The Hindu Business Line : Lowe sees good response for StarOne campaign

According to Mr Ajay Vidyasagar, Senior Vice-President - Marketing & Communications, Star India: "The Lowe approach stood out very distinctly and we are confident that their thinking will enable the channel to be clearly differentiated. Judging by the response this campaign has been generating, it seems to have begun doing just that - building the right kind of personality for a different breed of mainstream entertainment channel."

Explaining the campaign strategy, Mr Sabyasachi Mishra, Senior Vice-President, Lowe, says, "StarOne is possibly the first serious branding effort in the mainstream channel category. Most off-air brand communication for channels tend to be purely informational - after all that's what drives the traffic. Our take was that alongside show communications, there was also a bigger opportunity in pitching the channel as a brand that stood for something more than its content. So we evolved a communication architecture that builds both brand and traffic. The current `Switchheads' campaign is the first in a series of such efforts."

Elaborating on the insight, Mr Mishra says that the consumer research indicated a huge unmet need among viewers today. These are folks who have `grown-out' of the usual fare that's available on TV. They want their Hindi entertainment - but packaged and presented differently. According to him, the agency's work for StarOne is anchored on this big truth. "However, while doing this it's easy to get carried away and pitch this brand as a niche channel. So the big challenge for us was to position this channel as a brand for the discerning, and at the same time, not lose its mass relevance. I think this mass-class paradox has been resolved smartly through our creative approach."