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[X]

Originally Posted by Nadim

What about exclusive coverage of Sports events .. Football ( champions league .. etc ) and F1 or stuff interesting like these .. ? this makes OTV more desirable... and people might move to OTv in different ages and different tastes..

F1 and Champions League are licensed to Jazeera and Art respectively (only they have the right to broadcast those events in Middle East and north Africa), same goes to the English Premier League with Showtime Arabia. There is no TV station in Lebanon that can afford buying those rights (even local TVs in KSA and Egypt are not being able to afford them).

Anyway, back to the topic, commercial companies can not afford public campaigns against them, even if those campaigns are on the internet, if something was launched against Johny Walker for example, even if the local agency didn't react, the global branch will react.

[ballack]

what about Lebanese Basketball championship it is not expensive always LBC take the exclusive coverage without any competition with other channels.
OTV must run for it next year

[Carrera]

Thank you all for your valuable inputs and let me clarify some issues that were exposed in the thread:

1- As i mentionned at the beginning, sales representatives of OTV are facing difficulties and/or boycotting for 2 reasons:
- for political reasons and this is proved by the refusal of Saatchi & Saatchi (taken here as an example) to even welcome OTV sales rep in their premises so they can present the grid, the new programs, the opportunities on otv etc etc etc.
- for the monopole reason that is created by choueiry group

2- Of course the competency of the medium and its performance vis a vis the competition plays a big major role. For example, an advertiser can not ommit LBC but on the other hand he can not limit himself to LBC, because in order to reach your maximum number of viewrship and achieve a certain number of GRPs, you should include more than one medium

3- The statistics released by stat-ipsos are "public" in a way that anyone who is a bit involved in the advertising industry can have a hand on the numbers

4- I read somewhere on the thread that its more beneficial for an advertiser to advertise at a lower cost/spot. Well its not true: the result of any advertising campaign is measured by GRPs that is calculated using the cost of spot, the reach and the average minute rating. So for example, 1 spot at 500$ on OTV can bring more GRPs (ya3ne more results) than 10 spots on NBN for 50$ each

5- Let me clarify more the issue of Stat-Ipsos. Stat ipsos is a statistics company that uses telemeters to measure the viewrship on TV stations. These numbers are wrong, but they give a certain indication on the ranking of a station. LBC is #1 and noone has anydoubt about this. However, when it come to #2, there is a stong competition between OTV & NTV and that's where NTV is having more leverage than OTV since its not boycotted by some advertisers. The funny thing is that although the numbers of stat ipsos are wrong, and although all the advertisers admit that they are wrong, these advertisers always abide by them for the simple reason that the statistics market (in terms of telemeters) is monopolized. I read some of you proposed that OTV creates a statistics company to compete with Stat-ipsos. Well unfortunately it costs millions of dollars and its practicaly not feasible.

[walidos]

OK, here are my 2 cents.
I admire the effort, but dare say it might be a bit too early to make a push.
On the one hand, there is no doubt OTV is doing good in Lebanon (ref. stat-ipsos results) however being quite a young television, it is too early for advertisers to conclude for sure that Otv is a consistent media (consistent results that is)... On the other hand, the biggest spenders on advertising are multinationals who mostly operate in the region vs. in Lebanon alone, they look for satellite spillover (for example MBC 2 which is pan arab...) rather than local tv stations...

My recommendation would be this:

a) FOLLOW UP and don't quit!
As results keep coming in showing that Otv is consistently top ranked with high penetration and yielding high GRPs, smart investors (wether politically affiliated or not) will start turning to it to advertise their product.

b) DON'T mention politics and DEFINITELY DONT mention religion
I happen to work in this field, and have put some guys from Otv in touch with reps from the company I work for. One of the things they tried to sell was that Otv had the highest penetration amongst Christians :S frankly i don't think anyone cares wether a christian is buying his product or a non-christian, as long as someone buys it...

c) DONT be politically sensitive
Not everything is about politics, and really the stronger Otv becomes on the media front, the more advertisers will need it, rather than it needing them... if they dont want our business today, its OK, they will need it tomorrow... Unlike our slogan 'al watan layssa charika bal charaka", we need to understand that Otv CHARIKA, and we need to mainatin good relations with everyone, regardless if we are working together today or not, and regardless of the political affiliation.

[OrangeMusk]

Thnks for the clarifications Carrera.

Nevertheless, i couldn't help but feel that we are back to square one, and that there is nothing that could be done to alter the situation.

[Carrera]

Thank you walidos, however some retouching to your post:

Originally Posted by walidos

OK, here are my 2 cents.
I admire the effort, but dare say it might be a bit too early to make a push.
On the one hand, there is no doubt OTV is doing good in Lebanon (ref. stat-ipsos results) however being quite a young television, it is too early for advertisers to conclude for sure that Otv is a consistent media (consistent results that is)... On the other hand, the biggest spenders on advertising are multinationals who mostly operate in the region vs. in Lebanon alone, they look for satellite spillover (for example MBC 2 which is pan arab...) rather than local tv stations..

Every mutinational has budget to spen on pan arab region and another to spend on local stations

My recommendation would be this:

a) FOLLOW UP and don't quit!
As results keep coming in showing that Otv is consistently top ranked with high penetration and yielding high GRPs, smart investors (wether politically affiliated or not) will start turning to it to advertise their product.

b) DON'T mention politics and DEFINITELY DONT mention religion
I happen to work in this field, and have put some guys from Otv in touch with reps from the company I work for. One of the things they tried to sell was that Otv had the highest penetration amongst Christians :S frankly i don't think anyone cares wether a christian is buying his product or a non-christian, as long as someone buys it...

c) DONT be politically sensitive
Not everything is about politics, and really the stronger Otv becomes on the media front, the more advertisers will need it, rather than it needing them... if they dont want our business today, its OK, they will need it tomorrow... Unlike our slogan 'al watan layssa charika bal charaka", we need to understand that Otv CHARIKA, and we need to mainatin good relations with everyone, regardless if we are working together today or not, and regardless of the political affiliation.

Follow up is OTVs sales rep most used weapon.

As for the sales rep who mentioned something aout christians regions or whatever, let me pinpoint the following: I am pretty sure that the sales rep didnt mention christians as such, rather than showing the remarkable penetraion OTV made in the sample target of "matn, keserwan, jbeil". similar penetration was noticed when the sample selected was "female". As you surely know you can specify a target for Arianna and it can get you results according to target, whether the target is gender, region or anything. The good performance OTV is showin in the region i mentionned is interpreted by the strong "christian" penetration your company rep reported to you.

[walidos]

Fair points.
On the multinationals' front, we are on satellite so we need to appeal to arabs as much as to lebanese living abroad... programs a la star academy, an international or Arab news section (at the right timing) as well as games hosting people from all countries in the region are good tools... our weak point is that we cannot have 2 separate broadcasts a la LBC (local and international) where the viewership targeting is more precise.

On the sales pitch, I'm all for your point, hopefully it is well driven with the sales reps in Otv :)

[†.)]

Originally Posted by X

You can't force people to advertise on OTV, but what you can do is publicly declare the names of those products who are boycotting OTV,

For example, if there is a cheese brand called "Red Cheese" and they are boycotting OTV for political reasons, people should know about it so they boycott the product in return. Once the owners of "Red Cheese" realize that their product is being boycotted because they boycotted OTV for political reasons, they will come and advertise on OTV.

What we need is the names of those products who are boycotting OTV.

add :
===


BUY FROM THE PERSONS THAT ARE ALREADY DOING ADVS ON OTV!!!


boycot the other brands and buy things from OTV advs to encourage them advertising again and again and make others see how succesfull they are

[kryptos]

Originally Posted by †.)

add :
===


BUY FROM THE PERSONS THAT ARE ALREADY DOING ADVS ON OTV!!!


boycot the other brands and buy things from OTV advs to encourage them advertising again and again and make others see how succesfull they are

Nice idea †.)
We can have 2 lists: one to boycote and one to buy things from (akid buy ghrad eza 3eyzine .... dont buy pampers eza ma 3andkoun wled :) )

[The Jade]

Originally Posted by Carrera

Exactly my point, we should brainstorm a plan and put pressure on the ones who are boycotting OTV

As someone already said,
if OTV's ratings are s good, why doesn't the OTV apply pressure on the brand directly, which in turn will apply pressure on the advertisers like Saatchi and Choueiry Group ?

Not to forget that the other Ad agencies in Lebanon could still work with OTV like Impact-BBDO, Mindshare, Leo Burnett etc.....

PS: can we have the Ipsos Stats published here ?
thx