The Homa Files

TakeAway: Finally Hollywood can provide us with something other than a Paris Hilton debacle or Speidi controversy.

NBC went back to the basics: giving consumers what they want.

By focusing on people, the ever-important (and often forgotten) node of the 6 P’s, NBC has drastically changed the landscape of late-night television without developing a new, innovative product. It simply realized that it’s core viewers were changing, and acted accordingly.

This demonstrates that it doesn’t always take groundbreaking innovation to create a successful product. The same result can be achieved by simply looking at your existing products and attempting to deliver greater value to the consumer.

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Excerpted from Forbes, “Lessons from Leno: Marketers Can Learn From NBC’s Timeslot Switch” by Allen Adamson, September 22, 2009

…the producers knew exactly what they were doing when they decided to shift Leno’s show from its 11 p.m. time slot to 10 p.m. They were making a smart marketing move, one that is an interesting case study in brand management. General Electric-owned NBC, recognizing that good brand management means keeping tabs on what’s important to a core target audience, decided that airing the show an hour earlier would be a great way to hang onto this faithful group of viewers who are probably saying, “Hey, I can watch Leno and be able to get up with the kids at the crack of dawn.” There isn’t a powerful company on the planet where executives believe they no longer have to worry about what matters to their most important consumers. Consumer attitudes change, and the best brands respond. The second important branding effort made by those in charge of the Leno brand was taking a look at the competitive programming landscape and determining that there was an opportunity to offer something different, yet relevant. After considering the lineup of mediocre shows on TV, they saw something right in front of their noses. “Why can’t an already successful late-night television show be on earlier?” Here was a simple brand idea which, with a bit of repackaging, could be made ready for prime time–along with an audience delighted to have it in prime time. Taking a look at your category from a unique point of view, identifying something no one else has seen and doing your homework to determine its relevance to a particular target can give you a real competitive advantage.

Edit by JMZ

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Full Article
http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/22/nbc-kanye-tv-cmo-network-allenadamson.html?partner=yahootix

This entry was posted on October 5, 2009 at 7:43 am and is filed under Mktg - Brands, Mktg - Product & Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.