Are Your Diluting Your Brand?
The last time I checked MTV has about a billion reality shows nowadays. They started strong with The Real World, but since then have created a reality show for just about anything you can imagine.
MTV is either the smartest television company or the corniest. Help me out here, guys. We can all attest to watching — and enjoying — The Real World at some point in our lives. Right?
We enjoy watching a bunch of people “picked to live together” in a luxurious home where they get drunk, have sex, and party hard. It’s amusing, no doubt.
But what’s with this flurry of realities shows they now offer? I’ll name a few that I can think of:
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Laguna Beach:
This show makes me sick. It’s a show about a few rich kids in California who fight over boys, cry about rumors, and go to the beach. I actually sat through a few episodes of this show one day and I got up feeling mentally challenged. It was that bad.
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My Super Sweet Sixteen:
A show about rich kids who want to throw a “super sweet sixteen.” It’s based around young girls or boys (yeah, I guess they have sweet sixteen’s as well) begging their parents for an expensive party and getting a car at the end.
- Hmm… what’s another. Oh,
Pimp My Ride:
A show that revolves around rap star Xzibit going around to homes in California and granting kids who drive broken down cars with a new “pimped out” ride.
fill in the blank
At first site I would think that MTV is diluting their brand with this onslaught of corny reality shows. But after some thought, they may be smarter than I think.
Why? Because people actually watch these shows! MTV is selling the dream to the masses.
The girls who want to be rich and spend their days doing their nails and gossiping about boys all day are flocking to Laguna Beach. The guys who are into driving flashy cars are flocking to Pimp My Ride. And the young girls who are dreaming about having that super sweet sixteen bash are salivating over the My Super Sweet Sixteen show.
People are really eating these shows up. What’s corny to me is brilliant to others. So what can we learn from MTV as young entrepreneurs?
Well, MTV built their reality show franchise with a bang! They started with The Real World which shaped their entire reality show industry. From that one show, they were able to build an army of reality shows with similar success.
If you plan on building a series of products or services, then you better start of with something brilliant! Something great. Something revolutionary. Your first service has to be good enough to pave the path for continued businesses.
The strategy should be to build something so well-executed and so stellar, that everything you build after will share in some of the success with the original service. Sure, it may not be as great as the first service — or it may be better — but the chances of it surviving are exponentially greater if you succeed with your flagship service.
The last thing that you want to do is create a series of “so-so” services when you haven’t already established yourself with a single brilliant service. You can’t add more apartments to a building with a weak foundation, it’ll crumble.
Build a strong foundation and focus all your energy on strengthening your flagship service. Your first service is going to give you the necessary credibility to build future services. It all starts from the one excellent service. If you simply throw multiple services at people without establishing yourself with something noteworthy, then all you’re doing is overextending yourself and destroying your brand.
Once your brand is destroyed, don’t expect to recover. Take the time to build up your main service. Build a solid foundation. Then, and only then, move onto building another service and so on and so on…
What do you think, has MTV overextend their brand? What are your thoughts on creating multiple services for your company — do you need a solid foundation first?
3 Comments
Carolina
January 15th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I love my MP hour, this is a great article, Thanks Dave!
Was I suppose to “fill in the blank?” I clicked on it, but nothing happened…
About MTV overextending their brand…hmm..i don’t think so, they are just ridding the reality-tv-show-mania-wave they helped create, and i think, even pioneer. Thinking back to my days in Media world, everyone in the industry loves MTV, they’ve created a killer brand that associates them with the –hip, cool, young trendsetters– who can’t seem to get enough of their media content. Though I rarely have the time for MTV nowdays, i’ve learned from my friend that they are developing yet another channel for latino youth, this time around, english speaking–thank goodness, it took them a while to realize that latino youth actually do speak english and they do indeed tune into english tv. Embarressing?…that a powerhouse like MTV can’t still figure out one of its niche audiences in the U.S.–YES.
I’d say that before building multiple services, you have to get to know your audience, whether it’s niche, or mainstream, you gotta know it like the back of your hand. Market research is essential yes, but focus groups go further–they give instant, precise feedback from folks testing your product/service. This then leads to not only building a solid product/service that the consumer wants, but also a memorable brand that they perceive as the number one player in the market for whatever product or service your company delivers.
MTV had to create different channels targetting Latino youth, they’ve spent lots of money, and still haven’t captured that audience–they continue to struggle with this service, but are persevering and continue to pump more dollars into it, who knows.. maybe this time around MTV 3 will actually get stellar ratings from Nielson…
Overall, know your audience and service their actually needs, not what you think they need, and you won’t be making the same mistakes as MTV.
Cory Perry
January 15th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
It is really amazing how just one product or service can launch the path for so many others, even when those others are not as good as the original.
This has happened time and time again and MTV is not exception to this rule.
David Askaripour
January 15th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Hey Carolina, what you say is dead on: the most important thing to do is to learn your audience. However, a small part of me still feels that MTV is diluting their brand to an extent — some of their shows are nothing close to quality.
Hey Cory, yeah, one of the best examples is Google. It all began from the search! Now look at ‘em
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