Thursday, June 17, 2010

Star Plus Re-branding - An Advertising Waste

Star Plus LogoJune 14th 2010, I woke up to a disappointment. I woke up to the new logo of Star Plus.

The front page of HT was hijaked to have the new logo of Star Plus and its new tagline - Rishta Wahi, Soch Nayi (old relationship, new thinking). And thats it. A logo and a tagline for around Rs. 50 lakhs. Perhaps more.

Reason for a change
I could not find any logical reason why they went for this change, spending over 18 crores only on the new design. There was a passing mention of a research by Mr. Uday Shankar, CEO, STAR India, which had necessitated the change. ET reported that 'Star Plus undergoes facelift to target the youth'. Afaqs attributed the change to the change in the socio-economic paradigm of the country's demography.

Since it's a management decision, we cant question it much. So, I take the most generic reason for discussion sake - Rebranding rejuvenates and provides a fresh perspective.

What's the fresh perspective
So the question is the fresh perspective that this change would bring. The HT front page only had the logo with the tagline, which practically gave no feel of the new perspective.

One of my friends felt that the first objective is to just showcase the new logo to the existing core and fringe customers. I disagreed. Star Plus is a TV channel and the new logo as a mnemonic or a symbol will get communicated automatically in every frame of its broadcasts. Viewing habits does not change suddenly with a change in the logo colour.

My contention is that the full page could have been used for communicating the new spirit, the new perspective, the new culture or whatever is the new-ness. It could have communicated the new positioning of the brand through intelligent use of art and copy.

I understand that the positioning of a TV channel depends heavily on the programming content, its style and execution. But advertising can surely build the foundation of that positioning thought-meme.

ROI Perspective
From a spends perspective, this Advertising can challenge the famous line by John Wanamaker that said, "I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted… I just don’t know which half.” It would say, "we waste much much more..."

ROI for branding can be measured in many different parameters. (It's a huge discussion that I would write in future). For one, customer interaction, in today's digitally wired world, is one such parameter that can be benchmarked to measure the success of a particular branding activity or spends.

The meaning of "Rishta Wahi, Soch Nayi" and its significance to viewers could have been encapsulated in an interactive exercise leveraging new media like the mobile. Firstly, that would have made the viewers interact with the new positioning and secondly, the management could have got an idea of the success of the advertisement.

With so much money, we could have done so much more.
(I wont comment if I like the logo, thats personal and subjective.)

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