Indiantelevision dot com's Breaking News :TAM Adex Analysis: Program Promotions reaching a new high!

The past few months have seen a splurge of program launches on general mass entertainment channels. With the increasing fragmentation of viewership, on-Air program promotions have assumed a pivotal role for generating walk-ins (Trials) into these new programs. The other amazing development is that new rules are being framed in this area itself. Lets look at one of the various aspects here… which is the weight of the on-air promos.

A recent study conducted by the S-Group (a Specialist Media Strategy Cell within TAM) throws up interesting insights on the same. The focus of the study was to analyse program launches that have happened on the Hindi mass entertainment channels in the recent past. This article intends to share some of the learning’s that have emerged out of that study. The programs considered for the analysis were:

Different promo plans were analysed on the following parameters

How many people did the promo plan talk to?

How many times on an average did it remind viewers of the new program?

How much viewership did the promo plan garner within the audiences?

What was the length of the promo communication?

The following chart compares the promo plan deliveries across the above mentioned programs.

From the chart above, its clear that Star Plus seems to be topping the charts in terms of the weight of their promo plan across the three launches. The weight of promo plan for "Kahaani Terrii Merrii" is indicative of the latest trend in promo planning. With options available to the viewer increasing manifold; it has become quintessential for channels to ensure that they talk to the prospective viewers "enough" number of times.

Probably no!! For instance, a look into the average promo duration for the programs clearly indicates that the program promos on Star Plus have the highest duration! Is that good? Does that mean more time available to communicate the details and storylines of the new program? Perhaps.

In order to ensure sufficient walk-ins to the program at the launch time, it becomes imperative for channels to maintain a relatively high share of voice than the competition. This would ensure that the viewers remember the promo communication and would at least walk-in once to sample the content. In fact, the chart below on Average OTS delivered is fairly scary! Kashmeer promos were hammered into the viewer almost 20 times on an average. The same number for "Kitty Party" was 5.3 and "Kahaani Terrii Merrii" was 8.3.

In marketing communication parlance, it is a well-known fact that the market leader enjoys much larger presence in consumer’s mind. This automatically implies that the other brands in the marketplace need to shout louder to ensure the top slot in consumer’s mind and shout innovatively.

Simply put, while we study Promo GRPs delivered and Average Promo duration aired to get learnings out, do you believe that if all programs were promoted in exactly the same manner as every other would all programs have the same walk-ins? NO! And the reason is very simple. A Star Plus GRP is not the same as a Sony GRP which is not equal to a Zee GRP which cannot be equated with a Sahara GRP! Much as if a Colgate competitor were to make ads exactly as Colgate and spend the same amount on media will it get Colgate’s market share? No! It would have to do something more dramatic, more innovative as well as with a huge media weight.

Therefore, it will be unfair and naive to attribute successful program launches to any single factor amongst the above mentioned factors. In reality a combination of above mentioned variables along with other important qualitative promo factors would be deciding which remote button does the viewer press.