Five year-old NDTV Good Times has changed its positioning from being ‘India’s leading lifestyle channel’ to ‘India’s youngest lifestyle channel’. With the new positioning come changes in branding and programming, to reach out to the younger audience.
The channel donned the new look, with redesigned logo and tagline, on November 18. The creative changes were done in-house.
Smeeta Chakrabarti, CEO, NDTV Lifestyle, reasoned, “With a keen eye on emerging and evolving consumer tastes and preferences, the channel will now be focusing on providing younger, cooler, edgier and more relevant content to a young and dynamic audience.” She added, “We are at an inflection point with digitisation. We opened the lifestyle category in this country when we launched. Now, it is the time to redefine the core of the genre.”
Reasoning that the young audience communicates more with symbols, the channel will use more icons in its content as well. Case in point being the channel using hashtag (#) in its new tagline: ‘#LiveYoung’.
“We wish to provide our content on all platforms that are accessed by the largest consumer group in our country – the youth. Hashtag permeates all communication platforms. It helps us to define the channel in common parlance across all platforms. And it also makes us the first channel on India television to deeply integrate and recognise social media as part of the DNA of the brand and the audiences it caters to,” Chakrabarti explained.
The channel has redefined its programming slots as well, with style at 7 pm, travel at 8 pm, food at 9 pm and reality shows at 10 pm. It will also be bringing in more shows, such as America’s food reality show ‘Chopped’. ‘Highway on my Plate’ will also be relaunched as ‘Food Court’. “We will add more layers and shows as we go along,” the spokesperson added.
Advertisers, according to Chakrabarti, are responding positively to the change. “Luxury and super-luxury brands are looking at positioning themselves as young and not luxury or super luxury. Just like us,” she remarked.
Good Times will communicate the change through digital and social media, print, radio and other NDTV channels.
