How MTV revamped itself, gained viewership and made money.
Last fortnight, the hundred-plus employees of MTV, the music channel from Viacom 18 (a 50:50 venture between Viacom Inc and Network 18), cut a 15-kg cake at their funky office at Parel in Mumbai. The occasion, as MTV’s general manager and senior vice-president (creative & content), Ashish Patil, explains, was the channel’s highest ever viewership in India. So much so, the channel dared to compare its gross rating points (GRPs, the weekly total of television rating points which is viewership into time spent) to general entertainment channels (GECs) such as NDTV Imagine and Sab TV.
In the last three weeks, MTV’s GRPs have risen from 79 to 81 to 83. In the final week, 5 million people tuned into the channel. Its two reality shows, Roadies and Splitsvilla, are ramping up viewership numbers at a fast clip. Roadies has clocked a rating of 3.5 and above, while Splitsvilla touched 1.71 this week — spectacular for shows on a music channel. Popular soap operas like Balika Badhu and Bidai notch ratings of eight to 10.
The performance is a show-stopper even if MTV India chooses its base audience carefully to arrive at these numbers. The channel looks at a narrow market — 15- to 24-year-olds in the socio-economic categories A and B in Hindi-speaking markets with a population of 100,000 and more — to flaunt its impressive numbers. (For the record, TAM Media’s MTV GRP for cable and satellite homes in the Hindi markets, 15-year-plus viewers in all SECs was 33 for the period between March 15 and 21.)
But Patil is not apologetic about cherry-picking data. “We are laser-focused on youth. That target audience is a huge influencer and that’s why the advertiser buys us. We are not targeting Chunnu, Munnu, Dada, Dadi or the handcart puller.” Sceptics may argue on the contrary, but even TAM acknowledges that MTV is top dog among music channels with a 32 per cent market share, ahead of 9XM at 26 in the period between March 15 and 21. Channel V was much behind with a mere 6 per cent share.
MTV is clearly rocking if you believe what the irate Network 18 Group CEO Haresh Chawla has to say. Irate when he’s told that rivals believe MTV makes about Rs 50-55 crore in revenue but spends too much on its reality shows to be profitable. “We have hit our highest-ever rating and revenue in the last 15 years. MTV makes about Rs 90-100 crore,” he says snappily, adding that the spot rates for the two shows are sold at a huge premium. “We are a profitable channel,” agrees Patil who has been with MTV for 11 years.
Patil says that MTV’s success in recent months is not a fluke but the result of a conscious and well-crafted strategy.
The genesis of the strategy goes back to 2007 when a Brand Track study done by IMRB in five metros showed that while MTV’s awareness was 100 per cent, it was low on likeability — just 44 per cent. “The channel was looking jaded and did not make money,” says independent brand consultant Shripad Nadkarni whose outfit Market Gate was engaged by the channel for a re-jig. (After the revamp, its likeability has gone up to 93 per cent in the Brand Track study.)
MTV realised that it was grappling with serious issues. For a start, it understood that the consumer had changed. The “desi cool” youth who was proud to be an Indian, was more global now (he’s still a proud Indian though, insists Patil). Youngsters were well-travelled and more in tune with international concepts such as Orkut, Facebook and YouTube. However, MTV was still doling out Indian street humour and starkly Indian symbols like the rangoli, autorickshaw and liftman.
The media environment had changed too. GECs had proliferated and launched music shows like Sa re ga ma, Nach Baliye and Indian Idol. “These were eating into my eyeballs,” claims Patil. Moreover, music was now a commodity and freely available on the Net, iPod and mobile phone. The channel was also under threat from 9XM, INX Media’s music channel. It played back-to-back music and was in the prime distribution band which it was keeping warm for the group’s news channel.
Patil then launched Project “Sexy Back” which required the channel to bring the oomph back which, according to him, “seemed to have walked out along with video jockey Malaika Arora.” (For Project Sexy Back, the entire stationery at the office was changed and the office was repainted in sexier colours, lest the employees lose focus.)
To understand the kind of surgery the channel needed, scores of employees were handed handycams and flight tickets to fan out into the metros and conduct interviews at youth hangouts: Campuses, multiplexes and malls. The findings were an eye-opener. The channel was perceived as a narrow offering of “music” and “masti,” while the consumers expected far more. They wanted entertainment as well as information. “The channel was getting typed as Bakra (its long-running humour show), that is, flippant fun. But it had a larger role to play,” says Nadkarni.
To begin with, the sex appeal was enhanced by immediately hiring four hot VJs, including Mia, a foreigner and a Kingfisher calendar model, and Deepti Gujaral, another Kingfisher model.
A new-look channel, complete with slick and edgy graphics (Indian icons like rangoli , samosa and chandeliers were done away with), was planned with hot new shows which were no longer titled in Hinglish (Fully Faltoo, Bolti Band and so on).
Instead, smarter titles like Roadies 5.0, Wassup? and MTV It Sucks were introduced. Splitsvilla was launched last year and is currently in its second season.
The repositioning included re-working the MTV tagline too. MTV Enjoy became It’s MY MTV. The logic was simple. Personalisation was in. Wallpapers, mobile ringtones and caller-back tunes were customised. “It was the young viewer’s shortest cut to cool,” explains Patil. The tagline change was also relevant in the context of the entire shift in focus. MTV Enjoy was pure music and fun. But now the channel was ready to broadbase its offering. Thus entered shows based on romance and relationships, career and campus, lifestyle and current affairs. The intent was to make it a youth destination.
In advertising jargon, music television is a snack-in and snack-out category. But MTV’s non-music shows were intended to give an impetus to appointment viewing as well. “Our shows like Simi Girebal and film spoofs were aimed at moving towards appointment viewing. The fact is that a pure music channel is quite limiting” observes Patil. To improve its music content, MTV tightened its playlists too — it would play only hit songs.
Advertising inventory was cleaned up. Low value ads were done away with and the focus was shifted to premium inventory at prime time (morning and early evening). “We reduced prime time clutter by about 25 to 30 per cent,” says Patil. On Independence Day last year, the entire day was signed up with Nokia. Again, on April 1, 2009, the channel sold the entire day to ITC’s Bingo to celebrate All Fools’ Day as Bakra Din. “The move helps us get revenue, the brand gets value and the viewer enjoys a clutter-free day,” says Patil.
However, if MTV proudly talks of Rs 100-crore revenue, not all of it comes from on-air commercial time. A chunk of it is contributed by Viacom Brand Solutions, a 360-degrees communications agency which it operates. This was one of the ideas seeded by Market Gate and the agency is already profitable. It makes ad films (remember the latest ones for Vodafone text messages… Dhal Gaya Din …Tak?), does brand promotions, on-ground activations (it did a pub crawl for White Mischief across several cities) and organises film premiers.
That’s not all. It has embedded brands in Splitsvilla and Roadies. With a rating of 3.5, a clutch of super premium spots in Roadies have been sold at Rs 20,000 for 10 seconds, opposed to the routine Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 they are hawked at. Patil claims MTV’s top-line has grown 40 per cent.
Rivals and media experts are still not convinced. The argument is that MTV’s music-programme ratio is almost 50:50. “How do you expect it to make money? Splitsvilla and Roadies are costly especially with Roadies now being shot in Australia,” says the head of a rival channel. Patil counters that since it’s an in-house production, the channel keeps the costs under control.
Though Channel V’s head, Prem Kamath, admits that Roadies is a runaway success, he feels the channel will require at least five or six such shows for its appointment viewing strategy to be successful. Media agency Dentsu’s COO, Sanjay Chakrabarty, points out that Roadies’ success has not really allowed the channel to raise its overall ad rates. “It is still at par with the other music channels,” he comments.
MTV Vice-president (consumer products) Sandeep Dahiya says there’s nothing unusual about a channel riding on a couple of shows. “That’s how most TV channels operate. The big thing is that we are in the GEC league now.” The flip side is, MTV will have to contend with new rivals soon.
What’s hot, sells hot
MTV Hero Honda Roadies 6.0, the reality show which follows bikers on Hero Honda motorcycles on a pre-planned route, is offering MTV new revenue streams apart from advertising. That’s not to say it’s short on advertisers. Hero Honda has held on to the property for the last six years and now there are eight associate sponsors as well.
However, what’s exciting Sandeep Dahiya, vice-president (consumer products) is the merchandise opportunity that the brand offers. Last year, he sold MTV Roadies cargos (manufactured by Primus Clothing) at Rs 1,599 like hot cakes. If you missed them, you could probably grab Roadies helmets from Wrangler soon. In case you are not a biker, paper manufacturer Ballarpur is doing some stationery that you could stock. Better still, you could wait for Roadies-inspired bed sheets. “Last year, we launched bed linen under the ‘Laid by MTV’ brand. One of its whacky designs with a skull in the centre was a sellout,” claims Dahiya.
Several other product ideas are still in the works for promoting the Roadies brand, which was a completely made-in-India reality show. The company has already launched 15 Roadies’ categories with Archies including handbags, wallets, slippers and much else. If all goes well, there could be Roadies adventure shoes and watches too.
To be sure, MTV is no stranger to merchandising. Six years ago, it launched its own line of garments and even a co-branded credit card with an international bank. However, the channel suddenly seems charged up about merchandise since the retail market has also got organised. Viacom’s children’s channel, Nicklodeon, says Dahiya, makes more money from merchandise abroad than from advertising.
