Brand that Cash Cow
December 9th 2008 11:46
Brand that Cash Cow
I wonder if it’s because the line has blurred between news and a consumer product which can not be sold without a proper branding, positioning and advertising.
If this is true then the hottest brands in the News space today are SING IS KING and CASH FOR VOTES. Followed closely by THE KHANS FIGHT but the brand MURDER MOST FOUL, made up of new ingredients, has taken a beating in recent times but not before being top of the pops for 8 weeks in a row.
I am sure we all agree that our instincts tell us that the first thing media should do is investigate and get the facts right before the branding exercise but lets try and look at this from their point of view –
SO investigation means lots of hard work and time. It also means that out of the 100 odd stories that land up on your table, probably two would make it to the tube. So then how does one run a 24 hour news channel? How does one get the required eye balls? How does one plug those commercials?
On the other hand – people have short memories – get a Zesty tag line that has a ring to it – like SINGH IS KING, snazzy graphics, good music and few film clips and sure the story or whatever it is at this point in between.
And if all we have on the actual story is just a second of a sound byte then repeat that shot a million times back to back and you have got a full blown half hour slot. And whatever entertainment quotient is missing will be provided by the five minute of advertising commercials. Channel, journalist advertisers and the guy eating dinner in front of his TV- they are all happy.
So what’s wrong with this picture?
Yes, the option of choosing quality over quantity throws up some hard to digest measures but lets try and learn a small lesson from the same bollywood that all the news channels seem to be so besotted with .
Let’s look at say Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Hritikh Roshan and Kamala Hasan. All much in demand actors with huge pressure from fans, producers and general community to churn out more content but they do very few films every year and yet they make probably the best money in town.
Now lets look at Govinda, Ram Gopal Varma and even a non Bollywood product like Reliance net connection – Again all much in demand by everyone around at some point of time but they made the mistake of giving in to that demand, even fueling that demand and overestimating their deliverables.
Quantity over quality. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Govinda and RGV after Money hai to Honey hai and contract respectively but I know for a fact that consistent bad connectivity and lack of answerability is today making Reliance netconnect have major problems in selling even at discounted rate to many.
We don’t need to make 200 Hindi films if we know only 5 films will get any takers. We can pool in our resources and make some good kick ass 50 or even 100 films. That should be more then enough to offer variety and good content and fill up the coffers, all at the same time.
This will help us pay better to writers, who in turn will do more research and come up with plausible yet entertaining films.
It’s okay to think that News is also a product and it needs a brand name but its not okay to believe that that’s all it is- a product, a brand. Because it is not. News, in fact like a good film is sometimes the only hope we have in these times of despair.
Quality over quantity will always get you better results no matter what you are aiming for.
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