By Siddhartha Mukherjee
While sectors like FMCG, Telecom, Automobile, BFSI, etc are high on the use of communications tools and media investments, seldom do we realisethat the one sector that is actually doing true justice to brand communications through proper sustenance is the broadcast houses. Launches, beyond a point, are easy. It is an arduous effort to sustain and that is where Communication expertise comes to play!
Broadcast houses, TV channels in particular, are doing an amazing job of brand sustenance, even after a very effective launch.
Well, let’s say this – TV channels need audience (target consumers) to keep consuming their programme offerings every day. Unlike say a phone sim connection or a toothpaste, where the point of decision is one time and product, after purchase, lasts for a long duration of time, in case of TV channels, influencing the audience to stay on with a channel has to be an everyday affair.
How are TV channels managing this:
1. Mandate or KRAs Are Clear: KRAs set by the management are clear. Communications will not just be about Launch Communications. The bread and butter comes through sustenance. Audiences have to be attracted and maintained through the entire episode of the programme – does not matter whether it is IPL, Bigg Boss, a Movie, a Fiction or a Non-Fiction series. Which is why communications departments of TV channels, with their agencies, work literally towards daily planning.
2. Large Team: No doubt! Such large, regular and serious mandate calls for a large team. Typically, the CommunicationsTeam within a TV channel is much larger as compared to their counterparts in other sectors.
3. True Deployment of IMC: Brand Building is about Touchpoints across the Paid, Earned and Owned route. TV Channels use this wonderfully even during sustenance! Advertising, Promos, News, Social Media Conversations, On-ground activations, Viral, name it and they are using it!
4. Interplay of Earned and Paid: For Marcomm,this is one sector that optimizes and times its exposures beautifully. Whether PR should lead followed by Promos and Ads or should Promos take up the communications first and then PR or both should go hand in hand becomes a great learning point from this sector.
By and large, communications machinery outside the broadcast sector is not attuned to the idea that there is a world after launch. No wonder then, they gasp to achieve Share of Voice when they donot have a launch to manage. The fact that they can create product brand stories for sustenance often gets missed.Indeed broadcast communications offers huge learnings!