Anyone who is worth his/her salt in marketing knows that the power needs to be with the customer. Customer satisfaction is essential in the development of a strong brand and a strong business. With the advent of social media and handheld devices, customer interaction with the brand has become more frequent and deeper. With the availability of hundreds of competing providers for a service via the internet, consumers have a gamut of choices to choose from. Thus differentiation and customer satisfaction for web based services couldn't be more crucial.
In the following article I discuss how famous television networks like NDTV, Sports Center ESPN could use their financial might and talent pool to enter this exciting new form of media, where the viewer has all the power.
Internet Television
This new form of media truly engages the user, by providing a huge archive of TV shows to choose from. Most of the shows are tailored specifically for the avid internet audience and embed features like post show comments, video responses etc. Apart from the huge choice in content, internet television also sparks the formation of communities dedicated to a specific show or area of interest. Imagine, the thousands of our engineering student population performing a postmortem of a show on cloud computing or sixth sense digital devices.
Market players like Hulu, Revision3 have taken the concept up a notch in the US with specific How-To TV shows targeting a niche audience and connecting with them via live feeds, the itunes store etc.
To validate the power of internet television, when the Brit version of the popular business game show, "The Apprentice" was aired, 3-5% of the UKs entire internet traffic was taken up by live streaming of the show via youtube and BBC iplayer!
Next Level Customer Participation
The Objective
To increase customer involvement with the brand and facilitate deeper interaction with the brand and show content.
The Current Situation
Players like NDTV and ESPN do have discussion forums and interactives online for their shows, however, customer interaction is limited only to a postmortem of each episode or a string of queries. Show content and involvement still remain opaque to the user.
Specific shows directed at the internet audience do not exist. Thus a major audience that spends a handful of hours online and that also surpasses geographical boundaries has not yet been tapped to its full potential.
The Target Audience
Though the internet user demographic might be wide and include diverse users from school students to homemakers, the targeted audience in our case is the creative and outgoing user who wants further participation and involvement in the show’s content than what is currently available.
This is a user whose brand loyalty and participation in the brand building process will be effective and long lasting.
Users typically in this category will actively take part in opinion polls and discussions and would have subscribed to regular newsletters and feeds. Thus the target audience is essentially the list of top users in the CRM database. However, new and creative users, who might start a brand bonding process, can also be expected after the repositioning and addition of services.
The Mix
Product/Offering
The key to the offering is to allow users to create their own shows, under the theme of the brand and main concept.
To initialize the process, a video competition could be held, inviting users to post their own episodes under the name and concept of a famous show. Further development in user created content and idea could be carried out.
Presentation/Distribution
Via the formation of a community, users can share videos amongst themselves and subscribe to popular user created shows as is done with blogs. An interactive and eye catching web portal for users to post their videos, start channels or send episode reviews is essential.
The most popular and viewed user-shows could be posted on Facebook fan pages to encourage users to develop better and exciting content and take advantage of the free publicity.
Promotion
A specialized and coordinated promotional mix that keeps with the theme of the offering needs to be undertaken. Social media will play a key role in spreading the word to the targeted audience.
With the financial resources to buy advertising might, the big players could broadcast the theme of innovation and creativity to the masses.
A promotional campaign that airs the most viewed user created show on television would resonate with user expectations and entice a larger audience to join the community.
In sum, it is about time that the corporate world realized that users want an increase in participation with the brand and product development. A fully interactive environment is a very strategic way of engaging with the audience and fostering long term brand growth and equity.
