication. According to IRS data, Hindustan Times has been a consistent leader in the Delhi-NCR region and has been occupying the second slot in Mumbai since.

Mario Garcia also worked on the redesigning of HT Media’s listed company Hindustan Media Ventures’ publication Hindustan. Hindustan was repositioned with a new look and a new content philosophy, ‘Tarakki ko chahiye naya nazariya’. “The manifestation of it is delivered through an enhanced product portfolio: a new women’s magazine, a new Sunday supplement and brand new columns by many distinguished writers, all geared towards delivering on the core proposition of tarakki for the reader,” said Amit Chopra, CEO, Hindustan Media Ventures Limited.

Another listed print major, Jagran Prakashan Limited (JPL), gave itself a new corporate identity and brought its entire media offerings under one umbrella. “Over a period of time, JPL had diversified into multiple platforms within the media space with presence in print, OOH, activations, mobile and internet. The group’s perception was driven by the flagship brand, Dainik Jagran. There was limited awareness of other operations. This is only natural, given that the other businesses are nascent. However, as we move forward, and as other businesses gain momentum, it was important to make a move from a respected newspaper to an admired media conglomerate. This exercise is also about setting in place a robust system that protects the equity of the Jagran master brand,” said Basant Rathore, VP, Strategy Planning & Brand Development, Jagran Prakashan Limited. The new logo of Jagran Prakashan has the symbol of a rising sun, with the warm colours red and yellow and the Jagran brand name. The logo and new identity were designed by Ray + Keshavan|The Brand Union.

But does re-branding really help the print brand? Said Jaswal, “Re-branding can help, but it is not the final step. You change something fundamental in the product offering, and then signal that change to customers by changing the look and feel of the product too. If the vehicle does not fundamentally change but only the headlights, bumpers and upholstery do, then that print media brand will enjoy as much success as the Ambassador car did after its most recent changes.”

For advertisers, repositioning of media brands is quite welcome as it finely defines the target audience of the media brand. “The audience is constantly evolving and hence brands, whether they are physical products or media, need to mould and move forward to meet expectations and delight consumers, thus establishing a deep bond. It is imperative for channels to infuse renewed freshness into the brand, gain mindshare and loyalties,” said Kamal Nandi, Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing, Godrej Appliances. Even Shashank Srivastava, Chief GM (Marketing), Maruti Suzuki Limited said, “The Indian media space is still developing and it is only natural that there will be redesigning of brands and brand architecture. From the advertisers’ point of view, this is actually a welcome development and keeps the image of the industry updated.”

Feedback: dipali@exchange4media.com

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