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Strong Brand Is Key to Future
What does the future hold for our industry? As technology and consumer behavior continues to force our business to evolve in unprecedented ways, the future becomes increasingly difficult to predict. But one thing is increasingly certain … strong brand has never been more valuable. A clear and strong brand allows us to occupy a unique and distinct piece of the consumers mind. It signifies attributes, personality and expectations. In today’s fracturing and increasingly competitive landscape, a strong brand has never been more essential.
The combination of exponentially exploding content choices and increasing control is threatening to overwhelm the consumer. As this happens, people will turn to the familiar, trusted sources as beacons within the dizzying array of content selections. Imagine your own reaction if you were handed a menu with hundreds of entrees (long form) and hundreds more appetizers (short form). You would quickly scan it and narrow down your options to those you most quickly knew would be appealing. We’re seeing exactly the same behavior evidenced in viewer habits.
Recent studies have consistently shown that as the number of choices increase, the number of regularly viewed networks only increases at a fractional rate. It’s somewhat counterintuitive. More competing options actually results in a concentration of consumer choice. According to Nielsen, homes that receive about 75 channels watch less than 16 of them on average, just over 20% of the networks available. What happens when we double the available options to more than 150 channels? The consumer adds only four additional networks to their average viewing, for a total of about 20, or 13% of the networks available to them. These are indeed sobering statistics.
For a nonfiction network, a trusted brand is even more critical within this context. People’s need to understand their world has never been greater and the stakes never higher. As world events continue to fuel this “need to know,” the sheer variety of information services is proliferating into a diverse range that includes blogs, Web sites and mobile delivery in addition to conventional, and struggling, print sources like newspapers and magazines. Inherently, not all these sources can be equally impartial, or accurate, or deliver the same quality of information. Consumers are well served, and have a right, to be a bit cynical. The result is that the value of a trusted information source increases within the growing din of increasing options. That’s where brand comes in.
In today’s accelerated digital age, some brands generate excitement, awareness and even loyalty very quickly. Recent examples include Google, YouTube and MySpace. But when it comes to news and factual information, trust is also a function of time. For National Geographic, the trust in our brand has literally been built over generations. It is without doubt our most important asset. And thanks to the shifting landscape, the value of that brand is growing just as quickly as the diversity of content options.
