The TV Brand Builders

It wasn’t clear to me from the title whether this was going to be a book about how great TV is for building brands (I’ve got that T shirt) or how TV itself builds its credentials.  And I have to admit I wasn’t sympathetic. TV has for so long been the big gorilla of marketing, how much can you say about how to market what we spend more of our leisure time consuming than anything else? Including the internet.  But of course TV has been through massive changes in the last 20 years through the multiplication of delivery systems to the explosion of channels to the rise and rise of digital subscription internet providers who are offering series you can’t get anywhere else.

This is a comprehensive introduction to the building blocks of the contemporary TV scene. There are plenty of places where you can get statistics on multiple screen viewing and how digital TV interfaces with the internet. This book doesn’t get bogged down in analytics but focuses on the different ways that marketing is deployed to promote platforms like Sky, individual channels like Dave. The promotion of genres: Children’s programmes, news, documentaries, and reality TV.

The authors run Red Bee, the creative agency which specializes in design and marketing for media companies. They are expert insiders with plenty of passion for their subject matter and they have carried out plenty of interviews with key players in television, both in the UK and in North America.  It’s not surprising that they are reporting first-hand from successful projects Red Bee has won - and pitchlists they have been on.  Sometimes it can feel as if the narrative is one step away from a series of credential slides. But the truth is that the further I got into the book the more I enjoyed it - it really covers a lot of ground. And I liked the way that the shiny but complex area of transmedia storytelling comes three quarters of the way through the book (Hello Sherlock?) and we hadn’t even got to the social media chapter yet. When email and Linked In are awash with breathless case studies of the wonders of social media advocacy it was frankly a relief to see social media put in its place as one tool among many. 

So should you read it if you don’t work in or around television? Absolutely. What makes this book particularly useful is that the lessons from the marketing of television and all its works are immensely relevant for the wider area of branded content - where the content itself blurs with the marketing. How to ensure that viewers develop an understanding of the channel s carrying the content as well as their favourite programme or series. If you work in television then it will almost certainly expand your understanding of what marketing brings to the party. The chapter on how to build a TV channel with attitude is particularly good. You can’t just say it because the content needs to bear it out. And if you let your programmes do the talking, edgy content splinters leaving no cohesive voice. That’s a central issue for all branded content not just television.

Engrossing, passionate and smart. All in all an excellent cooks tour.  Recommended.