MUMBAI: As digitisation becomes a reality in India, news channels have realised that a branding exercise is the need of the hour in order to catch the eye of the consumers. The latest to invest in this practice is Hindi news channel India TV which will be launching its first trade campaign named ‘Bharat se India Tak‘.
The campaign, which will kick off next week, is conceptualised by Saints and Warriors with the objective of communicating its ability as a channel to "crossover to the right audiences across the length and breadth of the nation, audiences that are worthy target groups for a wide array of national & international brands trying to reach out to the vast and rapidly evolving Indian market."
The ‘Bharat se India Tak‘ will run for a month.
India TV is trying to correct the wrong perception about its brand values. "One of the issues that came up in the conversations within the channel was that the actual reality of the audiences that view India TV is very different from the perception that people
have. You keep hearing about the perceptions and it is troublesome as it is not what the actual audience measures tell you. These measures tell you that the channel has urban, semi urban and rural audiences. It has in fact very strong audiences in Delhi and Mumbai," India TV strategist Paritosh Joshi told Indiantelevision.com.
The campaign draws from the fact that India and Bharat are two words which are usually used to emphasise the rural-urban divide in the country. While India cues genteel, urbane and upwardly mobile, Bharat connotes the rustic and perhaps backward hinterland. Of course, reality is scarcely that simple and beneath the superficial contrasts, there are strong linkages that bind the two together. Through this campaign India TV aims to reinforce that it is one such common denominator.
The campaign includes digital and print initiatives with trade websites and publications respectively. The first phase of the campaign will go on for a month, after which it will scale up. For now the channel intends to focus on B2B branding, but will also look at a B2C campaign in the long run.
Recently, Zee News also drove a social media campaign promoting its new philosophy ‘Jitegi Aapki Soch‘. According to Joshi, this trend of news channel investing in branding is here to stay as the environment gets increasingly digitised. "In a digitised India, consumers will have ample choice and perception will matter. I believe a battle of brands will take place in every category as you have to be out there for the consumer to want you. News channels are no different," he says.
