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Star blocks others’ ads in HUL’s favour for a day
In an innovative marketing ploy, TV broadcaster Star India put an advertising roadblock all of Thursday on its programmes in favour of just one client: Hindustan Unilever Limited, reports Anita Sharan.
In an innovative marketing ploy, TV broadcaster Star India put an advertising roadblock all of Thursday on its programmes in favour of just one client: Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL).
All viewers could see were commercials for brands from HUL’s stable, such as Dove, Fair & Lovely, Lifebuoy, Pepsodent. Lifebuoy led the exclusive run.
Of the 21 channels on its network, Star India blocked advertising time exclusively for HUL across 10 channels. These included Star Plus, Star One, Star Gold, Star Utsav, Star Movies, Star World, Channel [V], Star Jalsha, Star Pravah and Star Vijay.
Srikanth Srinivasamadhavan, GM, media services, HUL, said, “We are pleased to be a part of an idea that will exclusively reach us to more than 100 million viewers throughout the day.”
Kevin Vaz, executive VP, advertising and sales, Star India, told Hindustan Times that Star made no changes to its ad-to-content ratio, but attracted a premium for exclusivity.
“These channels provided HUL with the highest reach cutting across audiences covering different age bands, urban to rural consumers and regions,” Vaz said, saying they covered the A,B,C categories of socio-economic classification used by advertisers to segment audiences.
Star India had taken a similar initiative in 2007 when Hutch became Vodafone.
