From zapping to churn – and what it means for marketing of television

The shift in entertainment consumption from linear to digital, has had a major impact on the packaging and marketing of television. With the emergence of SVOD platforms and a galloping supply of quality content, two marketing trends have crystallized for the TV houses:

1) MORE DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER – LESS MASS MARKETING

Traditional marketing and PR activities have become less rewarding in the last few years. Extensive trailing is not a viable option in an on demand world. Digital display advertising is less powerful because of ad blockers and banner blindness. And with an ever diminishing number of journalists in traditional media, your chances of valuable media coverage are not getting better.

Instead data-driven direct-to-consumer activities proliferate, through social media and other channels such as personalized emails and push notifications. Properly implemented, such activities can be not only cheaper but also more appreciated by the consumers.

2) MORE CHANNEL BRANDING – LESS SHOW BRANDING

The second obvious trend is that TV companies are increasingly engaged in channel branding. Historically broadcasters focused their efforts on creating a lot of buzz around a limited number of new, or very popular, TV shows. This made sense since the viewers’ zapping habits made awareness about individual shows more important for the ratings than awareness about the channel brand itself. Viewers did not really have to care about which channel their favorite show aired on, it was more important to know when it was broadcast.

Making users subscribe to – and stay with – a VOD platform is a completely different story. If consumers are to commit to paying another $10 per month, tv companies have to make sure their brands are well-known AND associated with sufficient volumes of quality content.

IMPACT FOR YOU

Both these trends imply new challenges for your marcomms team.

Increased focus on corporate branding means you might need to recruit new skills. The activities and thinking that go into corporate branding are different from program marketing, because the scope of a corporate brand is broader and more long-term.

Going direct to consumer, on the other hand, requires better workflows for coordination of brands and services, easier access to data and rich content for all your programs. Every single episode of all shows should have a minimum viable set of information (metadata) and media that can be used in today’s multitude of marketing channels.

Such an environment is only possible to create and scale if you have a high degree of automation. Collection and sharing of metadata and content must be automated, secure and flexible.

On a good note, investing in such workflows will benefit you in many other ways in the future. Read more in this previous post.

Clipsource has been hired to map and automate marketing workflows at some of the television industry’s finest brands. Contact us today to learn more about how you can unleash the power of your content.