Young Belgians Now ‘Plugged’ in Eusebio Larrea, Executive Producer Plug RTL, on the Successful Rebranding of the Belgian Channel
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29 January 2009 week 05 Young Belgians now ‘plugged’ in Eusebio Larrea, Executive Producer Plug RTL, on the successful rebranding of the Belgian channel Germany United Kingdom Eleven Grimme A new format for The Bill nominations The Netherlands France X Factor is off to a new season M6 Web launches new web portal for women week 05 COVER: Montage with Plug RTL’s logo Young Belgians now plugged’ in 2 week 05 the RTL Group intranet “The RTL brand is present but not dominant” On 8 September 2008, Plug TV became Plug RTL, complete with new name, new positioning and new schedule. An examination of the suc- cessful rebranding of RTL-TVI’s small sister channel. Eusebio Larrea, Executive Producer Plug RTL Belgium - 29 January 2009 Never one to kowtow to superstition, Plug TV was launched on Friday the 13, back in February 2004. At the time, there was nothing else like it in Belgium – a channel for 15 to 34 year olds that aimed to be different, alternative and wasn’t afraid to shock. Love it or loathe it, Plug TV was very much part of the RTL Belgium family of channels, albeit a world away from mainstream family channel RTL-TVI. Its edgy feel found immediate favour with advertisers, but despite its best efforts the channel never managed to exceed a 5 per cent audience share. Time for the marketing people to do their stuff: give the programmes a good once-over, take the temperature of the target audience and check the pulse of public expec- tation. Their diagnosis was simple: aside from an edgy look and feel, what viewers wanted most was flagship programming and high-qua- lity content. Rebranding campaign Producer of Plug RTL and his team. Their pri- Although Plug TV was pulling in as many vie- mary objective? To work on repositioning the wers as the other two Belgian ‘youth’ channels channel in order to break through that all- combined, it wanted to go one step further and important 5 per cent threshold. The target become an iconic channel for young adults. In audience will remain the 15 to 34 age bracket, its four years and more on air, Plug TV built up but the core market will now be 20 to 34 year a lot of knowledge about viewer expectations, olds, heralding a slight shift away from teen- through audience analyses, surveys and focus agers towards young adults. This is accompa- groups. Plug RTL is the result of this accumula- nied by a change of name from Plug TV to Plug ted experience. RTL, a fusion of the high-value-added RTL brand with the Plug brand, and a sign that the Enter Erwin Lapraille, Deputy Head of channel may be less ‘rebellious’ but will have a Television and Head of Programming, ably more relevant, balanced and higher-quality assisted by Eusebio Larrea, Executive content – perfect for its new core market. 3 week 05 the RTL Group intranet To find out more, Backstage met up with Plug RTL’s Executive Producer Eusebio Larrea, who worked on the rebranding. The discussion encompassed programme choi- ces, the communication plan and some very encouraging initial results. A more relevant and balanced schedule – what does that mean in practice? Firstly I’d like to emphasise that Plug RTL is an evolution rather than a revolution. Plug RTL is a vindication of Plug TV, a logical progression. After four years on the air, we have grown up and so have our viewers. We had to sift through all our experiences and give our viewers what they really wanted. Plug RTL is a generational channel for a young-adult audience. Less extreme, more structured, but just as creative and inventive. What matters to us is that Plug RTL continues to be different from anything else in Belgium. We’ve retained the same edgy, spicy, funny feel, while moving away from the ‘out-to-shock’ element, which doesn’t interest our audience. Basically, we’ve shifted to more of a ‘young adult’, less of a ‘teenager’, ethos. Valérie Damidot, presenter of D&CO Obviously this is just for starters. The schedu- Did you also change the programming? les are jam-packed with series like CSI:Miami, Along with the new name and logo comes How I met your mother, Ghost Whisperer, My improved content. We’ve kept the best of Plug name is Earl, Entourage, Charmed, Skins, The L TV and added new shows and more general- Word, comedy such as François l’Embrouille appeal programmes. These are the solid foun- that airs everyday at 20:30 and entertainment dations underpinning Plug RTL and its new, like La Nouvelle Star, Pékin Express and carefully structured line-up featuring regularly Incroyable Talent not forgetting Plug’s own- scheduled content, as you would find on a brand shows that really set the tone of the large mainstream channel. The process began channel. As well as Lifestyle with Agathe over a year ago with marketing and communi- Lecaron, each week our production team turns cation teams carrying out studies, surveys and out music shows Sampler, l’émission musicale, interviews with young people. Erwin Lapraille L’Ultratop Singles & L’Ultratop Albums as well headed up the Plug RTL project and developed as event programmes such as extreme sports the channel’s schedules to complement those show Plug Tribus and Backstage. of Club RTL and RTL-TVI. Design and produc- tion was all done internally by the Plug team. Beyond the flagship programmes, how do you express the core brand values of Plug Our buzzword for the new 2008/2009 season RTL? was ‘lifestyle’. This meant some new departu- Something that’s really important to us is our res for Plug – many of them had already proven very strong visual identity. For us, the attitude, to be a great success on the French channel the spirit, the very essence of Plug RTL comes M6 – like cookery shows such as Top Chef, Un across in our look, our jingles and our general dîner presque parfait and Le Chef contre atta- graphics. Working with Olivier Pairoux, who is que and do-it-yourself formats such as D&CO the channel’s Artistic Director as well as a pre- with the lovely Valérie Damidot and US reality senter, we make a point of emphasising this series Top Design. But the main embodiment of ‘artistic’ element and will continue to do so with the lifestyle concept is the weekly magazine our new structured format. It’s no accident that show of the same name, a 26-minute home- Plug has picked up many awards in its time, grown Plug RTL show presented by a well- most recently with our Don’t stop the music jin- known face from RTL-TVI, Agathe Lecaron. gle (Rihanna) at the Eyes & Ears Awards in November 2008. This season at Plug RTL we have decided to convey messages to our vie- 4 week 05 the RTL Group intranet wers to show that this artistic approach can be viewed on Youmake.tv. Then in September we used to address difficult issues. For example, produced six ads which we called ‘dual’ ads as last December we made a jingle for World Aids they each featured two programmes from the Day. channel’s schedules, an existing one and a new one. Music show Sampler Agathe Lecaron, the new iconic face of Plug RTL And how did you prepare viewers for these changes? We produced a teasing campaign to warn vie- wers about the upcoming change. The aim was CSI:Miami to keep our existing viewers while attracting new ones. Building on an idea by Olivier Pairoux, we developed our own communica- tion campaign, which we launched one month ahead of the rebranding with the slogan “Plug RTL à (re)découvrir” [Plug RTL – (re)discover it]. We broadcast five different ads based around the metaphor of rediscovery. They featured actors opening a familiar object, such as a frid- ge, a guitar flight case, a car boot, a door in a hotel corridor and so on, several times. Each time they opened it, they discovered something new. The underlying idea was: you might think you know Plug TV, but it can still surprise you. The more adult look combined with the myste- ry element gave a different feel. The ads can be My name is Earl 5 week 05 the RTL Group intranet Do you have any initial results to report? young viewers from 3.4 to 6.6 per cent in the It was an immediate suc- space of four months, cess, and there was no proof if it were needed overlap with RTL-TVI that the rebranding stra- programmes, so the tegy was a success. total audience share among young viewers of To cap it all, the adverti- the RTL Belgium family sing market has follo- increased significantly: In the new logo, the R is wed suit and investment 39.9 per cent in the back-to-front, hinting that the in Plug RTL is up. We period from 8 RTL brand is present but not have always worked September 2008 until hand in hand with our IP December 2008 compa- dominant. colleagues, with whom red with 35.7 per cent in we have a good rela- the period from January tionship. Together we 2008 until 7 September 2008. As for Plug RTL offer advertisers creative formats… and they alone, it upped its audience share among appreciate it! Increase in Plug RTL’s audience share among young viewers since the rebranding 6.6 6.4 5.4 3.4 September October November December Source: CIM Audimétrie, 15 to 34, 8 September to 31 December 2008, 18:00 to 23:00 Plug RTL’s Flagship programmes * Incroyable Talent: 15.5 per cent audience share (Genre: talent show) * Pékin Express: 13.6 per cent audience share (Genre: adventure game show) * Cauet retourne la télé: 13.2 per cent audience share (Genre: entertainment show) * D&CO: 11.3 per cent audience share (Genre: DIY reality show) * Un dîner presque parfait: 11.1 per cent audience share (Genre: cookery reality show) * Les Experts Miami [CSI: Miami]: 8.2 per cent audience share (Genre: US series) * La méthode Cauet: 5.6 per cent audience share (Genre: entertainment show) Source: CIM Audimétrie, September 2008 to December 2008 6 week 05 the RTL Group intranet Eleven Grimme nominations for RTL Group RTL Group companies enter the race for the 45th Adolf Grimme Award with eleven nomina- tions, to take place on 3 April in Marl, Germany.