Breaking the Media clutter. Do the new.

One of the greatest challenges which every advertiser faces today is to be stand out from the clutter. With over hundreds of TV channels, FM stations, out of home options, the challenge increases many fold. If your product benefit is great, the execution is super; the brand still loses out if it’s not presented smartly.

In this context, i am reminded of two instances in the past and one that I saw last week.

The first instance is of a dish washer brand (don’t remember the name) which was launched in 80’s. In those days, the only national platform to reach out to the masses apart from All India Radio was the good old Doordarshan. There was a lot of high quality programming in the form of Hum Log, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, Nukkad among others. Chitrahaar on Wednesdays and Fridays use to be hit with advertisers. And the top billing use to be for the Sunday evening movie.

So, on this particular Sunday, Shakti starring Amitabh and Dilip Kumar was to be aired. It was a top grosser and naturally it was to attract top billing. This brand of dish washer did the first known ‘black out’ that happened on TV. Theirs was the only ad that was advertised during the break that comes every 15-20 minutes. It was unheard or unseen on Indian Television. People remembered the product and it did attract a lot of enquires. Unfortunately, the product failed.

The second instance of a ‘black out’ was when Hutch changed to Vodafone. The entire Star network including its regional bouquets played only the Vodafone ads for one full day. Not sure what was the value of the deal, but the message was conveyed effectively.

The last instance that I heard (not saw) was the launch of Tata Docomo GSM service in Hyd. Their tag line is ‘do the new’ and as a product benefit, they are offering 1 paise per second billing across all calls in India.

So instead of doing the regular launch, they did the new. In perhaps the most effective and unheard of style, they pulled of a coup of sorts. They bought out the entire air time on all the four private FM channels in Hyd – Radio city, Big FM, Radio Mirchi and S FM.

All the channels played only their commercial. And here is the killer, they got all the four Top Radio Jockeys to come together and host the morning show from 8 to 10! So, whichever, channel one tuned into one could hear the same broadcast? And the knockout punch was in the fact that all the RJ’s talked on ‘how to do the new in life’ story.

Very interesting and absolutely engaging!

What next? A brand engaging Arnab Goswami (Times Now), Rajdeep Sardesai (CNN IBN) and Barkha Dutt (NDTV 24X7) together. Given the fact that the line between sensationalism and serious journalism is a thin red line, the day is not far off.