Ag talk | Shop CJ doubles marketing spends to Rs.16 crores

Started in the year 2009 with a one hour slot on Star Utsav, Shop CJ has come a long way from having a one hour slot to a complete twenty four hour home shopping channel. Star CJ alive, one of the country’s leading 24X7 home shopping channels have rebranded themselves to SHOP CJ.

This marks the culmination of a yearlong exercise where in Star phased itself out of the alliance to focus on its core expertise of GEC and Sports offerings. Providence Equity Partners replaced Star in the venture. At the launch of the new brand identity and logo, the company presented a new brand credo - ‘shop a new trend’. This also marked the entry of the brand into mobile commerce with the launch of its mobile App “SHOP CJ” thereby becoming an Omni Channel platform. Currently, Shop CJ is amongst the leaders in the Rs. 45-50 billion TV home shopping market in India. It is available on various DTH platforms like Dish TV, Tata Sky, Airtel and Videocon.

The new name is also incorporated on its online shopping website, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. The new brand tagline - ‘shop a new trend’, signifies catering to a wide spectrum of audience by providing products that are in synch with their lifestyle and latest trend. The new philosophy of SHOP CJ is to bring ultra-trendy, durable, cost-effective, innovative and customer-friendly products which delight the customers.

The re-branding initiative is to better align the company’s new philosophy with the future strategy. It plans to further improve the back end service in order to serve customers quickly and effectively. Plans are also there to launch new innovative categories on board and change entire home shopping perspective and experience.

The CJ group is globally known for its product quality and innovation. Their experience of various countries will prove to be useful to serve Indian consumers with world-class product experience.

At a press conference announcing the rebranding of Shop CJ, team Adgully caught up with Kenny Shin to know about their strategy in the way forward.

Adgully (AG): Post Star’s exit, who are the new Investors?
Kenny Shin (KS):
Post Star, we have Providence Equity which has a 50% shareholding with our parent company CJ O Shopping.

AG: With Star’s exit, will the brand philosophy of Shop CJ change? Will it affect the current functioning of the team in any manner?
KS:
No. Not really. Post Star’s exit our philosophy has not changed. It remains the same. There is no major change from Star CJ to Shop CJ. Not really. Internally we had already started to work on the company name and logo change and that happened last week. We were worried about what if, our sales have some kind of setback, but no, it hasn’t happened that way.

AG: Will you get a new team on board?
KS:
No, we already have a set team and we have no plans of getting on new members as of now. Star never played a key role in operations. They had given us their brand name.

AG: Which are the STAR Platforms you are still using?
KS:
Right now we have a slot on Star Utsav from 10am to 11am, so we are making use of their platform to broadcast our content.

AG: Will you be using them going forward?
KS:
Why not? If they give us a great price and support we have an intention and willingness to use their properties and resources.

AG: What is your share in the teleshopping industry?
KS:
In India we have a total of $8.35 Billion (2014) and the total group’s business is about $28 Billion. We are present in seven countries across the world and have nine channels. In India the TV Home Shopping market is USD $525 million.

AG: What are your plans to beef up distribution?
KS:
Yes, we do have a plan to beef up distribution through CJ Express.

AG: What was Star’s role in distribution?
KS:
We did not have any direct support from Star and it never played a role in distribution.

AG: Do you plan to launch the premium goods segment on home-shopping in India?
KS:
We have already added some premium brands/products to our catalog. By end of this month you can see some of the precious jewellers available with us. We have already sold brands like Gucci and Longines in South Korea. We are trying to bring in more high-end/elite products to India.

AG: What has been the advertiser’s response for the channel?
KS:
It has been pretty good and very encouraging so far. We look forward to their support.

AG: What are your efforts on the marketing front?
KS:
We have a bigger, wider and a more comprehensive marketing activity. When we launched our channel in 2010, the launch campaign was about 6-8 crores. This time we are going to spend double and since Star has exited we have to be more aggressive. So mainly we will spend heavily on our campaign. 50% of our budget will go to television that is to the Star network especially to Star Plus for our TV commercial.

We already have a TVC which will be on air by end of this month. Apart from that we will be doing a 360 degree marketing campaign which will include Print, Radio and digital. We also have some BTL activities.  The agency which has worked with us on the digital front is First Economy, Percept has worked with us for our creative and Gracious communications is our media buying agency. So all in all we have a full marketing plan in place which we will roll out soon.

AG: What is your approach on the digital front?
KS:
We launched a mobile application for android after the exit of Star. The application is a live streaming version of the television on your mobile. Tremendous growth in the mobile e-commerce industry has encouraged us to offer this service. The rate at which Indian consumers are adopting shopping on the App, is faster than other countries. We want our consumers to shop exactly as per their convenience.

AG: What are your expansion plans?
KS:
We will be expanding our presence in east and north-east through physical warehouses. Company is also investing to improve warehouse management system which will enhance logistics and the back-end services. Apart from that we also intend to bring in language feeds for southern India and you will soon see us in multiple languages in India. By Archit Ambekar | Twitter: @aambarchit

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