 "Tata Sky")
Tata Sky has taken a leaf out of the marketing manuals of telecom companies which, it hopes, will give it greater penetration and growth in its target market. This is how: The country's second-largest direct-to-home (DTH) operator has chosen to take telecom's popular daily recharge concept and apply it to DTH.
Media observers say it's a smart move and a potent tool that could help Tata Sky surge ahead in subscriber numbers, provided, consumers take to it.
"The service is fairly new, so we have no concrete trends or data to indicate market response. But from the initial feedback received, it looks encouraging. There are people who do not view television everyday for various reasons. For many, there is a spillage (of expense) when they recharge for the whole month, but use TV only on certain days. So we figured there should be a way to deliver sachet-sized TV viewing to such consumers," says Malay Dikshit, chief commercial officer, Tata Sky.
This sachet-sized or byte-sized TV viewing, not uncommon to fast moving consumer goods companies, which also takes into account the purchasing power of consumers, has been backed by a novel ad campaign. Since the launch of the latest edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) on April 8, Tata Sky's daily recharge has been marketed using episodic ads revolving around a boy and a girl and their love story.
Executives at Ogilvy & Mather, the agency that conceptualised and executed the campaign, say viewer feedback post release suggests many are hooked to this episodic nature of the campaign waiting for commercials to rollout daily during ad breaks. "Every day the love story unfolds itself with a new film on national television. The campaign is interactive. The boy and girl update their social profile on a daily basis as the story unfolds. People also end up helping the boy decide what to do next every single day to take the love story forward through an immersive digital experience," Sukesh Nayak, group creative director, Ogilvy & Mather, said.
Interestingly, Tata Sky hasn't advertised on IPL before, so its debut is impressive, say ad industry sources. "We have advertised this year on IPL as it provides the continuity needed for the daily format of this campaign. The brand promise of 'Daily milenge toh pyaar toh hoga hi' is a simple expression to stay connected with viewers everyday with our offering," Dikshit says.
But beyond the simplicity of the campaign, there is a definite business objective behind the exercise. According to the latest FICCI-KPMG Media Industry Report, the battle for TV viewers in phases III and IV is expected to be keenly fought between multi-system operators (or master cable operators as they are popularly called) and DTH operators.
While DTH operators did manage to gain 20 to 30 per cent of subscribers converting from analogue to digital in Phases I and II, the FICCI-KPMG report says they are in a much better position to gain consumers in subsequent rounds. "This is due to the inherent technology advantage of DTH in sparsely populated areas. It is also due to their balance sheets being healthier than those of MSOs, especially the smaller regional MSOs," it says.
The current DTH market is pegged at over 72 million households in India, growing at the rate of around 12 per cent per annum. In the next three to four years, the DTH market will cross the 100-million-mark, led largely by growth in small towns and cities as well as rural areas. Like telecom and FMCG, which innovated to target the rural and semi-urban consumer, industry sources say Tata Sky is keeping a firm eye on this target group in its bid for growth.
"This model gives two distinct advantages - affordability since the recharge is byte-sized at Rs 8, and flexibility of usage, since they can buy the recharge and avail the service at their convenience, much like buying a shampoo sachet and using it as and when required," says Dikshit.
But rivals seem hardly enthused by Tata Sky's moves describing it as a desperate attempt to garner subscribers. A prominent DTH player says, "This is nothing but pure desperation. Have you ever heard TV consumers doing daily recharge? They don't even do monthly recharges. Most look at yearly renewals. So what is the idea then of daily recharge? I don't think it will work and even dealers, I am told, are not interested because the trade margins are thin - not more than 20 paise per recharge. I am a firm believer that instead of short-term tactics like this, Tata Sky should devote its attention on building its distribution muscle. Gimmicks like this can't substitute for plain business prerogatives or objectives."
As things stand now, Dish TV and Zing (Zee's regional DTH brand) together have around 26 per cent of the total DTH market, according to industry estimates, followed by Tata Sky at 20 per cent and Videocon d2h at 18-19 per cent respectively.
