Of TV brand building and branding a TV channel

MUMBAI: One spoke about the evolution of a TV brand while the other extrapolated on the branding of a new channel, but both instances have in their own right, shaped the television scenario in India in the last one year.

SET India CEO Kunal Dasgupta outlined the success story of the award winning and much lauded Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin marketing campaign, right from viewer insight research to flash mob marketing - a unique example of an Indian TV show marketed aggressively from day one. Turner India's Orion Ross and Arnab Chaudhuri, on the other hand, took the assembled audience through the various stages of the Pogo logo evolution, its channel IDs and brand image.

In his presentation, Dasgupta recounted how the channel, perceived as a 'me too' channel till a year ago, undertook an eight-city study to understand the contemporary woman and found that

- women want a successful life
- today's woman is a strategist
- she's competitive
- she's aspirational
- she's looking for an alternative to kitchen politics on TV shows

Sony had the advantage of being the first market where the original Latin American Betty La Fea would be recreated, as Jassi... The marketing tasks at hand, according to Dasgupta, were fueling curiosity, creating hype, building an image and taking care to conceal the character of Jassi till the launch of the show. A 360 degree approach, which included the intrigue approach, a testimony approach and a character approach were tried as well as various interactive marketing techniques employed.

The gambit, says Dasgupta, worked. Jassi has fetched Sony four million new viewers in the general entertainment category, while the slot sampling too has grown by 300 per cent in the last one year. The TVRs, naturally, have also shot up by over 300 per cent, he says. On the marketing front, the Jassi ringtone was downloaded by 300,000 cell phones.

Jassi today, apart from being the channel driver, is also the unofficial mascot of the channel, invited to host fashion shows and feted at various events. The story of a conventional plot, well executed, says a happy Dasgupta.

Ross and Chaudhuri, who spoke about the evolution of Pogo, elaborated how they moved from animated figures to using real children in the channel ids. The duo spoke about their use of four colours used for the logo, the shift from the use of pogo sticks to bouncing alphabets in the letters and the way the brand identity was created for a channel that was completely new in the Indian market.