Unbundling the Brand

In the CPG market the brands are unbundled from the corporation. You buy Pantene brand shampoo not P&G. There is some brand extension like using the Pantene brand for all hair care products. But most customers do not know or care about who makes Pantene. This level of unbundling was part of the strategy and not something forced on P&G or Lipton by the environment.

In the case of media companies NBC, ABC and HBO they are the brands and the product categories or the individual products to do not have a brand. The companies actively pursued bundling as the strategy like the Must See TV campaigns. The main brand is meant to evoke the same positive feelings across all the shows, from sitcoms to dramas. A successful show is used to position the main brand and leveraged to bundle with it other weaker and newer offerings. The shows are also very loosely tied to the media company because of the re-run market.

In the TiVo and Hulu world, an unbundling of the shows from the parent media company is unfolding and the companies can do nothing about it. Jason Fry of WSJ sees this as diminishing the role of a network to a bit pipe, like a cable company:

I don't know what network hosts most of the programs saved on my TiVo. (A rare exception is "John Adams, but that says more about what a strong brand HBO has become.) I don't have the faintest idea what time "John Adams" or most any other show airs. Why should I? Unless you're talking about a baseball game, all I need to know about a show is that it's on my TiVo screen when I want to watch it. As a result, I neither know nor care any more about the supposed qualities of NBC or the WB or any other network than I do about the supposed qualities of whatever company makes the coaxial cable Time Warner uses to bring a TV signal to my house. Content itself is becoming the brand -- and networks used to hitting me with commercials while I sat captive on the couch have to work much, much harder to get my attention.

The media companies can either let this happen and stay on the sideline or be a driver in developing the individual brands. This requires them to recognize the changes in business models from traditional Ads, DVD sales and re-runs. In addition to branding the content they need to unbundle them so each brand competes on its own.

This is not totally new to the networks. They already have branded morning shows like Good Morning America and news programs like 20/20. But the problem with entertainment shows is who owns the content and who should spend for brand development. The bigger question in an unbundled media world in which the content becomes the brand is, what value does a media company add?