Will Discovery's mega entertainment gamble to woo Indian masses pay off?

Brand experts say the risk is huge as the channel has never done fiction-based content at such a large scale globally

Discovery India is extending its brand to general entertainment, seeking a role for itself beyond the infotainment segment that it has been a part of since its launch in the country. The network is also pushing for a stronger digital play with an alliance with Netflix for the global airing of its Indian general entertainment channel (Discovery Jeet) and a bouquet of mobile-first over-the-top (OTT) entertainment offerings. It also plans to launch a kids’ entertainment channel. The objective is to go mass-premium in India as the network has said and also, snatch a slice of that part of the broadcasting universe that attracts maximum advertiser interest. But will this end up diluting the Discovery brand and muddying its identity within the niche and informed audience that it has worked hard to cultivate in the country?

Brand experts are skeptical, preferring to keep their anonymity over any overt comments about the viability of such a move. Discovery, they say has never done fiction-based content at this scale globally. It is a big risk. Karan Bajaj, senior vice president & general manager, Discovery Communications India is not entertaining any doubts at the moment however. He says that getting into entertainment is not a brand dilution but an extension.

“When you extend the brand, it should borrow something from the master and it should lend something back to the master. If a sub brand can do it, then it’s a good sub brand otherwise it’s a diluted sub-brand. In our case, if I think about Discovery Jeet, it borrows the master's credential of meaning and purpose and lends back the credential of entertainment back to the. We are making the brand much more emotional and dearer to a larger number of consumers,” he said.

The company has said that it expects to triple its turnover (undisclosed) through the extensions and its digital thrust, in three years. On January 26, Discovery launched the first of its four mobile-first channels, Veer on YouTube. It has said that it will launch three more, for auto enthusiasts, young adults (female) and food, all advertiser friendly segments.

On television too, advertisers are being wooed assiduously. The launch programming, which is being highlighted in an ongoing campaign for Jeet is an indication of things to come. Santosh Padhi, co-founder and CCO Taproot Dentsu, the agency behind the launch campaign says in an official note: "Baba Ramdev is one of the most talked about Indians today. It was important to capture the same graph while communicating to the audience in the 30-second commercial too. I firmly believe that when you have a great product, you must stay true to it and that's exactly what we stuck to - the fighting journey of Baba Ramdev."

The sensationalism is hard to miss but the network says the intention is to keep things balanced between fact and fiction. The brand philosophy that will drive Jeet is the same as Discovery says Bajaj. "Do something that has a purpose and don’t add noise to TV," says Bajaj. He adds that the core brands like Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet, which caters to metro and tier-I will stay within the infotainment space to cater to the 15 million households, who are in the top of pyramid of the 250 million households in India. The new ventures are aimed at the next set of consumers, which are around 120 million households. The core channels will however change the mix of local and global programming. Bajaj says that in the last 10 years Discovery did about 5-7 hours of local content per year, and now this year alone it will do 40 hours of local content.
 
The Jeet launch and the ongoing campaign have been wrapped around the tagline ‘Hai Mumkin’. The idea is to offer inspirational shows around ordinary people who have created extraordinary lives for themselves and the campaign will highlight the same.

The network is also betting big on digital formats this year. “Our digital channels will help us ramp up reach across linear and digital platforms by almost three times making it an irresistible proposition for the advertisers,” says Bajaj. Veer that has just gone live had ten sponsors even before the launch. He adds that the network will provide both long and short-form content in order to capture all ends of the market. “The exciting bit is that when people say that TV is under threat from digital, but I feel that the Discovery viewership will triple because of these initiatives since the channel is reaching a whole set of new people,” says Bajaj.

The networks foray into GEC and digital also allows it to be present in lucrative business of film promotions, a rich source of revenue for many entertainment channels across media. According to a report by ESP Properties, a Group M company (Showbiz: The growth and potential of the entertainment industry, December 2017) at present, a film’s promotion budget for the Indian market is higher on television (45-50 per cent) and lower on print (10-15 per cent). Digital is getting increasingly important (10-15 per cent). This is too big a slice of the ad pie for any network to ignore.