Star Plus is seeing red and showing red. It launched its new ruby red logo with a white-hot swoosh on June 12, replacing its blue star logo.
UTV, present across the film and television entertainment spectrum, has replaced its solid black logo back-ended by a three-colour line, with a new, more fluid, contemporary signature logo.
Business news channel Bloomberg-UTV also has a new logo in keeping with UTV’s change, where ‘Bloomberg’ is either in black or white, in a sharp departure from Bloomberg’s global orange representation.
And have you checked out rediff.com’s homepage recently? While the logo remains the same, the homepage is entirely changed.
All these media brands have changed how they look that represents a deeper, strategic shift in what they offer, stimulated by a look at their consumers.
Star Plus’ new strategic focus is reflected in the words underlining the red star: “Rishta Wahi, Soch Nayi”. Star India CEO, Uday Shankar, said: “The logo is symbolic of maturity, a coming of age. It is expected to convey strength, sparkle and glamour. We are looking through a fresh new lens at the same important things.”
The channel will remain focused on women, its protagonists being women who make a difference. “Our characters, sets, look and feel will be governed by this. New programmes such as Pratigya and Sasural Genda Phool already reflect this,” Shankar said.
{{/usCountry}}The channel will remain focused on women, its protagonists being women who make a difference. “Our characters, sets, look and feel will be governed by this. New programmes such as Pratigya and Sasural Genda Phool already reflect this,” Shankar said.
{{/usCountry}}Star Plus’ transformation drew from viewer research. “The TV demography is more heterogeneous today. Middle and small-town India is giving us huge volumes; they must be represented, engaged. There’s new wealth, assertiveness, aspirations, a determination to take destiny into one’s own hands that must be encompassed in our content.”
For UTV, a new logo represents a strategic shift that started four years ago. Before that, for 16 years, it was in the B2B space, creating content for other broadcasters and offering them post-production and dubbing services.
“Then we took a conscious decision to re-engineer ourselves and offer B2C stuff, bringing UTV products directly to consumers,” said Zarina Mehta, co-founder, UTV. “Today, we have films, TV channels, console and high-end gaming, mobile content and web-based products under the UTV brand. We create content for other broadcasters, but 90 per cent of our business is now B2C.”
Mehta explained that the new UTV logo encompasses the strengths and values the brand has built over 20 years. “These include innovation, cutting-edge creativity and a passion to win.”
An innovation is UTV’s audio cinema for mobile phones — abridged audio versions of films with dialogue and narration which, said UTV, has picked up 1.3 million mobile subscribers.
Bloomberg-UTV’s new logo, with its positioning line of “Blunt. And Sharp” is a strategic shift in positioning and targeting. Its CEO, M.K. Anand, explained: “There are four players in TV business news, with CNBC TV18 leading, followed by NDTV Profit. ET Now and Bloomberg-UTV follow with about the same viewership ratings. The market cannot support more than two of us. So we have to work to be number two while straining every muscle to get to the top slot.”
Bloomberg-UTV’s research showed that while nine per cent of the urban, business channel-viewers (predominantly male, 25-plus-years SEC A & B, cable & satellite) who actually understand stocks and investments, made up the top of the pyramid for business news, there is a 10 per cent audience in the next rung who are “opportunists and aspirants”. While CNBC TV18 is perceived as the stocks and funds expert catering to the top end, targeting the rest, especially the opportunists and aspirants, Bloomberg-UTV felt, could help it improve its ranking.
“We have decided to be ‘Blunt. And Sharp’: direct, questioning, cutting out the fluff, being clear. While we will primarily target the opportunists-aspirants, we also hope to attract the top and bottom rung viewers,” Anand said.
He claimed Bloomber-UTV has already seen a jump in average time spent per viewer to 11 minutes last week, up from 6-7 minutes till the previous week. CNBC TV18’s average, he says, is 25-30 minutes.
Meanwhile, the channel’s ad campaign that used Greek words and said that business shouldn’t sound like Greek, has gotten into legal trouble with business newspaper Mint, published by HT Media Ltd, which used a similar concept in its advertising last year. The Calcutta High Court has asked Bloomberg-UTV to withdraw the ads.
Rediff.com, meanwhile, has a homepage now that is very crisp and brief. It leaves its predominantly young users the flexibility to use the website they way they want to. A new feature, MyPage, actually transforms the portal’s experience to something akin to a social networking site, providing the user with personalised experiences.
“Research of global online usage patterns reveals that the industry has shifted from content to conversations and from portals to platforms. Through MyPage, utility meets conversation,” said Prerana Nayak, associate director, product development, Rediff.com. MyPage marries conversations from all over rediff.com — real time friends’ updates, photos, videos, music, news links, bookmarks, blogs — with conversations from the rest of a user’s world including his/her favoured brands, films and entertainment, celebrities and causes. It was already all there, said Nayak. Rediff.com is just offering them better.
Going forward, consumers will have greater influence on media and entertainment offerings. As Star’s Shankar said, “The winds of change are lateral and multi-layered, blowing across the country. We must really understand them if we want to make any transformation work for us.”