The TV Station: WFXX |
For the rest of this discussion about the practices of branding, we are going to apply the principles discussed to a mythical television station, which we have named WFXX. You may find more information here than you ever thought you would need, but we wanted to give you as many of the nuances of working in a “real” television station as possible.
17.1 WFXX
WFXX is the FOX television affiliate in a six-station medium-sized market (size 25 to 45) in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The designated market area (DMA) covers 14 counties, ranging from the heavily populated metropolitan counties to the sparsely populated rural counties in the southwest part of the market.
WFXX is about to begin a 10:00 p.m. newscast, having previously never done news in any form. In addition, it has been asked by the PAX affiliate in town to provide hourly prime-time headlines when the news operation starts up.
17.1.1 The Details
WFXX is channel 33.
It is owned by a large media corporation, which bought it from the family who signed the station on the air in the late 1960s as a primarily religious broadcaster.
The station’s building is located in the downtown area of the city, but not in the hub of business or sports activity. The building is not a showplace.
The ownership is struggling with keeping the equipment up to par. In the past 6 months, a plan has been put in place to replace and upgrade equipment.
The chief engineer knows he has to get the plant ready to go digital, so everything will be capable of handling digital and high-definition television (HDTV) formats when the need arises. By the time the 10 o’clock news report signs on, the station will boast state-of-the-art technology to take it well into the new century. The HD transmitter will also be installed, and the sales department is lobbying for an all-infomercial stream of programs on the unused bandwidth.
The general manager was the general sales manager at the company’s flag-ship station in a major market. This is her first time at the helm, and she is acutely aware of the pressures put on her by the corporation. She knows the value of marketing, branding, and promotion, but she still has to please her bosses with her monthly performance numbers. She also likes the idea of an all-infomercial channel.
The company has made a major commitment to put a newscast on the air. Their standard business model forecasts that it will not make money for the first two years, but the rest of the operation will have to compensate for any profit short-fall. That translates into smaller budgets for other departments.
The news department is being assembled, and the four main anchors consist of the following:
Anchor man–age 52 and graying, he has been in the market for a decade and is moving over from another station where he was being underutilized. His hire is somewhat of a coup because he had once been a major anchor at the NBC affiliate.
Anchor woman–age 34, pretty, moving into her first main anchoring job from the weekend slot in Albuquerque. She is married to stockbroker, who is moving with her. She also has a young daughter and a 1-year-old baby son.
The weather person–age 34, is very classy, has the American Meteorological
Society (AMS) seal, was number 4 (weekends) for a large station in San Francisco and wants to be the star in his own right. He loves his gadgets and is willing to go out to speak to science classes 3 days a week, weather permitting.
Sports guy–age 29, single. Former baseball player who is not too bright, but affable. He had one season in the majors before injuries forced his retirement.
The news director is in his late 30s and has been a news director for seven years at medium market stations in Michigan, Nebraska, and Ohio. He is from this market, and he took the job because he wanted to return home. He feels promotion should be in his control and is somewhat suspicious of outside promotion plans, fearing they will compromise the credibility of his reporters. He has convinced the organization that the news must be called WFXX Metro News, to carve out a position in the viewers’ minds. He likes the idea of having his talent on another station, which has led to a number of spirited discussions regarding how they will be branded.
The reporters are a mix from within the market of those who did not get their contracts renewed by the competition and new college graduates from the state university system’s highly regarded school of journalism.
WFXX has had the call letters only two years. People in the market still refer to them as their old calls: WGDD (W-good).
17.2 THE COMPETITION
Our mythical market has an overabundance of competing media. They represent all the networks and weblets, and all compete to establish their own brand with the audience.
17.2.1 Channel 3
The number one news ratings station in the market is an 900-pound gorilla. It is an NBC affiliate with Oprah leading into the 5:00 p.m. Action News. Their local news block runs until 6:30, when the NBC network news starts. This is followed at 7:00 by two highly popular (but older skewing) syndicated programs. They also have a half hour at 11:00 and an early morning line-up of news from 5:00 a.m. until the start of the Today Show.
Their budgets are high, with new sets, updated graphics, and a very stable on-air group of anchors. But there is trouble in paradise for the first time in a long while. Their anchor lady is talking about leaving, and the rumors are that the new news director is a tyrant. They will deny it to their dying day, but the station initially rose to the top of the market by finding and exploiting “sensational” news stories. They now aspire to be “capital J” journalists.
17.2.2 Channel 7
The number two operation is a scrappy but classy station with a solid, no-nonsense approach to news. Their anchor man has been on the air for 30 years and is black. After a succession of news directors, they have settled on one who is closing in on a year at the station and has made positive changes. They lost their very popular weather person to marriage and a move out of town, and the replacement has not been very well received. They are not very sure about who they are on-air and have changed their look twice in the past year. They do the exact hours of news as Channel 3. A CBS affiliate, their demos are a slightly bit older, but they seem happy to use this as a base on which to build.
17.2.3 Channel 10
The ABC station is a trailing number three, but they are spunky. They will try anything to get numbers, including some ambulance chasing and seedy undercover reports on prostitution and strip clubs. Their general manager is a former news director from San Francisco, and this is his first time at the helm of a station. Their anchors are all young, pretty, and pretty much nondescript. They change positions like the wind and have recently been stung with some bad performances by their technical people, which has been written up in the newspaper.
17.2.4 Channel 24
A WB affiliate, with no news presence at all. They run Law and Order at 10:00 p.m., followed by Seinfeld at 11:00 p.m. against the other newscasts.
17.2.5 Channel 45
This is a PAX net station with updates read by a young intern reporter during their prime time. They seem to survive on paid programming and the ubiquitous Touched by an Angel. They figure to cash in on the cachet of news by using your news reporters during their hourly headline breaks.
17.3 THE MARKET ECONOMY
The major businesses in the market include government, two auto plants, headquarters to a major Baby Bell, a snack food manufacturer, and an oil refinery. There are two medium-sized universities and a large junior college specializing in technical training to feed the labor needs of the auto plants. There is a lot of shift work in the market, much of it working women. The switch to an on-line work place is slow to catch on, and picture cell phones are still considered yuppie. The people in the market are good people. Change is hard for them to deal with as they find their income level is falling while their age is increasing.
There is a ray of hope on the horizon in a new Mayo-type clinic, which, in conjunction with the large university medical school, is already bringing national and international notice.
The market has one morning daily newspaper with a popular television supplement, 23 different radio stations encompassing nine major formats (including two carrying National Public Radio, or NPR), a healthy outdoor and transit plant, and a variety of advertising driven weekly publications.
This is the complex and fascinating arena in which you have to work your marketing and branding magic.
17.4 BASIC BRAND POSITIONING GUIDELINES
As WFXX’s brand manager, it falls to you to work with the team to come up with a positioning or branding statement for the highest impact on your audience. This statement will tell the audience who you are and what you stand for. Therefore, you should be familiar with some of the basic guidelines for a branding process as outlined in Section I of this book. Work with these ideas and concepts in developing and hammering home your brand positioning.
17.4.1 What’s in It for Me?
Known as WIFM (pronounced whiff-em), this is the overwhelming concern of your audience. They must be able to know, appreciate, and embrace the benefit your position offers them. If you tout your Doppler radar, the audience must know how it will help them save their property and their lives. If you have the earliest newscast in the market, tell your viewers that you did it so they could get a head start on their world each day. If your news anchors are not from your market, let them tell your audience how much they love living there.
17.4.2 Is It Simple?
Make sure your chosen positioning statement is simple. Parsimonious Word-smithing is the way to go. Say everything with very little effort. It must be easily understood and remembered. The statement must also be able to be incorporated into everything you and your station do. This synergistic requirement will come back to either bless you or haunt you unless you think it through.
17.4.3 Does It Hit Your Target Audience?
Your positioning dimensions must be important to your target audience. If your station has chosen the proverbial soccer mom as its target audience, ensure that your branding is reflected in your graphics, music, and on-air philosophy. Here is where some money spent in researching the wants and needs of your target audience will pay off in overwhelming dividends. Whatever you do, do not scrimp on research. You could end up like a famous clothing maker who ignored the research that said it should stick to its core product. Against the advice of researchers (and customers), it expanded into other lines and almost went bankrupt.
17.4.4 Does It Have Both Tangible and Intangible Aspects?
When selecting your positioning statement, it is important to be sure you have introduced some intangible positioning with it. The emotional or even irrational feelings your statement induces in the minds of the audience will make it much more difficult for your competitors to rip off and thereby steal your thunder. However, don’t ignore the functional and rational positioning either. Being “the station where people cry a lot” contains emotion and is certainly not rational, but it has no concrete function in its branding line.
17.4.5 Are You Promising Too Much?
Can your position be sustained over the long run? In the first decade of the 21st century, NBC could truthfully tout itself as “the network of the Olympics.” However, very few stations have an investment that will run that long. Your audience will soon determine if you’re promising them the moon and delivering mud balls. Make sure your positioning line will outlive the morning paper.
17.4.6 Can Your Competition Steal Your Thunder?
Make sure that your competitors can’t undermine your statement. In a classic case, at the turn of the last century, a beer company in New York City came up with the statement “We sterilize our bottles!” Of course, all the other brewers also sterilized their bottles, but being the first to say so effectively shut out competition until one competitor came up with “super-sterilized containers.” If you are hawking the benefits of your helicopter, be aware that your competition can come up with a newer, faster, see-in-the-dark, and track-down-running-criminals machine. Be prepared.
17.4.7 Can You Introduce It Gradually?
A well-known axiom of human behavior notes that people hate changes, so if you are re-branding your station, make the changes gradually. If possible, make the changes consistent with prior associations, thereby positioning them as improvements. An example would be a new news set that will make it easier for the audience to see the weather or story preparation.
17.4.8 Are You Alienating Your Loyalists?
Another axiom of human behavior states it is easier to retain your current brand loyalists than it is to convince someone to change to your brand. Therefore, when making and implementing your branding statement, be sure you appreciate those loyalists. Even if their demographic isn’t as valuable to the sales department, they have influence over demographics that are.
17.4.9 Will It Withstand the Test of Time?
The world’s greatest brands have maintained the same position for decades. Just ask Coke, Betty Crocker, or Heinz. Can your positioning statement stand up that long? There is another oft-quoted axiom that by the time you–in the station–have gotten tired of a spot, it is just beginning to make a dent in the hearts and minds of the audience. How many times did you hear a Coke jingle before you realized you were thirsty and needed a Coke?
17.4.10 Does It Work in Copy?
This last item is one that will set the teeth of many creative people on edge. Make sure your positioning line can be easily and effectively translated into promotional spots and advertising copy. If you have decided to be “the bright and happy station,” how will that line fit into a spot about hurricane death and destruction? Work it out in copy, and if you determine that in some cases it would not be appropriate, make sure the copy restrictions are written down and understood by all those responsible for copy.
Likewise, see how the line works graphically. It may be great in a large-sized logo, but how does it look as a lower third? What happens to it in print as a “bug” in a co-op ad? What does it look like as a microphone flag with flags of your competition all around it?
17.5 SETTING OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGIES
The simple answer to starting work on the positioning line is this: Research. To know how to speak to your audience, you must know them inside and out.
A typical research project to accomplish something of this magnitude will include several focus groups and a large-universe either telephone or intercept interview process. There are a number of resources on how this is done, so we won’t go into detail here.
Your research project came back, and over several days of exhaustive discussions in a room off-site you determined these highlights:
The audience is aware of your station, but only barely.
Your other network competition occupies their top of mind, and your station comes in when the interviewer probes.
The good news for you is that you’re ahead of the WB and PAX affiliates.
Your audience tends to think in terms of the programs they see on your air. You are not FOX 33 to a large number of them. You are “football station” or “The Simpsons station” or “the station with the police chases.” And to some, you’re still known as “W-Good.”
The public feels the news is already saturated with news.
They especially hate “body bag” news, but the numbers say they watch it.
The station has a deserved reputation for technical gaffes. It once sat on a slide for 15 minutes while a projector was being fixed during a local prime time movie.
You, the management (including the department heads), and your consultants huddle some more and come up with a list of branding lines. You do some more research to test them and come out with: “FOX 33, Sending Our Best”
The research shows that the public likes this line because
It is simple and easily understood.
Your station identity (FOX 33) is maintained.
It doesn’t boast.
It doesn’t over-deliver.
It will be true for a long time no matter your position in the market.
Your competition can’t undermine it.
It can be easily used in copy and graphics.
It shows a certain amount of humility (or emotion).
It has a bright promise for the future (be it in programming, news, or technical improvements).
17.6 DESIRED EFFECTS
To start the process of brand acceptance, your first step is to build brand awareness. This is the phase of the process that will consume much (but not all) of your resources.
17.6.1 On-Air Graphics
Set out to design the brand for both on- and off-air use. Your designer should preferably know television and print or have access to someone who does. The graphic’s animation must meet the technical requirements of your equipment. Your animation house (or in-house computer graphics expert) will ask you to list all the applications. These will include the following:
On-air identification (ID) animation as a stand-alone piece
Promo open and close animation; interstitial (bump) animation
Specialized applications you and your client users (i.e., news and sales) have developed
Animated bugs for IDs
Spending the money now for top-quality, well-planned animation will save you and your station thousands of dollars and man hours down the road. Resist, if you can, the sales manager’s brother-in-law who has a hot new graphics card in his computer and “can do as well as the big houses at a fraction of the cost.” Animation has come a long way, but not quite that long.
17.6.2 Off-Air Graphics
Because you are starting a news operation, you are typically going to want to brand your news equipment up to and including your vehicles (unless you are in a market in which using a logo makes your vehicles targets). Your designer should be able to mock up how the logo will look on a variety of equipment. How does it looks in print, both newspaper and outdoor? Does it hold up when it is reduced to 8 points?
17.6.3 Music
A brand can be easily identified and retained by the audience if they hear it as well as see it. A music house experienced in working with television stations will work with you to write lyrics that will help the brand develop. They will also know what lengths of music are typically used on air. Any time you run the animated ID, you should also hear the music. You can also use seasonal variations of the music. For example, just adding the proverbial jingle bells will turn it into a holiday cut.
17.6.4 Printed Matter
Does the letterhead, business card, and other printed inventory of your station have your branding? Make sure that even the little printed message on your postage meter reflects your brand position.
17.7 KICK IT OFF–AND LISTEN
“X-Day” is the first day on which you start your branding roll-out. If your market research shows that the audience responds to personal messages, ask the general manager to tape a spot explaining “WFXX’s new commitment to the audience” as embodied in your branding. Have her invite the audience to give her feedback by mail, fax, recorded phone message, or e-mail. Answer these communications with a brief, hand-signed message. This simple but key process will keep your loyalists from abandoning the station simply because they will feel that you are at least listening to their concerns. This same message can be put into a onetime newspaper ad.
The logo, animation, and music should be supported with your promo copy. In the case of WFXX, all promo spots end with “FOX 33, Sending Our Best.” So a promo for the mythical syndicated program Computer Nerds Get a Clue will end with “Catch the fun tonight at 7 on FOX 33, Sending Our Best.”
Once WFXX has kicked off this process of establishing the brand, keep the pressure up (Remember how many times you saw Heinz 57 before it made an impact). The WFXX branding process is no exception. Slowly, day by day, it will creep into the burgeoning awareness curve of your viewers. Your younger viewers will likely become aware of it first.
17.8 WHAT YOU MUST DO TO ESTABLISH THE BRAND
The “WFXX, Sending Our Best” line must be on everything the station does. Every vehicle should have the brand built into the logo; every satellite dish, microwave antenna, and camera should have it. Every promo, every public service announcement (PSA), every local program ending, every radio spot, every print ad, every outdoor poster, every banner, every hand-out, every brochure, every business card, every sales presentation, every everything.
This branding process is not only external; it must be carried forward to the staff. Every bulletin board should have “WFXX, Sending Our Best” somewhere on it. Every tape box, internal run-down sheet, message pad, and even screen saver on every office and newsroom computer needs to carry this message. The hold “music” on the internal phone system should have the “Sending Our Best” music jingle on it. Every eyeball and every eardrum should have this message wash over it at sometime during the day, whenever people make contact with the brand.
The on-air product, too, must meet the needs of your target audience. Your extensive research has delineated their wants, needs, and desires. Focus groups, shopping center intercept interviews, and telephone interviews should provide a vivid picture of the audience. The challenge is to position the brand in such a way as to convince the audience that the station will at least assist them in fulfilling their wants, needs, and desires.
The branding of the on-air product goes beyond promos, IDs, PSAs, and radio spots. It extends into the selection of news stories that will be promoted and teased throughout the day. Although it is not necessary to have the newscasters per se say “Sending Our Best,” the branding may be accomplished in both tangible and intangible ways. A promo tag line such as “If you have children, you won’t want to miss this story” immediately plants in the mind of the potential viewer (who may or may not have kids) the desire to see the story. More importantly, it establishes the brand in the audience’s mind as someone who cares about children and the needs of their parents.
Market research shows that the viewers are available and willing to watch the 10:00 p.m. news. Focus group feedback tells the station the audience doesn’t want a newscast just like all the others. The news director agrees to structure the news somewhat unconventionally, allowing the brand manager to call it “different.”
The television on-air will start 5 weeks from premiere date with a 5-day tease using 10-second spots exclusively: “Something DIFFERENT is coming. FOX 33, Sending Our Best.” The spot campaign will expand during the next 4 weeks as the anchors are introduced in the news room talking about how they have listened to what the market has said and that they will be part of the “difference.” The spots always end with “FOX 33, Sending Our Best.”
For WFXX’s 10:00 p.m. news, radio will be used to continue to build brand awareness: “There’s a different kind of newscast in town, and it’s on a different station. FOX 33, Sending Our Best.”
Outdoor designs will highlight the “different” branding aspect as well as “Sending Our Best.”
The brand manager puts the anchors on the road, speaking to civic clubs about how they love the market and how exciting it is to be part of something different. The brand manager always makes sure there are plenty of hand-outs available with anchor pictures and branding statement.
The weatherman sets up a schedule of speaking to school science classes about meteorology and leaves behind handouts with anchor pictures and the brand statement.
This campaign, both on and off air, continues to premiere date with radio and print peaking on that date.
The headlines on the PAX station have the PAX logo on screen, but your station’s talent ID as “Sarah Slade, WFXX Metro News @ 11.” The marketing of your product on their air is something that must be continually researched and monitored.
Once WFXX has kicked this branding off, keep the pressure up. Remember how many times Heinz 57 varieties was seen or heard before it made an impact. Your branding process is no exception. Slowly, day by day, it will creep into the burgeoning awareness curve of your viewers. Younger viewers will likely become aware of it first.
From here, the savvy brand manager can chart his or her own course using the principles in this book, checking themselves against the practices as they build toward the future.