2nd Edition of Medianews4u’s Straight Talk, The Brand Stories, a regional brand summit; saw the Discovery top boss Vikram Tanna give a key note address on driving relevance in an evolving regional content ecosystem. At Discovery Tanna is the Business Head of the Regional Clusters, South Asia.
“Tamil Nadu is known for breaking records and hitting it out of the park.” setting the context Tanna said.
“For any content ecosystem, including broadcasters, OTT players, and people who build commerce from consumers. If you look at broad stats it automates everything on the All India Average TV penetration. All India stands at around 66% whereas the ecosystem in this region, hits it out of the park, with more than 95%.”
“It is disproportionately high in terms of disposable income. A great economy, when you look at India, there are many India’s within India. So this is the best piece of India, when it comes to the Adex ecosystem.” Said Tanna.
Talking about content the Tamil Nadu as a state and market loves to consume Tanna said, “Content drives commerce for the consumer so it’s really a great barrier that we build content, and everybody drives commerce through agencies and clients. So there is reach there is engagement, there is addiction to video, in fact a lot of digital companies invented the word called fans, I truly believe that our super fans sitting over here in this state, and they’re consuming content and why are they consuming four plus hours of content. It’s primarily because of the fact that there is path breaking drama.”
Elaborating with an example Tanna said, “Dhoni has been a household name since the time he’s been a part of CSK. The epicenter is sitting here, but if you look at super fans of Chennai Super Kings, they exist pan India. And that’s what consumers have the power over here to kind of really act as catalysts and things which are working in the content ecosystem.”
“Movies go across genres”, said Tanna.
Continuing he said, “It’s already a unique situation with normal viewership. Let me give you basic stats right if you look at GEC’s is the give you maximum viewership, and out of these GEC is roughly 60% viewership which is coming out of this genre. And that’s what is responsible for the unique changing the face of how this content ecosystem works over here.”
Highlighting three distinct trends, Tanna said, “As a region Tamil Nadu defies everything that you say about the consumer, here the opposite is always true.”
The other trend, “no matter how well educated or how technologically advanced one is, everyone in this region always goes back to their roots. Traditions are very important.”
Finally, “While education is extremely important, and everybody is investing in their kids’ education and investing disproportionately, when you start interviewing these individuals, you will always see a lot of new findings coming out.”
“So if you start looking at the content needs, which are unfulfilled in this space, they love to look at content, which is really aspirational, which is driving their needs, they love content which gives them an adrenaline rush. Each of these really provides inputs in terms of what differentiated programming, what does the family in Tamil Nadu want. And once these needs and wants are fulfilled, you will actually see the numbers going up.” Said Tanna about the content needs of the region.
Talking about Discovery Tamil Tanna said, “The changes that we made in the last one month to DTamil is really an attempt to actually see, whether we can enable, and become the destination for differentiated family entertainment? The host of shows that are coming up is what we have made in the last one month is a renewed attempt and our endeavor to become the destination for differentiated family entertainment.”
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