Zee is at the forefront of propagating the shift to CPT: Ashish Sehgal

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL) has been forging ahead on various fronts – be it strengthening its digital offering with the launch of ZEE5, or focussing its attention on regional markets. The network has been introducing a content mix that straddles both rural and urban markets. 

Going forward, ZEE is strengthening its regional strategy and is planning to enter Kerala and Punjab in a big way. Besides, the acquisition of 9X Media is seen as complementing the group’s movie and music publishing business.

In conversation with Adgully, Ashish Sehgal, COO, Zee Unimedia Ltd, speaks at length about the various strategies of ZEEL and how it plans to achieve them. Excerpts: 

With the Government further intensifying focus on the rural markets in its Union Budget 2018, what are Zee’s plans to fortify its presence in this market?
Zee being a pioneer in the broadcast industry had identified the rural need-gap sometime back, and with this intent we had established our presence by strengthening distribution and marketing of all our main-line channels in the rural market. So also with FTA channels. Our content mix will progressively straddle across both Urban and Rural markets. We are also working towards being present across every market and every genre. Similarly, from the advertising rate point of view, we will be establishing models wherein the rural audience will also be paid for, which currently is abysmally low. 

Zee Anmol has seen great traction in Rural+Urban as per BARC data. How does Zee plan to grow its FTA bouquet? How are you ensuring that FTA does not eat into the main GEC offering?
We are currently in the Hindi GEC, Movies and News space, very soon we will fortify our presence in the Music space as well, which strengthens our content mix to these audience base. Also, from an advertising point of view, we had started our process of right pricing for the audience reached, which will see a further correction going forward. FTA eating into the mainline GEC is not a concern in the near future as the brands which are being consumed by these audience sets are vastly different. 

What are the areas in the FTA space that need to be addressed?
The only major concern is that advertising revenue for the audience reached is not in-sync and the same needs to be addressed immediately. From our end, we have started this process, but the market needs to evolve as well. 

With quite a few state Assembly elections happening and the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, how do you see it impacting TV ad rates, especially in terms of government ad spends?
With the elections lined up, the Government will definitely want to increase their share of voice across both Urban and Rural India, this would be an opportunity for the broadcasters as the demand would increase, leading to rate revision. Price point of the Government is way below the market benchmarks, which will have to undergo corrections as well. 

Watch the ZEE5 launch anthem:

Broadcasters have been asking for revision in the DAVP ad rates. Is it happening any time soon?
Yes, as mentioned earlier, their rates have not seen a change in the past 5 years while cost has escalated multi-fold. Hence, for broadcasters to sustain, it is critical that they revise the rates. 

The market is just emerging from the impact of demonetisation and GST. What does the landscape look like for broadcasters? In which areas have the costs gone up and which are the areas that have seen a dip?
For FMCG, TV is the critical medium to reach out to the audiences and they have seen a dip in costs, which will be utilised in marketing of their products. 

All of ZEE assets were brought under one roof to present a bouquet to the advertisers. How has it worked out for the Group? What kind of impact have you see in your ad revenues?
As the name Zee Unimedia suggests, with network synergy we are able to provide holistic proposition to our advertisers with key focus on “VALUE”, thereby leading to a win-win situation for both brands as well as us. This is reflected in the advertiser loyalty as well as our growth in revenue, which is way ahead of the market curve. 

Currently, ZEE’s bouquet does not offer Sports. How are you planning to fill in this gap? How does ZEE view Sports as a genre?
As you are aware, India has 2 religions – Bollywood and Cricket. Zee has currently taken the approach of owning the Movies space – be it through satellite, Digital rights of most big ticket movies/ library movies or through making of movies. Sports, until now was only Cricket, but it is expanding to other games as well and hence, our objectives to be part of this pie will evolve going forward. 

What are your plans to grow and expand the ‘&’ brand? What kind of differentiation have you planned for ‘&’?
We are launching an English movie channel under the “&” umbrella. This brand was launched with a clear objective to connect with contemporary Indians, cater to urban, progressive, aspirational yet rooted mindset and content of international quality. 

Have the performance of &TV and the recently launched &Prive been as per expectation? What more have you planned for these two channels?
Yes, our launch expectations have been met and we have been able to create brand in this cluttered and fragmented mindset space. More importantly, the urban audience set has accepted both these propositions as the content is refreshing. In the Hindi GEC space on &TV, we have a slew of new shows lined up whose focus is vastly differently and talking to women who are goal achievement oriented as compared to aspirations of women.

Business News as a genre has been growing in importance. How is ZEE Unimedia promoting it? What are the revenues garnered?
Zee Business has been an important platform for us ever since it began operations in 2004. We take pride in the fact that we simplify the genre for the common business class, small time investors and the working class who find stock market terminologies mind-boggling and want a clear and simple analysis. Our shows like ‘Share Bazar’, ‘Mandi Live’, ‘Aap Ka Bazar’, ‘First Trade’, and ‘Big Debate’ are followed very closely by our viewers. In this genre, it is critical that we have a known anchor which we are investing in, so also we are further revamping our market hours and looking at a pan India presence. From a selling point of view, our focus is to reach out to relevant audience being media neutral through activation, seminars, etc. 

How has ZEE’s venture into the digital space been so far? What has OTT’s contribution to the overall growth been?
We were the pioneers in launching an OTT platform in India. We launched Ditto TV five years ago. We tasted initial success with ‘Rs 20 Ka TV’ offer. Our AVOD Platform, Ozee, gave us learning in terms of how we can leverage our existing content. In the current scenario, consolidation is the key to success. Users are extremely time constrained, hence having everything under one platform made perfect sense and this is the right time, thus the launch of ZEE5. 

You may ask why ZEE5, it is due to the strong presence across 5 continents. With a vast library of content, ZEE5 will be the only OTT platform to offer multi-lingual content from across the globe. We will present a huge line-up of originals, Indian and international TV shows and movies, Live TV and content on Health and Lifestyle, etc. Viewers can watch content in 12 languages. They can choose from English, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Oriya and Punjabi. In addition to Android and iOS users, ZEE5 will be available across Amazon Fire TV Stick, Chromecast and also on www.zee5.com. 

How does ZEE5 fit into the Network’s scheme of things? How are you going to position it to advertisers?
We are the only network in the country that has a substantial share across key regional markets. Kerala was the only missing link, which we will address in the coming year. The beauty of ZEE5 is its multilingual offering. We have a great following of all our formats on linear TV and we hope to replicate that on ZEE5 as well, this would help us provide platform neutral audience of similar mindset. Our brand anthem celebrates this spirited new India, globally savvy, yet happiest in the language of their comfort.

With the launch of an exclusive OTT platform now, will you sell GEC and Digital together to advertisers?
Yes, that is definitely the plan! It’s a matter of time that BARC will roll out EKAM and report both TV and digital. 

Also, the Zee Network has been at the forefront of propagating the shift to CPT from CPRP. Selling digital with TV will be the natural transition across genres and shift television to CPT. More importantly, it will not just be reach/ impressions, but advertiser-centric relevant audience profile which will be offered to the advertisers. 

What are the new channels that ZEE has in the pipeline? Which are the genres that you will be focusing on more in 2018?
Regionally, we plan to enter Kerala and Punjab in a big way. 

Our acquisition of 9X Media will complement our movie and music publishing business.

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