Broadcast and CRM

It was an interesting session yesterday at the iMMovator Crossmedia Café in broadcast city Hilversum (the Netherlands). The theme of the meeting was Broadcast and Web 2.0, which can be roughly translated to how broadcast companies can use CRM. Jochem de Gruyter (see photograph) of SBS Broadcast company introduced the subject looking from the Direct Marketing side to a broadcast company. His two lines of thought were: Why should a media company use CRM; if it will use CRM, what are the strategy and tactics.

He started out with the observation that consumer look less at TV. Yet for a commercial broadcast company it is important to get the advertisement slots filled. A commercial broadcast station will attempt to fill 20 percent or 12 minutes in hour with commercials. In practice the advertisement slots will be filled. The profit for a station will not come out of advertisement slots, but from crossmedia activities, certainly if the station wants to compete with YouTube and Joost. So the commercial broadcast companies will have to move from mass to individual client.

This move implies a lot for an organisation which has always been oriented on mass markets. At once they have to identify the individual client, keep them happy and expand the client value. This is something else than just broadcasting a programme and have a receptionist picking up the complaints.

The strategy is twofold:
- better exploitation of existing and new content, making the company less dependent on content from third parties as well;
- have a better knowledge of the viewer/user/client; get a database with profiles.

In practice this means setting up a database for the profiles of the individual viewer/user/client and opening up other communication channels than the existing programs, phone-in and sms actions. These days there are many more communications channels than before. Yet many of them have a high irritation degree. Funny enough an unsolicited e-mail has an equal irritation degree to TV ads. Yet e-mail is a serious medium as a starting point for communication with the individual viewer/user/client, when matters of interest are communicated.

Jochem demonstrated this with examples. He showed how SBS was producing more content of its own. The material not used for television could be used on internet or for mobile. But he also showed how he informs the individuals about related television programs, products and actions. In this way a program has a longer life than the one time plus a repeat it used to have. With the database it is also possible to do advertisement campaigns through other channels. In that way a broadcast can be extended across other media as well as the 12 minutes for commercials.

Blog Posting Number: 910

Tags: CRM, broadcast