Market characteristics and brand strategy

Good Morning guys,

Let’s continue our story and focus now on the market characteristics and the impact of these characteristics on our 2 brand strategies.

The French TV market is a highly competitive market because it is easy to switch and to compare the offer. The key factors of success for our 2 brands (TF1 a M6) is the innovation. They both have to follow all new trend and new expectations from their customers. In order to increase market share, channels always refresh their programs at the beginning of the year (A year in television start in September) and each summer we can assist to a real Mercato (like in football), channels are trying to attract/buy the best anchorman.

We can identify two main strategies:

1) Rely on old deep rooted programs/anchorman in order to keep viewers (customers)

2) Innovate by broadcasting new concept of TV show

The first strategy suits more with the one of TF1 even if they need to innovate because they rely on a lot of famous anchorman (Chasal, Foucault, De Chavanne,…)  and well known programs like the News, Le juste Prix, Une famille en Or,…

The second one suits more with the strategy of M6, they was the first in France to broadcast reality TV in 2001 (Loft Story) or cooking contests.

When we talk about evolution, we also talk about new technologies. TV channel have to follow all innovations in order to be present everywhere. In 2005 when the TNT has been launched in France, each channel has to define its strategy and both M6 and TF1 has decided to create new channels W9 for M6 and TMC and NT1 for TF1.

Each channel has also to select precisely each programs in order to reach its target at any moment of the day. Indeed, one specificity of TV market is that the target depend of the hour, in the morning it can be first children before going to school, then mother at home with talk show or product demonstration/sales, then old people with game, then at midday everybody who want to know the news, etc

Sometimes TV channel compete also to buy programs, for example Sports. Each 4 years all TV channel try to buy the right to broadcast the FIFA World Cup (soccer), the one who make the best offer win the rights. TF1 is the historic pubic TV channel for football broadcasting in France but M6 is trying to win market share and reach to diffuse some games during the last World Cup.

Last but not least we should not forget internet, more and more people use this media to watch TV programs. Each channel has to define its strategy on this media, both TF1 and M6 have strong presence online and allow people to watch old programs on their website (Replay) or play online games, but only TF1 allows watching TV in live.