Star Power

Here’s a very basic question: who is bigger, the station or the stars?

KTN is clearly undergoing something of an attempted renaissance, as reflected by the recent spate of double-page spreads trumpeting their revised line-up of news anchors. Partially in reaction, I assume, Citizen TV has been running exceptionally similar ads over the last couple of weeks in the Nation.

Back to my question. The obvious problem with building your stations’ brand around its’ stars’ brands is that said stars, as we have seen in this market time and time again, are not fixed to any certain constellation. Today KTN, then off to Citizen, then NTV, then K24, then back to KTN, then off to Cartoon Network, and so on…

To me there is a certain ‘bi-polar-ish-ness’ to this ad. The headline is kind of bold, though not prominent enough – “Your Authoritative News Team” - which at least reflects an admirable attempt to position the KTN brand in a particular territory, though whether said position is the correct one is a separate question.

On the other had, this ad is screaming “Look at the people we have, look at our stars!!!” What this ad says to me is that there is a certain lack of confidence at KTN, a niggling belief that the station/brand is only as good as the line-up of people that it has reading from their iPads in front of the camera.

I would say that KTN are very much falling into the trap of abiding by the conventions of the category. Essentially what happened is that Citizen TV disrupted the category some 5 to 7 years ago by building and focusing upon their all-star cast, but what was disruptive has now become the convention…

Essentially what this ad says to me is that the reason that I should watch the KTN news is the ensemble of people who present it. The glaring weakness with this argument is that if said people were to leave does it therefore mean that I should stop watching KTN News? Is there no deeper principle/philosophy that drives KTN’s editorial and presentation style, and is it not this principle/philosophy (brand position) that should actually be driving which channel I choose to watch come 9pm and the onset of the desperate need to feed myself with the latest gossip I mean news from Kenya’s political scene…

A useful analogy is drawn from the film business. Undoubtedly stars have ‘pulling power’ – if you are a fan of Brad Pitt then no doubt you will want to go and see his next film. However a better analogy from the film business would be the ‘franchises’. James Bond is a brand, he/it has a position, a personality, values, a mission, a vision, a ‘visual language’, a ‘tone of voice’ and so on. We all went to see Skyfall because it was the latest offering from the James Bond brand, not (primarily) because it starred Daniel Craig…

The point is that what KTN needs to be focusing on is its brand. The key question for the people at the Standard Group is this: ‘How shall we convincingly and competitively differentiate or news offering from that of the other brands on the market?’ Truth be told their ad here demonstrates zero differentiation – in essence it says “we’re just like Citizen (and NTV for that matter) but with a different set of faces/stars and we hope that you’ll prefer our set of faces/stars to theirs.”

There is of course a wider game at play which is to do with the relative positioning’s of the various TV station brands as a whole, with Citizen being ‘of the people, for the people’, NTV and KTN appearing to battle (it seems to me) for a similar ‘middle-class urban Kenyan’ audience, KBC being I don’t know where, QTV looking like it’s got it’s guns aimed squarely at Citizen and KISS making a genuine attempt to carve out a distinct niche for themselves.

Back however to KTN News, which is a sub-brand of KTN, bearing in mind though the need for the KTN ‘mother-brand’ to sort it’s mind out about who it is and who it’s for.

What sort of steps could KTN be taking to begin building a distinct and competitive brand identity and position for itself? My ideas as follows are merely thought starters, but the questions raised are questions that have to be answered if KTN News (and I am old enough to remember how KTN broke the monotony of ‘Leo katika ikulu ya state house') is to survive and thrive.

Do the news anchors (men) have to wear suits? How about they drop the ties and go for the more casual approach? How about dress policy is afro-centric? Do they have to stand in front of an animated graphic just because everyone else does? How about sofas instead of black leather ‘executive’ chairs? What about the language? Should they start slipping in some sheng? Or should they hire some professors and become Kenya’s home of the ‘Queens English?’

Set design? Graphics design? How about the opening theme tune? Less dramatic? More dramatic (which would be hard)? More hip-hop, more benga? It’s all part of the package…

It even comes down to the choice of anchors. All young and pretty? All old and wise? Only left-handers? Do we really need a weather report? How about we get a farmer to read the weather report, seeing after all it’s farmers who really need to know if it’s going to rain or not…

These are just a few of the many questions that one would have to answer in designing a distinct brand identity for KTN news. The ultimate question as always though would have to be: what do you fundamentally stand for? The answer give at present is ‘authoritative’, which essentially means ‘news you can trust’, news which is objective, balanced and truthful. Now whilst I have no argument in principle with this position, I do wonder how distinctive it is in this market (it’s not), and until KTN News develops a distinctive position it will continue to struggle for viewers. What the exact way forward for KTN is I do not know right now, but I do know that essentially aping the way that Citizen does it and hiding behind a no doubt expensively-assembled roster of transient stars will only get them so far…

Generic 101

With brands, as with people, the ones that truly stand out are the ones that have a distinct and distinctive way about them – they look, talk, act, sing, dress, walk, move, laugh, cry and dance in a particular and memorable way. They have ‘a style all of their own’.

The opposite of this is that much abused agency word ‘generic’, which essentially means ‘just the same as everyone/thing else’ (think school uniform, or think corporate warriors dark suit and tie).

At this point in the conversation many businessmen and women roll their eyes – ‘these ad guys, they just want to be different’.

Well yes and no is the answer to that statement. No, we don’t want to be different, but yes, your brand needs to be different.

After all what is the point of a brand? What is it if it is not a tool by which your business can differentiate itself, it’s products and it’s services in an increasingly competitive marketplace?

If indeed this is the point of a brand, to set you apart, then why would you run a piece of communication that looks/sounds/reads/feels like every other piece of communication run by every other brand in your category?

The banks in this Nairobi are especially guilty of doing this. If you conduct an exercise, as I have, in which you stick examples of a cross-section of Kenyan bank ads on a wall, and consider them, you will soon see that the various logos that they bare are essentially interchangeable. The arrayed ads are indistinct from one another – there is nothing to distinguish them from each other, other than the logos (and colors, though most are either blues or greens).  No effort has been made to generate a visual, graphic, typographic and tonal style for the brands that is clearly and identifiably of the brands…

There is a concept in psychology known as ‘groupthink’, in which a closed group of people succeed in convincing themselves of a particular reality regardless of the actual reality of said so called reality. We (marketing fraternity) are suffering in this town from an acute case of groupthink. We have convinced ourselves that this is how a bank ad is supposed to look like, and this is how a promotional ad is supposed to look like, and this is how a sale ad is supposed to look like…

How can we possibly get things so back to front? The only thing that an ad is supposed to look like is not like any of the brand’s competitor’s ads!!!!!

And no I am not saying that the ad referenced here should star a cartoon elephant and a topless grandmother in the name of being different – one must of course still work within the framework provided by the category, the brand’s position and the target audience – but if your ad is not clearly differentiated, it is doing nothing for your brand, and if it is doing nothing for your brand, pray what exactly is it doing for you???

All the great ad campaigns in history, and by great Mr. CFO I mean had the greatest impact upon the bottom line, were great first and foremost because they were so utterly different to anything that had come before them. It is this sense of difference, freshness, newness and originality that captures people’s imagination and drives them, almost unwittingly, into your stores/branches/kiosks/arms…

And no, for the last time, different does not necessarily mean pink dreadlocks with multiple nose rings. Different could mean something as simple as using illustrations when all your competitors use photos, or sponsoring a volleyball tournament when all your competitors are throwing money at football.

The great TBWA call the above process ‘disrupting the conventions.’ BBH put it slightly more poetically – “when the world zigs, zag!!!’ It is at the heart of what every good agency does, and whilst it will rarely be what the client wants, it will almost always be what the client needs…