Amidst hugely popular 'Saas-Bahu' soaps if there is one genre standing tall, it is Events- be it film awards, beauty/personality contests or celebrity shows. The lure of a your favorite stars performing live and winning accolades and awards keeps the audience glued to the screen till the wee hours of the morning.
Recent shows have demonstrated that despite increasing number of these awards, audiences have lapped them up. Our analysis focuses on key events over last few months- Femina Miss India, Zee Cine Awards, Star Screen Awards, Shah Rukh Khan Live, Lata Live, and Eternal Asha.
Zee TV is probably the most significant example of the popularity of these shows. Zee's top rated shows have been generating TVRs of around 4-5% in the last few months but 'Zee Cine Awards', telecast on 17th January, managed a high TVR of 6.7%. Even the rerun of the show on 19th January got a TVR of 3.9%, more than a lot of the top programmes!
(TAM data for M/F, 15-44 Yrs, Sec ABC, C&S Homes)
'Star Screen Awards' on 20th January generated TVR of 9.1%. Notably, curtain raiser shows titled 'Best of Screen awards', had a healthy TVR 4.35%- more than even the much hyped Femina Miss India telecast on 19th January (2.4%). Reruns of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle shows on Sony seem to suggest that repeats of such shows have more viewership than an average serial.
While Sony has been the traditional leader with epoch events like 'Lata Live' and 'Hrithik Show', its Star Plus working hard with mega Star Events like 'Star Screen Awards' 'Indian Television Academy awards' this January. After dominating the air waves during the weekdays, this strategy of weekend telecast seems to be working well for Star.
FMCGs dominate
Given the high popularity of these shows amongst women one would expect FMCGs to be the largest advertisers on these shows. A look at the usage trends of these shows reveals a definite tilt in the favour of FMCGs, especially the Female products. These product categories occupy the top 5 slots (see table below) in terms of advertising duration though Motorcycles seem to be an exception.
(TAM data)
What is interesting to note is that levers have a relatively lower presence. While Levers advertises over 2 dozen brands aggressively, only Fair & Lovely was part of top advertised brands. Hero Honda found the recent events a suitable platform to mount the 'Dhadkan' campaign featuring Hrithik and Saurav. It used up close to 600 seconds and these seconds don't come cheap.
(TAM data)
Is there is preference for channels when it comes to advertising on Events / Live shows? Well the data for Sony and Zee surely doesn't suggest any different trend. But a few advertisers have shown a preference for Star. Pens and Paints are two categories, which have utilized Star heavily for this genre but the presence on the other two channels is insignificant. Even Insurance products, which have utilized television scantily ever since they started, have used the events and live shows on Star to gain visibility. Even Restaurants especially Pizza Hut showed a preference for Star over other channels.
