Tech helping TV to offer more offline to online interaction, says Ashish Sehgal of Zeel

Zee’s content and partnership business has tripled in the past three years, way beyond ad spot growth, says Ashish Sehgal, Chief Growth Officer, Zee. On the TV medium, Zee has been the flag-bearer of the growth of brand integration in content, with already successful case studies with names such as Castrol, Flipkart, Kurkure and Maggi.

Brands are looking at engagement through content and OTT platforms have an advantage compared to other mediums. But as technology is improving, one can see growth in engagement on TV as well.

Sehgal said, “We believe that today, it’s about content first and platform second. Relevance will be the key. While OTT is already interactive, technology is evolving extremely fast on the TV front to provide more interaction (O2O-Offline to Online) as you noticed in the case of Flipkart in our association with them along with Essence team.”

Brands often complain of a lack of innovative ideas for content integration on TV, but Sehgal said that the solution to the problem is the quality of people working in the brand solutions team.

“We have people from diverse backgrounds like brand marketing, creative agencies, TV programming, production and sales. Also, there is a lot of collaboration with our internal teams and we leverage their insights to get the best results. You need to know the audience to tell them the stories they like, and when you know what moves them, planning and integrating the right kind of communication for a brand within the narrative of your content becomes easier,” said Sehgal.

Excerpts:

Kurkure, Maggi, Castrol, and recently Flipkart used Zeel channels for reaching out to their TGs through content. Why are brands increasingly looking up to brand integration more than plain vanilla advertising? Is it cost-effective, or gives better ROI or content is just a part of their 360-degree plan, or are brands testing waters?

In today’s cluttered environment, coupled with a fragmented mindscape, it’s imperative for brands to create an imprint that lasts until the point of purchase. Moreover, in this connected landscape, influencers and influencing have been redefined from mere commercials/advertising with movie stars to content with their favourite/aspirational characters. Brands are looking for relevance, love, aspiration and trust to be portrayed and this is possible through story-line weaving, which is similar to ‘Icing on the cake’ and the same is then cut into shorter duration and treated as vanilla advertising. And what better medium than TV, which even today is the most-watched and wide-reached medium in the country. Higher imprint leads to better ROI.

Zee channels have been leaders during prime time fiction shows across almost all genres. Hence, our audience connects not only with the storylines but with the characters and their way of life. What better way to harness that than through their favourite stories, characters and multiple platforms, including social and digital ecosystem? Our endeavour and focus have always been outside-in business perspective and in the light of fast-evolving media landscape. A few years ago, we introduced “Content and partnership” in our structure, which would provide a holistic solution to needs of brands.

Brands have realised the story-telling/influencer potential of Zee Network and our ideation capability. To attain business/communication objective, more and more brands have been partnering with us.

How are brands responding to the results of their content initiatives with Zee channels?

For every sales organisation, repeat business is the key. So also is our motto and it’s heartening to note that loyalty quotient has risen multi-fold and repeat business is to the tune of 70%. The number of awards that our projects have won stands testimony to the fact that they have been appreciated not only by the brands and have met the brand objectives but by the industry at large.

For Zeel, what is the growth rate of the brand solution business? Is it outpacing advertising spot sale growth? How much does it contribute to the overall advertising revenue?

At Zeel, my intent has been to create a future-ready sales organisation. Hence our objective at ‘content and partnership’ is ‘access’, thereby building a relationship with more and more such partners who would believe in our capability /core competence of ‘solutions’ and not just platform. Having said that, this business in the past three years has tripled, way beyond ad spots growth. Since the brand solution is a substantial portion of our business, we have gradually broad-based this business across multiple genres, markets and platforms.

Is it mostly the bundling of brand solutions with ad sales or standalone?

We have an outside-in repeat business approach. While we allow business partners to leverage our strengths with integrated solutions across relevant brands, it remains entirely their choice. And that’s fair also because each brand has a different objective to drive.

There are very few players as aggressive as Zeel when it comes to brand solutions business. A few see it as compromising with the integrity of the content. How do you see this?

‘Content and partnership’ is the culture of the organisation and hence the same have been linked to the programming and business teams’ KPI as well and all our efforts are on to build this capability. With the content team on board, as brand solution providers, we are not only judicious about what, how, where and when do we integrate brands within the content but we take care of integrity of the content as well.

Also, content integrations are only a subset of offerings in terms of the solutions that we do. There are a plethora of avenues we use to achieve brand objectives like influencer campaigns, branded content, etc.

Brands often complain about the dearth of innovative ideas for brand integration on television. How is your brand solution tackling this?

It’s about people when it comes to the quality of solutions. We have been investing in building a strong team. We have people from diverse backgrounds like brand marketing, creative agencies, TV programming, production and sales. Also, there is a lot of collaboration with our internal teams and we leverage their insights to get the best results. You need to know the audience to tell them the stories that they like, and when you know what moves them, planning and integrating the right kind of communication for a brand within the narrative of your content becomes easier for you.

We have been working with various categories like FMCG, auto, financials, e-commerce, govt, etc., and have been able to find effective solutions for all of them. Like with Castrol, we have been their primary partner in creating engagement with mechanics on “Castrol Super Mechanics” but at the same time, we’ve been very successful in driving the consumer campaign of #nonstopdemocracy with our RideForVote campaign with them. Our cause-based campaign of promoting health with truck drivers with “Truckasana” has also been widely appreciated.

Branded content or content marketing is said to have more scope and prospects on digital than television. Do you see the brand solutions business doing better on Zee5 in future compared with your television channels?

Our approach is to be an ‘idea-first’ unit. We focus on being a solution provider to brands and not necessarily TV but what the brand needs. At Zee, the possibilities are almost 360 degrees, from entertainment TV to news to social to OTT to on-ground to production to films.

Our solutions are platform-agnostic. Each medium serves a relevant purpose. Currently, TV’s reach is unmatched and here to stay for as long as we can see in the foreseeable future. However, it’ll always be about the brand’s objective and we’ll work a solution out that delivers the best result from their point of view.

What are the benefits and limitations or challenges for branded content on television versus digital or OTT? What edge do both mediums have over each other?

We believe that today, it’s about the content first and platform second. Relevance will be the key. While OTT is already interactive, technology is evolving extremely fast on the TV front to provide more interaction (O2O-Offline to Online) as you noticed in the case of Flipkart in our association with them along with Essence team.

Many brands complain that advertising is not that impactful as it used to be with consumers’ falling attention span. But how sure are they about brand integrations unless they meet their objective? After all, the measurement metrics like viewership of ads would not work for content integrations!

If that is the case, it makes all the more sense for brands to engage in solutions. Because of the falling attention span of the audience, you would want to engage them in content they want to consume. Be it integrating into popular shows or a full piece of branded content. As far as metrics are concerned, we engage in research to derive the efficacy of the campaign depending on the need of the campaign and brand.