Punit Goenka, Managing Director and CEO of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, explains why it’s important to rebrand in today’s cluttered market.
What is the reason behind revamping the logo? Why now?
We wanted to bring new freshness and that’s the reason behind the revamp. We worked for over 11 months on it and now that’s it ready, we didn’t want to wait any more to rebrand. We did rebranded our logo in 2005, but the fact that India is changing and one has to change itself too with time. The country has a large younger population and so the GECs which used to focus on older women are now shifting to cover the younger sections of the society. So given the contemporary mood and youth factor, we thought it was time to change and align ourselves with it.
What does the new logo ‘Umeed Se Saje Zindagi’ stand for?
There has been an evolution of the saas-bahu serials to socially impacting dramas; the content has evolved not only in soaps but also in reality shows, and the single common thing is hope. It is the protagonist’s hope that is driving her to fight, the contests hope and drive themselves to their goal. So, the concept is a common man’s hope getting fulfilled or getting hope from him. That’s why we came up with the logo – Umeed Se Saje Zindagi. The design, with its upward flourish, signifies the upward movement of desires and wishes.
Did you hire someone specific for this?
Several minds were involved in this process. A huge in-house design team closely collaborated with its creative agency Draftfcb Ulka to develop the new corporate brand. And of course, the audiences. We did a market survey where we held camps for two-three months in which almost 1.4 million people came. We tested our content, the logo etc and took their feedback and ideas to incorporate in the whole revamp process.
You revamped a few years ago and many other companies – channels or newspapers – keep revamping themselves. How important do you think it is to do this?
In a cluttered market, to revamp yourself is always necessary. It is important to remind the target audience that we exist and this is the brand which is bringing you entertainment or whatever the product is.
How would you place Zee as against other GECs?
The differentiation of Zee from any other is only from the content point. Our content strategy has always been different. We have always focused on our protagonist, our contestants and our stars. We don’t believe in going out in getting stars. The second big differentiation is that our content is made keeping our global audience in mind. We have millions of viewers outside India so we want them to associate themselves with the storyline. That’s our key differentiator and we continue to build on it.
Will the youth-focusing Zee now focus more on reality shows as they seem to be trending right now?
I still think that fiction still remains an important segment. Therefore, it will be a mix of fiction and non-fiction. There are channels capturing the metro youth but there is still a market for national youth. So, if there are opportunities we will try to capture them. One mustn’t forget that youth is the toughest audience to hold on to. Youth has to be captured from multiple platforms, not only from a television channel. You have to go out on the internet, the mobile space. Just launching reality shows is not going to suffice.
So, what can we expect next from Zee?
This year we are going to focus on more niche channels. We have already launched Zee Khana Khazana and we are waiting government’s permission to launch our 24/7 golf channel. There are around 2,00,000 active players in the country. So a channel priced at say Rs100 a month makes revenue. Apart from that we will be launching four HD channels – Zee TV, Zee Cinema, Zee Studio and one sports channel. This has been already approved and done by the board.
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