How programme context can help determine where and how a brand appears within an entertainment property
Media planning around a large entertainment property usually begins with questions of audience, duration and available inventory. There is another consideration that becomes important once a brand enters the programme environment: context. The moment in which a brand appears, the nature of the programme around it and the action available to the viewer can influence the role of that presence as much as the format itself.
Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited’s association with Kaun Banega Crorepati Season 18 provides a useful case through which to examine this idea. The association includes conventional media presence alongside contextual Aston bands and viewer participation through KBC Play Along. These formats place the brand in different situations around the same programme and allow context to perform a specific role in each.
A contextual Aston illustrates the principle in its simplest form. Its duration is brief, but its placement is linked with a relevant programme moment. This shifts the planning consideration from the length of an advertising asset to the circumstances in which it appears. The value of the placement therefore comes partly from the relationship between the moment and the brand presence.
That distinction can be important in entertainment content. Viewers follow a programme for its characters, questions, performances, outcomes and individual moments. Advertising around that content operates within a different setting from communication encountered independently of it. When a brand asset is placed in relation to a programme moment, the surrounding content becomes part of the circumstances in which the brand is seen.
Participation introduces another form of context. KBC is organised around questions, choices and answers. Play Along extends that familiar activity to participating viewers, providing an existing programme behaviour within which a brand related question can appear. In BPCL’s case, the supplied plan includes questions around road safety and sustainability.
The relationship between the subject and the format is useful here. A road safety or sustainability question remains a question within a quiz programme. The programme does not have to change its basic character to accommodate the activity, while the subject receives a place within an established question and answer setting.
This suggests a broader consideration for brand partnerships with entertainment properties. The selection of an asset can begin with the role that the surrounding content is expected to play. Some assets depend primarily on exposure. Others derive additional meaning from a particular programme moment. Participative formats depend on an action that viewers already understand and choose to undertake.
Context, in this sense, is more than the programme in which an advertisement happens to appear. It can become one of the considerations used to decide the form that brand presence should take.
This becomes especially relevant when an entertainment property provides several possible forms of association. The planning decision then extends beyond selecting available inventory. It includes deciding which parts of the programme provide an appropriate setting for the subject being communicated and which viewer actions fit naturally within that setting.
For BPCL, KBC provides 2 clear contextual possibilities within the association. Relevant programme moments provide the setting for contextual branding, while the question and answer character of the programme provides the setting for participation. Both arise from characteristics already present within KBC.
The approach also offers a useful discipline. An entertainment association has limited space in which to communicate. Trying to place every corporate message inside that space can dilute the relationship with the programme. Selecting subjects and formats that have a clear connection with the available context gives individual assets a more defined purpose.
This is particularly pertinent during Bharat Petroleum’s 50th year, when the Corporation has a wide range of institutional subjects that could potentially form part of its communication. Within KBC, the association can remain focused on the forms of presence that suit the programme itself, while other aspects of corporate communication can continue through channels suited to those subjects.
The wider advertising consideration is therefore less about how much information can be placed inside an entertainment partnership and more about the relationship between content, moment and brand activity. A programme provides an audience, but it also provides situations, behaviours and formats. Those characteristics can influence what kind of brand presence belongs within it.
BPCL’s KBC Season 18 association provides one example of this principle through contextual presence and participation. The larger idea is applicable to the way entertainment partnerships can be considered: once a brand has secured presence within a property, the next planning question is where that presence makes the most contextual sense.
