A new logo, a new tagline. Perhaps, even a name change. All to signal that change is in the air. That?s what many television channels have been doing in the last six-seven months, as they fight to get the eyeballs in the Rs 25,700 crore Indian TV industry intensifies.
As many as 12 television channels from various genres have gone in for a re-branding exercise this year. The list includes current general entertainment channel (GEC) leader Star Plus, major media conglomerate UTV Software Communications? various channels including UTV World Movies, UTV Movies, UTV Bindaas, UTV Action and UTV Bloomberg, NewsX, NDTV Imagine, Lumiere Movies and Imagine Showbiz and kids channel Nickelodeon.
Channels usually go in for re-branding when they need to signal some changes as far as the inherent brand value is concerned. However, there are other extraneous factors at work as well. In some cases, when brands get old and lose their connect with the audiences, a makeover helps them get a fresh lease of life and project a more modern image. Or there could be a new channel whose trademark or logo is not registering well with the audiences and therefore a change becomes inevitable. Also, in some cases, if the channel changes hands, a makeover becomes imperative as the channel itself goes through a series of changes.
Harish Bijoor, brand-strategy specialist and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. said, ?The broadcast media in India is still in a nascent stage in terms of differentiation and bottom-line profit churn. In the beginning there was one: Doordarshan. And then came many and now it is a veritable clutter of too many. Brands are now vying with one another to rise above this commodity clutter. Therefore the overt effort to re-brand and look different. Yet another reason is the fact that consumers are getting younger and younger. The young consumer is looking for the contemporary look, logo, tone, tenor and decibel. All this is therefore being changed. With gusto.?
For Star Plus, the raison d?etre was its comeback to the number one position on the GEC roster. Star Plus had been the number one GEC channel for nine years since its launch in 2000. But, post the debut of Viacom18?s Colors in 2008, it had slipped to the number two and then number three spot. It took Star Plus some time to fight back, but the moment it spruced up its prime time line-up it was back at its numero uno position. In the week ended February 27 it managed to achieve 300 GRPs (gross rating point) and 22% of total viewership share in the Hindi GEC space and won back the top slot, which it has retained till date. ?Today we can claim to be a true pan Indian network and have a market share of 15% (pan-India) which is significantly higher than other broadcast networks,? said Uday Shankar, CEO, Star India.
But Star Plus realised that mere programming changes weren?t enough to consolidate its leadership. A fresh packaging, logo, new graphical elements and a new signature was also required. And so, for the first time in the last decade the blue Star Plus logo gave way to a more glamorous ruby red star sign with a new mantra ?Rishta Wahi, Soch Nayi? (Old relationship, new thinking). ?When you are running a channel for 24/7 you don?t get to step back to figure out what?s going wrong. When we sit in our rooms in big cities we get carried away with certain perceptions. But a new middle class India has taken shape in the last 10-15 years. And therefore it was important for us to change with changing times,? said Shankar.
Star Plus says that its new tagline reflects this new thinking literally. ?While values remain the same we are now offering our viewers a fresh perspective? is how Shankar puts it. It is estimated that Star has spent nearly Rs 20 crore for this new logo which has been designed by London-based company Venture 3 and for a new advertising campaign created by Ogilvy & Mather.
For homegrown media conglomerate UTV Software Communications, the trigger was its completion of 20 years in the industry, as it achieved a market capitalisation of nearly Rs 1,620.21 crore. The company earmarked a budget of Rs 3.5 crore for the makeover, which covered all the businesses under the UTV umbrella, including television channels such as Bloomberg UTV, UTV World Movies, UTV Movies, UTV Bindaas, and UTV Action.
?UTV is 20 years old. And the whole thing began one fine morning ? then we decided to do a book. And me and Jyotika (Jyotika Ahuja, the corporate communications head of UTV) were thinking about the book and then we decided to get a team together and we felt that this is a good opportunity to sit back and think about the brand UTV. And then we completely forgot about the book! It?s been four months and we still don?t have a book. But what we do have is a new brand identity,? said Zarina Mehta, co-founder and director, UTV Group. ?So what we did is we sat down top management and we wrote down a series of brand values. Also, we have transitioned in the last four years clearly and consciously to move from a B2B (business-to-business) to B2C (business-to-consumer) company. And this also triggered the entire brand transition process.?
The company?s target audience is the 15-34 years age group. On an average, the UTV Group has about 70 million viewers who spend about 60,000 hours on its various channels. The company wanted to know what employees and consumers thought of the brand UTV. Of the 1400 employees, ?Altogether 750 people were given a blank piece of paper and asked what UTV means for them? And 88% of them actually used the word innovation. The others were ?trend setting?, ?challenging?, and so on. But the word innovation was consistent among each of our businesses,? says Mehta.
Along with this, the company conducted a consumer insight study on what consumers feel about the brand, and it threw up a strikingly similar result. Innovation was the key word here too. UTV Group hired a Singapore-based design company Bonsey Designs to create the new look for UTV and its group companies. Besides the change in logo, all the companies under the parent brand now have the name ?UTV? as the prefix and the same has been translated into the logos.
In 2009, when NaiDunia promoter and CEO Vinay Chhajlani and former Businessworld editor Jehangir S Pocha acquired English news channel NewsX that belonged to INX News, a change in the name and branding was inevitable. However, the new promoters shied away from talking about it probably because they had a bigger problem at hand. NewsX since its inception had failed to lure audiences and changing that was the primary agenda of its new owners. Finally, in May this year, Indi Media Company that owns NewsX, rechristened it as Independent Media Network (INM) News. This was followed by a new brand identity and logo.
Jehangir S Pocha, co-promoter, IMN News, says, ?IMN News is the latest entrant in the English news space and we aim at creating India?s first non-tabloid audience centric news channel. After a lot of research, we have analyzed the opportunities in the genre and we have created a brand that will have a very distinctive positioning. There is a need in the viewer?s mind which we will be addressing.?
The new brand name and look have been created and developed by a team of key management executives along with Argentina-based design company Stein Branding, one of the foremost design houses in the broadcast world. The new sets have been created by James Yates Design in New York. The new-look channel will be unveiled within a few months, and will be accompanied by a similarly redesigned website, IPTV service and mobile TV service. ?The idea behind the logo was to create something that would stand out and represent our core brand values,? says Pocha.
Another set of channels that went through a brand makeover due to a change in ownership is the erstwhile NDTV bouquet of channels?NDTV Imagine, NDTV Lumiere and Imagine Showbiz.
In February this year, all the three channels were acquired by broadcast major Turner Asia Pacific Ventures (TAVP). While all the three channels dropped the name NDTV from the name, the logos remained more or less the same. Nikhil Madhok, vice-president, marketing and communication, Imagine TV, said, ?Even when Imagine was owned by NDTV, we positioned the channel as Imagine and not as NDTV Imagine. We just had it in the logo and so the journey of the brand transition started much earlier. So the font remains the same. We didn?t want to change the logo drastically since we didn?t want to signal a change.?
Viacom 18?s kids channel Nickelodeon too succumbed to the attractions of a new look this year, as it went through a rebranding exercise for the first time in 25 years. In line with its global brand makeover, Nick India adopted a new look from June 26. The playful splat in the logo was replaced by a more contemporary and slick logo.
This was done to synergise all the brands across platforms and across networks globally. This ?one brand? exercise was rolled out in September 2009, starting with the US market and concluding with India. It helps connect Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Nicktoons, Nick Jr. (formerly Noggin) and TeenNick (formerly N), all of which use similar looking lower case logos.
?The brand makeover sets the stage for the next phase of growth. We have a been a fairly fast growing channel in the kids space and having done that, reached the number one position. The idea is to widen the gap with others and dominate leadership and consolidate ourselves as the number one player. And the first step towards that is to align ourselves with the one brand,? said Nina Elavia Jaipuria, senior vice-president and general manager, Nick India. ?It?s all about making the brand more relatable and reliable to children.? On a weekly basis the channel gets an average GRP (gross rating point) of 140-150 in the Hindi speaking market (HSM).
And the latest to join this rebranding bandwagon is Discovery Network?s lifestyle channel Travel & Living which will unveil a new look from September 1.
The channel will be called TLC and will reveal new graphic elements, show packaging and new shows. TLC will adorn a much hipper, trendier and cooler look and the viewers will enjoy a bigger, better, bolder channel with new faces, new genres and new places.
Rahul Johri, senior vice-president and general manager, India, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific said, ?There are two reasons behind this revamp. First, it is important to refresh channel looks from time to time and in this case Travel & Living was six years old since its launch in 2004. So we have been contemplating about it for a while.?
Second, in the US, the Travel & Living channel is one of the biggest channel from the Discovery bouquet. It is one of the top 10 entertainment channels in the US reaching nearly 99 million homes. ?But the TLC brand did not exist outside of the US. So we wanted to maintain the brand congruency,? he said.
In the Asia Pacific region TLC reaches around 133 million homes and nearly 50 million in India. The new robust programming line-up on TLC, with over 150 hours of captivating content includes 15 premiere shows, 6 new hosts, 11 new seasons and innovative genres such as extreme adventure, family and makeovers.
Experts say that behind every re-branding exercise lies the intention to increase viewership. But in order to achieve that, a good branding exercise needs to be backed by compelling content.
Consider the example of Multi Screen Media?s general entertainment channel Sony, that went through a makeover in 2009. The channel launched new graphical elements in its brand imagery, a new signature tune and a massive advertising campaign to announce its new looks spending about Rs 15 crore in the process. The channel also launched as many as seven new shows to mark the change.
However, 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 air. Following this in January this year the channel announced its exclusive content tie-up with Yash Raj Films TV, but this time again the shows failed to attract the attention of viewers and were pulled off air. Media watchers say Sony?s repeated experimentation with content has made the entire makeover exercise meaningless.
On the other hand, Star Plus which was already back to the number one spot after it introduced new shows saw a huge spike in GRP after it unveiled the new logo. It introduced the new logo on June 12 and the week following that it for the first time ever crossed the 450 GRP mark ? a major feat for any GEC given the fragmentation.
Madhok of Imagine TV says, ?In the long run it is only the content that can help a channel survive. Branding efforts can only help when there is a new channel or a new show.? Concurs UTV?s Mehta. ?At heart we are a content driven company. The mediums are just one more way to reach out to our consumers.?
Nickelodeon says that the rebranding exercise is just a road map for the next big change.
?There is much more than just this brand change. And the first thing is content. We have launched two new shows ?Artzooka? and ?Dreamkix?. The other big thing is digital and we plan to sell inventory for advertisement. It will be like a social networking site for children. It automatically becomes another platform for advertisers where they would want to connect with the kids. And it becomes another stream of revenue for us,? said Jaipuria.
Pocha of IMN News says, ?The name and logo change are only a part of the overall change we are undergoing. The overall news viewing experience will change.?
However, Bijoor sounds a note of caution. “I do believe the timing is right (for so many channels to go in for rebranding). But the very fact that everyone is attempting literally the same thing means that there is going to be? a higher degree of parri passu feel across all these channels. I do believe this branding work needs to be just a?Phase 1 effort. More needs to happen soon, just to stand out from the new clutter of everyone?s making. The biggest ones who need differentiation in terms of branding effort are the news channels. There are too many. Many look alike in their colour codes, presentation styles and attitudes. And all dabble with the same limited content that the day?s news dishes out. The real challenge of branding is in this space.?
Even as these channels look to refurbish their image, there are new channels coming in. Sri Adhikari Brothers? new comedy and music channel called ?Mastiii? has been launched. The logo and the stills are packaged with vibrant and exciting colours which sets the mood right for the kind of content that it is expected to offer.
Anita Verma, associate vice-president programming, Masttti, says, ?Our branding is in synch with the positioning of the brand. The logo of the channel has been designed by the in-house team. The three ?I?s at the end of ?Mastiii? denotes the musical notes, while the logo has a butterfly with speakers in the place of eyes.?
She further said that its imperative for any brand to make itself available at their preferred destination of entertainment and hence branding the product is very crucial before it reaches the audience.