Mahmood Nanji Story of Success

Mahmood Nanji is one of the marketing gurus of Pakistan’s branded world, having served at the forefront of many company’s marketing department, including the coveted position of CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at Tapal.

He was the force behind the TVOne program Brand Power, a one-of-a-kind program on the Pakistani electronic medium. Although it generated a lot of interest, for some reason it was discontinued. He has now moved to Indus News and started a new program Story of Success.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb2f2lALqPY

Tycoon on Express News is quite similar to Story of Success but the host doesn’t have the same aura as Mahmood Nanji to make an everlasting impact.

The lack of interest by the media in this breed of people is probably due to the fact that these people don’t have an onscreen persona which the local media rates as the wow factor in wooing the audience toward their channel. The quality of content especially the wisdom these people can communicate to the audience is not given preference by our local channels. In this sense, Indus News has done a tremendous job in breaking away from the status quo and trying something fresh.

So, going by the famous BCG matrix, will Story of Success go on to become a star or end up a dog?

For starters, Indus News itself is not the strongest of brand in the world of News Channel brands. Geo and Dawn News rule the roost while Aaj, Dunya, Express and Samaa follow close behind. In this cut-throat competition, Indus News has its work cut out. Amazingly, not a single channel from this lot is willing to differentiate itself in some way, not having the guts to break out from the brand clutter. Everyone wants to follow the same red ocean strategy which the market leader has set out and no one is venturing forward to come up with a blue ocean strategy.

Does that mean any program which is on a channel that is not popular itself is doomed for failure? Not necessarily. But it does help tremendously, especially if your media reach goes beyond just the electronic medium.

Take the market leaders. Any program they produce they promote aggressively not only on their own sub-brand channels, but also in their print publications. Geo for instance promotes a new program on all its sub-brand Geo Entertainment, News, Super and Aag, as well as Jang and The News newspaper. Think of the enormous reach of all these communication vehicles combined together and compare it to what Indus can do. If Indus is to use all these modes of communication, it would cost a fortune to it whereas on the other side Geo and even Dawn News can do it literally for free owing to belonging to powerful media conglomerate which is omnipresent in all modes of communication.

Indus News cannot compete with the likes of these giant brands. And any program aired on it faces the same dilemma. So what can ‘IN’ do about this?

For starters, it has to upload all the aired episodes on the internet, preferably Youtube. This was what was done with the program Brand Power whose episodes were uploaded on the website brandsynario.com. This is the most basic requirement in today’s age of media proliferation. With a plethora of channels to choose from, chances are your program is going to be missed by majority of the target market who may be viewing something else at the time the program is aired.

But would that be enough? No. At the very least the program needs to have a strong brand presence on the internet. Ideally it needs to be promoted 360º but since that’s going to cost a fortune, internet seems to be the most viable option.

On the internet, it needs to have a brand identity on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube and Slideshare. It can take a leaf out of Naveen Naqvi’s book who has done a tremendous job positioning her program on Dawn News on the internet. Then there’s Ayesha Alam and Faisal Qureshi both who have done a good job themselves promoting themselves and their talk shows online. They even maintain a blog, which wouldn’t be a bad idea for Mr. Nanji himself.

Although they have come up with the facebook profile, it needs to be constantly updated and spiced up with a few attractions as well. For instance you can offer prizes for winning a quiz which is based on the contents of a particular episode. This would certainly pique the interest of the audience.

There’s a small clip of one of the episodes with Citizen Foundaton’s creator Mushtaq Khapra’s but that’s uploaded by one of the viewers rather than a deliberate ploy by the producers or promoters of the program. Finally Mahmood Nanji’s personal account at Twitter has tried to promote the program but the program needs to have its very own Twitter profile.

That’s the promotion part. What about the program itself? Is it great? Or does it need to improve? Yes it does. While making it glamorous wouldn’t be a good idea, adding some other elements would definitely spruce up the proceedings. This could include pictures from the interviewee’s past highlighting his achievement. A brief look at the business in action during the course of the interview would add further depth to the program. Although this format was followed in the Liberty Books program, it isn’t made the standard format which is a pity.

Story of Success could go on to become a renowned program which inspires millions of people. All it needs is a few tweaks of the format coupled with a healthy dose of some shrewd marketing.

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Instead of trying to be all things to all people, it kept its focus narrow by staying true to its initial positioning. In fact it boosted that image by coming up with unique and innovative programs like News Weakly by Sami Shah, For the love of Food by Aida Khan, Open Frequency, Late Swing, Cutting it,  Techie Watch,  First Blast, Breakfast at Dawn, No reservations, TalkBack by Wajahat S. Khan and a host of other programs all in English. It hired newscasters who spewed out fluent English in foreign accent so much so that sometimes when you weren’t looking at the screen, you were fooled into believing that it was CNN or BBC. And the person spearheading this stew of foreign accents was Saima Mohsin.

Being part of a large media empire that encompasses all media, it promoted itself aggressively whether it be through the parent company’s radion channel CityFm89, newspaper, magazines Herald and Spider or even through Aurora in which only a couple of months ago the interview of DawnNews CEO Shakeel Masud was published in which he claimed that DawnNews had broken the shackles and had audiences now from even the SEC C and D when initially it had from only SEC A and B. The launch of DawnNews in USA and GCC countries had received overwhelming response and plans were underway to launch in Canada and Europe.  It seemed that the channel could do no wrong.

Then one fine day, it was gone. Just like that. Half of Dawn News’ airing time was suddenly relegated to Urdu language news and programs. In fact the prime time from 7 to 9pm was exclusively devoted to Urdu language. And the justification given for this topsy turvy change was some market research which Dawn claims has shown that there’s more demand for Urdu news channels with creditable news and reporting.

Something’s not right here. If what this market research is inferring is true, then there’s a dearth of good Urdu channels with authentic reporting and the consumer is rejecting them and wanting something credible. In reality the converse is true. Urdu news channels are a dime a dozen and the consumer is hooked on to them with no regard for whether they are reporting right or wrong. In fact people love to devour even the talk shows which are proven to be the least credible with hosts and even guests of dubious standing.

For the sake of argument, let’s say Dawn’s market research was authentic and people are really craving for a spank clean Urdu news channel. Even in that case, what would you do if you were a successful English news channel? Common sense dictates you would come up with another channel as a sub-brand with Urdu programming. Why on earth would you slash your successful programming to make room for something which may or may not succeed? You won’t. Unless you were out of your mind. Or your supposedly successful programs weren’t as successful and this was really what the market research unearthed.

But why weren’t they successful? What was wrong with them? Only those with access to the insights of the market research would know that. One reason could be that a very high barometer for success was set for them, probably benchmarking the Urdu programs for them. If this was the case, then it was a sure recipe for disaster, because going by the sheer size of the Urdu-speaking market, the English one can never even come close to it. Even if you take the Dawn Newspaper, no matter how successful it becomes, it can never be at par with the Urdu newspapers. So that could be one reason.

Another could be the fact that the channel is still in its infancy and is comparing its success rate with that of the market leader GEO. If more time was given to these programs with fewer expectations, maybe they would have pulled through as well. In Malcolm Gladwell’s words, these programs were not allowed to reach their ‘Tipping Point’. How do you determine when the tipping point of a tv programs is going to be reached if at all. There’s no research done to estimate a trend. Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers: The Story of Success says the tipping point for a person to make it is 10,000 hours. After he has spent 10,000 hours practicing whatever it is that he does whether it be sports or software programming, a single small opportunity can tip the fate in his favor big time.

But how much for a tv program to reach the same level of success is not known. To get an idea of how much time and effort may be required to attain the pinnacle of success, here’s an example of a local success story. If you are into listening morning show programs on the FM channels on your way to work or study, then you are probably familiar with the Taza Dum program hosted by Adeel Azhar on FM107. If you haven’t heard, ask around. He has become something of a rock star of radio drive shows, popular even amongst the school-going tweens.

But how did he reach this coveted status? In his own words, he had been doing this show for three and a half years with no luck, he was receiving criticism from all quarters and was just on the verge of quitting when all of a sudden the show shot to success overnight. It’s tipping point had been reached. How much time has Dawn given to its English programs to try to reach the elusive tipping point? Marketing Research can help with a lot of things. This is not one of them. It’s purely a matter of gut instinct of a veteran.

Even those few programs that are still in English are getting affected by the Urdu onslaught. Have you seen No Reservations lately? Ayesha Alam who was doing a good job of presenting in English is having quite a few awkward moments trying to express herself in Urdu. The forced transformation appears to be painful for her.

If you closely look at the day-wise schedule of Dawn’s week, not a single English program is on air from 6pm to 11pm at any day of the week except Sunday which three programs are aired on prime time: No Reservations, Fusion and Beautiful People.

And what’s the story behind Beautiful People? It’s an Indian program with Bollywood celebrity interviews. What was the need for that? Let’s just say that the market research showed that people wanted to see Indian celebrity interviews on a Pakistani channel, wouldn’t it have been better to air something new? The last interview shown was of Deepika Padukone and it was from the time her first movie was released, more than two years old! What’s wrong with Dawn?

The bottom-line is that Dawn’s brand essence is slowly receding. A brand is a single idea in the mind of the consumer. Dawn followed that rule religiously until now. It was following a blue ocean strategy which all brands should aspire to follow, but now it is back to the red ocean strategy, which in layman terms is called the rat race.

“The problem with rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat.”

DawnNews would do well to take a leaf out of its sister concern CityFM89′s notebook which has carved out a wonderful niche for itself purely by being true to its roots. It recognized that it was a niche brand and worked with respect to that positioning instead of competing head on with the Urdu FM channels like DawnNews is trying to do now.

If you want to know more about what went wrong behind the scenes other than the branding failure, check out these poignant posts on a blog called the Cafe Piyala which has the inside scoop on how Wajahat Khan resigned from Dawn News, how people were either shown the door or pays drastically cut. All that is not discussed here because this site is confined to purely branding issues and not workplace politics.

Dawn News started out as a great brand and it ought to revert to its original brand essence if it is to prosper instead of trying to be something which it is not. Dawn already has had a bitter experience with two failed Urdu projects in the form of Hurriyat and Zulfiqar. If Dawn continues its Urdu transmission, history would simply repeat itself.

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For the first question, no. Marketing is nothing short of full-fledged warfare. In a battle, one party avoids going head-to-head with its rival even if it has matching resources simply because it’s going to suffer considerable losses. Both the parties look for an element of surprise. They try to come up with a strategy that catches the other off-guard.

The same holds true for marketing. And here Aaj TV has resources nowhere near to that of Geo. According to a report published in the August 5 edition of Dawn newspaper, the Jang Group which owns Geo TV was one of the top 3 leading business houses in Pakistan. The Business Recorder Group which owns Aaj wasn’t even in the top 25. That’s how wide a gulf is between them. Aaj would be dead and buried in no time if it tries to pull off that stunt with a frontal attack strategy.

Secondly, does it even need to make that effort? Why can’t it be as it is? Two reasons. One, because Geo TV already has made some serious efforts to tackle Aaj, which I already  mentioned, and secondly because of the Law of Duality which states that in the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race. Even if it doesn’t come to that, the rule of thumb is that the leader in any category holds twice the market share of the runner-up who in turn holds twice the market share of the second runner-up. The rest make do with leftover crumbs from the three leaders.

Aaj has to ensure that it’s at least in the second place and to hold on to that place. And to hold on to that place, it has to make the leader uncomfortable as frequently as possible.

So what can Aaj do to compete with Geo TV?

First of all, it has to do away with mindless positioning statements, like Pakistan’s Premiere TV channel. For one, the majority don’t know the difference between Premier and Premium. And secondly, it is not the premier TV channel of Pakistan by any stretch of the imagination. It’s an utter waste of opportunity to come up with a statement that does you no good.

 Secondly, whenever they are showcasing their abilities and achievements, they invariably stress upon the point that they are the first digital channel in Pakistan with an Earth station and that it is directly broadcast by the AsiaSat satellite with a footprint spanning over 60 countries.

 I have no idea what that means, and neither will the majority of the people. So what’s the use of stressing this point? So it is technically superior to the other channels including Geo, good for them. But what advantage does that convey to the end-user? Is there a marked difference in the quality of the pictures and sound broadcasted? There isn’t, or at least it doesn’t appear to be. If they are beaming out superior quality broadcast, then that advantage is probably lost courtesy the cable walas. In any way it doesn’t make sense to harp about something that doesn’t mean a thing to the intended audience. It’s just like what KFC used to brag about that its staff can assemble or dismantle a fryer in five minutes. Duh! Why should the consumer care about the fryer and its assembling time? It’s utterly stupid. Tell the target market about a feature of your brand that impacts them directly. And it better be good.

Thirdly, Aaj should puff away all crash-and-burn thoughts of beating Geo at its own game. It should come up with a game plan of its own, then a ploy of convincing Geo that this is what the industry is going to be like in the future, and when Geo TV falls for it, weave a web around it or do anything you deem necessary at that point.

So how to do it? Simply follow the laws of branding faithfully and consistently for a considerable period of time. Unbeknownst to it, Aaj TV already is following some of the laws of branding namely, the law of the name and the law of the word, which more or less stress the point that a brand should have a name that is short, simple and memorable. Aaj has it. Unfortunately, so does Geo.

First they need to come up with a flanking strategy, and for that they need to conduct a comprehensive marketing research. To be more precise, they need to have a ‘brand picture’. Of course they need to have a brand vision first, but since they have already been running for a couple of years I assume they already have a brand vision, and if there is a need to change it, that would depend upon the brand picture. Brand picture comprises of the brand image, brand contract (what the brand promises to the consumer) and the brand-based customer model. Without delving into any more branding mumbo-jumbo, the most important element is the brand image which reveals the brand persona and the brand association, in short what the brand stands for.

And no, this survey cannot be conducted by Aaj TV itself. Only an expert can decipher the brand essence. The best there is in Pakistan is A.C Nielsen, which costs you a whopping Rs. 3 lac for just your brand picture! Like I said, branding is not cheap.

Whatever this survey reveals will dictate the branding strategies. Being a member of the audience myself, let’s come up with a few strategies based on what I perceive to be the brand essence of Aaj.

Aaj for me is synonymous with mind-blowing images of the state of the state, bodies lying in a pool of blood in the aftermath of violence, the severed head of a suicide bomber, and the attack on the offices of Aaj TV which their TV crew filmed at the risk of their lives. The stark reality, that’s what I get to see on Aaj.

Remember that marketing is a battle of perceptions, not product or services. It means Geo TV may have given a lot more of those sort of daring coverages than Aaj, but Aaj has been able to highlight itself more in that department, and if it can etch that perception in the psyche of the audience  then no matter how hard Geo TV tries, it won’t be able to reverse that perception because the audience is always right, at least according to them, and they don’t like to entertain the thought that what they thought was right wasn’t.

So how can Aaj TV take advantage of this? The first thing is to come up with a new sub-category within the news category like High-Risk TV, Pure or Unadulterated Reality or Uncensored TV.  Then position itself as the leading brand in that category like maybe Pakistan’s 1^st or leading provider of uncensored coverage or bold coverage provider. Come up with a believable positioning statement in line with that category. Then gradually start creating the hype that this new category is the best thing to happen since sliced bread.

Now if Geo or any other channel makes a beeline for this category, well and good. Don’t fight it, welcome it. Aaj will always have the first mover advantage and any other channel that ventures into this territory, be it Geo or any other is only going to authenticate it and prove that Aaj was right all along. It’s nothing new; happens all the time in all sorts of industries. Before the advent of the Beetle, people had scoffed at the idea of a tiny car catching people’s fancy, and yet it happened. The category took off and with it the Beetle, grabbing a massive 67% of the market share for that category.

So coming up with a new category is going to put the competitors in a Catch-22 situation. Should they ignore it and risk losing out on a lucrative opportunity if the category takes off, or do they go for it and in the process validate Aaj’s strategy?

Coming up with a new category may not be as hard as conforming to it. If Aaj does what I propose and comes up with the high-risk category, then it would have to revamp its channel structure. It would have to do away with all those programs that do not add to that brand essence, which pretty much includes all the entertainment shows. Then it would have to come up with more programs that do add to the brand essence, programs that reflect the stark reality of our society.

That’s pretty expensive, but with a little bit of shrewd thinking, Aaj can reduce the burden on itself, for instance by putting the onus on the audience itself. It can encourage them to make videos or even take pictures of anything that mirrors our society and would be interesting to show. For instance a mobile or car snatching, bribing of the traffic or even the mainstream police wala etc. With almost everyone having video and photo-enabled cellphones, it’s not hard to imagine people would gladly indulge in it. I mean they have been doing it for making kinky videos and unleashing on the net just for the heck for it where most of the time they don’t get credit for it. Just imagine how much they would be motivated if they are going to be given credit. People who make these videos and take picture would instantly be drawn to watch Aaj just to see their handiwork and that automatically increases the market share. The best thing to do would be not to have a separate program to show these audience-made reality clips, but to show them intermittently between programs just to keep people hooked on to your channel for the maximum possible time.

Of course there’s a downside as well. A considerable manpower would be required to sift through all these videos and pictures to find those which are really worth showing on TV and also to detect whether a person with directorial aspirations hasn’t come up with a staged drama. The storage part would be no problem. Just ask people to post these clips on YouTube with a tag you prescribe beforehand so that you can find them easily.

Now coming to those entertainment programs that have been axed to save the brand essence, they can be switched over to a new channel Aaj starts which has a brand essence specifically attuned to these shows. The new channel would have a different name of course, being a different brand, but to add credibility to the new brand and to reduce the promotional and advertising budget that is normally associated with launching a new brand, Aaj should use its name initially along with the brand’s name to endorse it. Then as the brand nurtures and develops, the Aaj name should gradually reduce in size until it disappears altogether once the brand is strong enough to stand on its own feet.

But how the audience is going to know that their favorite programs have migrated to some other channel? Use the hosts of the remaining as well as the new programs to occasionally mention during their programs about the new channel and the programs that are on it. Don’t make them gush over it, just a sort of reminder that Aaj is doing something new and exciting to make it more appealing to the audience and that’s why the programs have been shifted to a new channel. In short, use Aaj, the parent channel to advertise for the other channel brands it starts.

It’s going to be a tough (and an unpopular) decision for Aaj TV to remove all its other programs and focus solely on depicting the stark reality and delivering the news. However, it would be aligning itself with many laws of branding as well as those of marketing such as the Law of Contraction which states that a brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.

Aaj TV only has to look around to see that this works in the television industry. The biggest examples are that of CNN and BBC. These world class channels rarely sidetrack from their brand essence. Both of them have limited themselves to just news and yet they have the whole world at their feet. One other thing Aaj can learn from CNN is that although it positioned itself as the leading news channel in the cable category, it has moved far ahead than just being a cable channel. The claim to be first in a category works only as far as building credibility is concerned. People don’t like a better service, because just about everyone claims to be better in this and that. What brands don’t claim as much is a claim to authenticity. Once the brand becomes larger than life, the claim is no longer needed. Coke was the first in the cola category, and yet have you seen it harping about that fact at all? It doesn’t need to now.

Closer to home, Aaj can learn a thing or two from the Dawn News Channel. From the looks of it, it appears to be a good branding effort. They have positioned themselves as a suave news channel which only delivers news in English. Notice how all of its newscasters speak impeccable English. So not only have they done the branding, they are delivering on the brand contract as well. Which shows that your branding should be backed up by an effort in the physical realm if it is to work.

TO BE CONTINUED……………

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So what is guerrilla warfare in the marketing battlefield?

This is what Philip Kotler and Kevin Keller had to say in their book Marketing Management, which is considered to be the Holy Bible of Marketing:

“Guerrilla warfare is practiced by a smaller firm against a larger one. The smaller firm launches a barrage of attacks in random corners of the larger opponent’s market in a manner calculated to weaken the opponent’s market power. Military dogma holds that a continual stream of minor attacks usually creates more cumulative impact, disorganization, and confusion in the enemy than a few major attacks.”

There are as many GW methods as there are marketers in the world, but since we are following the branding laws, let’s continue to follow the brand perspective or in other words the Ries’ school of thought.

Ever heard of depositioning? Simply put, depositioning is removing your competitor’s brand from an enviable position in the mind of the consumer so that you can occupy that vacated seat. It’s not that the rival brand ceases to exist in the consumer’s mind. It only moves down in his or her list of priorities while yours moves up.

Again, it’s easier said than done. No one goes down without a fight, the least of which would be a brand that earned itself a respectable position in the consumer’s mind. However the counter-attack can be beneficial to both you and the category. Many marketers have come up with the conspiracy theory  that the Cola-Wars was just a combined promotional gimmick by the two giants to create noise around their business so that the Cola category blossomed and with it the two brothers-in-arms.

There are innumerable examples of depositioning in the advertising world. The classic Cola Wars, the Dew/ Sprite scuffle are just a few of those. Everyone does it except the Pakistanis, who rarely indulge in it. It’s really strange considering that we can be nastily spiteful when it comes to throwing dirt on each other. The parliamentary sessions epitomize this habit of ours.

Depositioning, however, doesn’t mean smearing your rivals. The aim is to turn you rival’s strength into a weakness.  The best example of this is when Mobilink came up with their Happy hour promotion where a few hours of the day had special concession, Ufone depositioned it impeccably by coming up with a low uniform rate for the entire day and claiming in their ads “Every hour is Happy hour now”.

So its not that we can’t do it, it’s just that we are not really inclined to do it. Those inclinations better change soon if you want to be competitive.

So what can a TV channel do to launch an attack against GEO TV? Plenty. First go for its strengths. The biggest strength of Geo TV is its ability to grab the movers and shakers of other TV channels when they have achieved stardom status.

The biggest grab was that of Dr. Shahid Masood from Ary, who according to Geo’s own employers is being paid an astronomical salary of Rs. 22 lac. And no, it’s not the yearly gross. It’s the monthly figure! Ali Azmat of Junoon was paid Rs. 1 lac per episode of Pappu Yar, a Talk show aired on Geo’s Aag. The most recent snatching was that of Farah, the cooking sensation of TV One. And the most controversial would have had been that of Begum Nawazish Ali which fortunately for Aaj TV, didn’t happen. According to Ali Saleem, the man behind the begum (no pun intended), the idea of becoming the Begum was floated by him in the Geo TV camp. Geo ignored it, so he then went to Aaj TV who gleefully accepted it. Once, however, Begum Nawazish Ali show attained stardom, Geo TV alleged that Aaj TV stole the idea from it. In the end, the case came to naught, a triumphant Hameed Kashan informed me.

But how do you really do it? The way to go about it is not to malign anyone. Instead of adding venom in your offensive, add a healthy dose of humor.

The hefty salaries these big shots are being paid can be cunningly inculcated in a sitcom or something. In fact, why not a sitcom about the world of TV personalities and their idiosyncrasies? Kamran Khan, Hamid Mir, all of them can be made cannon fodder for a blitz campaign since they are after all public figures open to scrutiny. For instance Dr. Masood uses very loaded Urdu in his Meray Mutabiq. You can attack that aspect. The sky is the limit.

So what’s the downside? For an established brand, the downside is that the aggrieved party is going to launch a counter-offensive to blast the intruder to smithereens. The campaign may not actually achieve that, but it would certainly sting badly.

For a newcomer or a weak brand, however, there’s nothing to lose. The big brand under attack cannot launch a proper counter-attack since it doesn’t know the other brand very well. Then there’s the dilemma if the big brand does launch an attack against the newbie or nobody, it’s like acknowledging its presence and admitting that the small fish has created enough ripples in the pond to trouble the big one. Nothing can be worse than that, so the big fish pretends to ignore the smaller one even exists at all, like Coke did when Pepsi was nowhere near it. It was such a big deal that the employees were not supposed to even say Pepsi in front of outsiders to the headquarters. Pepsi was referred to as the ‘imitator’. Coke chose to ignore and is now paying the price.

Hence it’s going to be a Catch-22 situation for Geo TV if a new channel launches a depositioning campaign against it.

However if Aaj finds all these strategies too overwhelming, it can still remain in the ancient category of something-for-everyone and make do by following the Law of Ladder and the Law of the Opposite among others. It could go for something like Avis’ brilliant advertising campaign: “We are No.2 We try harder.”, which worked wonders for it. But the downside is it will always have to be content with the No.2 or No.3 spot and the market share that is reserved for these spots. If it wants to go for the top slot, it will have plunge into the branding strategies paradigm. There’s just no way around it.

Currently, Aaj TV is looking to come up with a couple of new TV shows, one a sitcom and the other a Survivor like show, although it is apprehensive about the moralistic implications of it in our conservative society. Are these shows going to help Aaj deal with the competition? Not by a long shot. At best, they are going to up the popularity numbers by a few notches in the short run, and that also only if they are successful.

Having observed the Aaj team from up close, I believe they have the firepower to upset the reign of Geo TV Empire. They have a highly unstructured workplace hierarchy where everyone meddles with everyone’s business with the intention of helping out, sort of a cross-functional teamwork if you compare it with a formal structure. A very Google like environment suited to the highly unpredictable world of media.

Now, if only they can come up with a lynchpin in their ranks who can show them the way to branding glory, and more importantly if they can follow that entity by setting aside their skepticism of the laws of branding.

Related posts:

1. Aaj Groping For ‘The’ Brand Power To Dethrone Geo TV I : THE DILEMMA ‘Don’t you think that people today are more program loyal...
2. Aaj Groping For ‘The’ Brand Power To Dethrone Geo TV II: FLASHBACK Let’s see how the television industry in Pakistan has evolved...

 Back to the offices of Aaj TV, Mr. Kashan then goes on to give me a brief history of what glorious programs Aaj TV has come up with and how successful they have been. It’s true that Aaj has come a long way since its inception just a couple of years ago, and its programs have played a pivotal role in that achievement. But the million dollar question is, where to from now? And more importantly, how to reach it?

In spite of all the pride Aaj TV’s marketing department feels about its efforts, theirs is a troubled and I might add, dwindling group, courtesy Geo TV. Geo TV has been on the case of Aaj TV for a while, whether that’s because it considers it as its arch rival or it metes out the same treatment to all the players in the field is not known. Especially in the wake of May 12 carnage in Karachi in which the offices of Aaj TV were made a target for a healthy shower of bullets, a big chunk of its marketing team has switched jobs, mostly to GEO TV, Mr. Kashan confided.

Hence Aaj TV is on a recruitment spree especially for its marketing division. If you believe you have the guts to work for an exciting but hectic job in a dangerous location, then shoot your resumes to marketing@aaj.tv.

But more than that, what they are really looking for is for someone to show them the way, what their marketing strategy should be from this point on. Right now they are basically groping in the dark, though they don’t want to admit it.

Aaj TV may have quite a few TV shows that have been runaway successes, but beneath all that there is a confused positioning. During the ongoing recruitment drive, the Aaj team had to endure quite a few disappointing feedbacks on their channel. Most of the people didn’t know many of the popular TV shows of Aaj. One candidate when asked to name a few Aaj program quipped ‘Aaj ke bhaau’, which interestingly is a GEO TV program. Another said that Begum Nawazish Ali Show was aired on GEO TV. Most of them could name only a handful of their programs, sometimes missing the big names altogether.

Just like a little knowledge is dangerous, a little bit of success is dangerous as well. And this adage couldn’t be truer in the case of Aaj TV. I got the impression that the creators of Aaj TV don’t consider it as a brand. They consider it just as a TV channel like the others and are trying to compete with other TV channels on their turf. This is a classic blunder that most of the companies not only in Pakistan but all over the world and in every conceivable industry make. They meet the rival head-on by playing in the existing competitive framework, pitting their resources against the far more resourceful rival and inevitably they wind up in trouble.

What do they expect by playing on his field, by his rules, and with fewer resources? A miracle? Sadly, miracles don’t happen in the realm of marketing to those who play by the rules, that is, the rules of the competition. And hard work may pay rich dividends in all the other areas of life, but trying harder is not the secret of marketing success.

What you’ve got to do is change the ground rules of competition. To what end? At best you can nullify a competitor’s strength; at worst you force him to move from his natural strengths and compete in a field he’s not familiar with or even comfortable. So even in the worst case scenario you have a chance to catch him off-guard. This is the true essence of marketing creativity.

TO BE CONTINUED……………

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1. Aaj Groping For ‘The’ Brand Power To Dethrone Geo TV II: FLASHBACK Let’s see how the television industry in Pakistan has evolved...

In short it was just like any other category in the world, be it car, computer, music or even ice cream. The car industry in the world in the early 1900s was essentially a one-car industry, and Henry Ford made full use of that status quo to come up with his best-selling T-series. But with time the industry evolved and the category got fragmented into many sub-categories: the SUV, the station wagons, the luxury vehicles, the sportsy types, the beetle craze and a host of others. Music fragmented into rock, classical, folk etc. And then rock fragmented into pop, hard, alternate, funky, electronic and what not. It happens all the time.

 The worldwide television industry has followed this marketing law of division as well. The law states that over time a category will divide and become two or more categories. So now we have network, independent, cable, pay, public and even interactive television in the world. In Pakistan, since we lag behind the world in most innovations, the television industry only a couple of years ago started undergoing this metamorphosis. And yet the people coming up with the new private channels still go about their business as if it’s the 80s where a single channel has to be heralded as the ultimate source of family entertainment and dish out programs that cater to everyone in the family, from the grandpa down to Tancredo the dog.

Where is it written that you have to appeal to everybody in order to be successful?  Less than 1% of the entire population of the world own a mercedez or BMW. Are these brands not successful? Not many Karachiites know of Khan Broast in F.B Area, and yet it is able to generate revenues in the millions every single month just by focusing on a specific class and that also in a limited area.

And both Aaj  and Geo are guilty of this strategy of the yore. To an extent, yes, they both have realized that the market has segmented big time and so has the industry, and they both have done something about it in their own small way – Geo with separate channels GEO Sports, News and Aag; and Aaj with Play. But from this point, either they don’t know where to go from here or they think they have done more than enough, I don’t know. What I do know is both of them believe they have to target the entire population of Pakistan and much more with just a single brand.

Geo TV is still giving confused vibes with Geo and Geo News since both show each others programs, so what’s the use of separating them? What’s their brand essence, and more importantly what does Geo TV itself stands for in the minds of its audience?

The story of Geo TV is that it came into the picture as one of the first crop of private TV channels. If I remember right, it was the second private channel after Indus Vision. Both Indus and Geo TV had the same aspirations: to shatter the monopoly of PTV and occupy the throne itself. Like PTV they came up with the hackneyed formula of being a complete channel catering to the needs of all and sundry.  

Although Indus had the first mover advantage, it literally presented it on a silver platter to Geo who came much after it. I believe the reason  was that Indus was pretty tentative in what it broadcast, being the first channel in the history of Pakistan to be given the freedom to air anything it wanted to. It was presumably fearful of doing anything out of the ordinary lest this freedom be taken away just as quickly. Geo on the other hand threw caution to the wind and pretty much aired anything it could produce. So it was our very first daring, uncensored, vulgar, unadulterated, obscene, truthful (depending upon how you look at it) channel. It was brash and became an instant success. Branding or not, it threw all its resources into creating bold and audacious programs and gave the Pakistani TV audience the first breath of fresh air.

So irrespective of what the branding gurus say, Geo TV has a pretty strong positioning in the near obsolete TV category of something-for-everyone. So does Geo need branding strategies to survive? Probably not.  Why? What makes it so powerful that it can do without the immutable laws of branding?

For one, it is positioned in the minds of the consumers as the first really independent channel which was in line with the Law of the Mind which states that it’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace. Secondly it has gargantuan resources at its disposal to keep extending its reach. But most importantly, it has the lion’s share of the market because its competing brands don’t have a clue themselves about the rules of branding, diluting themselves left and right by trying to be all things to all people and inevitably winding up in trouble. So who benefits in this valley of the blind? Of course the one-eyed Jack (Geo).

In the absence of proper branding by the competitors, the leader in the category can reign supreme without doing any branding itself if it has enough resources.

However, once a TV channel with sufficient resources and a proper branding strategy comes up, Geo TV can pretty soon land in hot waters. Why? Because marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products or services. You may have the best quality programs and the top dogs to host them, but if your audience doesn’t perceive you that way, you are as good as dead.

 I say sufficient resources because branding is an expensive undertaking. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart. When I proposed to Mr. Kashan that Aaj should have different channels with different but distinct brand personas, his prompt reply was, ‘Do you know how much it costs to launch a new channel?’ That explains it all.

TO BE CONTINUED……………

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