THE PRINCIPLES OF TV BRAND MANAGEMENT

Branding is just a fancy name for promotion, right? Wrong.

Branding is more than that. Brand management has a special role within the larger context of promotion. Some promotion activities may have branding component. In simple terms, branding deals with a product’s reputation. This encompasses those promotion activities that are intended to distinguish a brand from its competitors by communicating to consumers what the brand stands for. For media “products,” this marketing communication can occur at several levels:

On-air promotions
Advertising
Public relations/publicity
Product usage

What is important to remember here is that, despite the use of all the marketing tools, promoting isn’t always branding.

Effective media branding strategies are designed for the long run and make use of promotion techniques that will nurture audience’s loyalty. A conscientious media brand manager needs to look at his or her promotion efforts and ask a couple of important questions.

Does this particular promotion effort enhance the long-term reputation of my brand? Does this promotion effort offer enduring reasons why my brand is superior to my competition?

Branding focuses more on the consumer, rather than on the product.
Successful marketers are not in the business of selling products but in the business of selling solutions to people’s problems. Smart marketers know that promoting the attributes of a branded product is only half the battle - A truly persuasive marketing message talks about the personal consumer benefits derived from these product attributes.

Although branding television is a relatively new field of study, the essential notions of brand management have been around for a long time. One of the essential tools used by most business schools and marketing organizations is the classic Marketing Mix, consisting of the following brand elements;

Product
Price
Distribution (Place)
Promotion Product – the media content experienced by an audience. The product can be a network, a station, a program, or even a feature.

Product - can be a tricky branding situation because these products can overlap so that one product is perceived as a distributor of another product – The reputation of a distributor can send a message about one or more of the branded products to the consumer. What if Tiffany jewelry were made available at Carrefour? What if Marlboro cigarettes were added to the menu at Goodies?

Pricing – is not a major concern for free over-the-air broadcasters. However, price can also be interpreted as the time invested in watching a program. A broadcaster wants the use of a media brand by an audience member to be time well spent and therefore, a good “investment.”

Looking far into the digital future, there is much speculation that television broadcasters will enter the viewer subscription business providing many niche-programming services to highly targeted audiences. Television will become more retail, and pricing strategies for these new services will become a major concern. And, successful brands can charge more –- Consumers are willing to pay more for a brand they know and appreciate.

Distribution – First, there is the physical distribution of program content, which involves a station’s signal strength. No amount of promotion can increase sales if potential customers are unable to buy the brand or tune into the programs.

An equally important distribution challenge involves program scheduling. Unlike most consumer goods, broadcast “products” are bound by time. Imagine a retail outlet in which the shelf displays changed every half hour to display different competing brands!

Three important scheduling factors follow:

HUTs (homes using television)
Counter-programming
Lead-in

Just as some consumer brands in retail setting have better store locations or better shelf positioning, certain television programs are exposed to better audience “traffic” than are others. Each of the above factors can influence ratings performance (share of market) but not necessarily brand loyalty.

Promotion – includes communication activities aimed at informing, persuading, and reminding consumers about a particular brand. These activities include advertising, public relations, and sales promotion. Television networks have an added advantage over retail goods in that they can use their own medium (on-air promos) to reach potential customers.

But remember, not all promotional activity is branding. Most short-term promotion schemes intended to boost temporarily market shares which seldom cultivate long-term brand loyalty.

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