AND THE NEXT REALITY SHOW IS..
Post By ConnectMarketing in Content ManagementBig Brother, Apprentice, Idols, Nigeria, Intern, Dragon’s Den, The Entrepreneur, etc.We receive proposals every week for another one and another one. Many of them are clearly ‘me-too’ and these days ‘original’ is not really original. However, there are still some pearls out there.The television stations are winning because the shows are bringing back the viewers and the media rates are going up. What about the brands that are associated with the shows? The more short term the objectives are, the less effective. Also, when a brand is associated with a reality show whose DNA and core essence is not in line with the brand’s DNA, you can hazard a guess. Which reality show can you name as the best you have seen in recent times and how do you think the sponsoring brand has fared on their investment?
Comments
Comment by T on June 20th, 2008 a 8:09 pm
Reality. Reality . Reality . I remember some of them but i am struggling to remember the brands that sponsored them. Maybe because the shows were very strong or because the brands associated were not really big. But i remember the Apprentice and Bank PHB
Comment by Remi Ogunpitan on June 20th, 2008 a 9:01 pm
Reality shows would continue to attract viewership, however unless brands inv olve thenselves in developing the DNA of a reality show to ensure full value for their brands, such programmes are just purely good entertainment if produced well that is. My opinion is that as a producer my job is to find the next big idea or genre that works for brands. Reality shows will be here for a while, but the novelty value is dying unless we start to approach programme making from a more pragmatic perspective.
Comment by Ayo Shonaiya, London UK on June 21st, 2008 a 9:16 pm
As I see it, the brands that bankroll, or are associated with, the cloned reality shows in Nigeria are chucking vast funds into wishing wells, preferring to go that route because they believe (and hope) the ‘machinery', support and affiliation hype that comes with the foreign originals is money well spent (no pun intended). That is why they do not invest in original ideas and concepts in the highly popular and successful genre. It’s such a shame because creative producers of original concepts like myself don’t get a look in. In my experience proposing to brands in Nigeria, I find they tend to confuse short lived mega hype with effective brand activity. Over the past year I have pitched a show nicknamed “Nigeria’s first not-so-reality show” to brands, and at every meeting I felt they were waiting for me to say, “it’s kind of like Big Brother meets Celebrity Takes 2”. And then again, for the brands that are ready to take a risk with an original idea, they often miss-kick over
Comment by Ayo Shonaiya, London UK on June 21st, 2008 a 9:19 pm
...the bar. I co-directed a reality show in Calabar for 13 weeks in 2006 called Creative Academii (yep, never heard of it right?). First Bank put up the $120,000 prize money and I felt all they wanted for their investment was to claim they ‘out-paid’ Big Brother Nigeria. The TV stations may be winning as you put it, but it’s the beginning of the curse like the Mexican soaps, disregarding the DNA and core essence of what a Nigerian TV station should be by filling up their primetime grid with Telenovela. In my opinion, we can’t yet measure the success of reality shows in Nigeria, or how the sponsoring brands have benefited because quite frankly the brands themselves are just doing “me too”. Just read in the papers that a new show is coming up called Ladybird, a house full of Nigerian women competing to win one prize, and the producers say there will be no nudity and profane language?! I can’t wait. I just hope their own “me too” doesn’t turn into “why me?”!
Comment by kenny Omodara on June 25th, 2008 a 7:22 pm
The beeline to sponsor reality shows is very much a reflection of how misinformed brand managers and stakeholders reckon they can swoop on the consumer.The sooner they realise there are no shortcuts to brand loyalty rather it requires investment the better for them.However i dare say that by the time a couple of them get wiser a ton of shareholders funds would have gone down the drain.
Comment by Faith Adepoju on January 9th, 2009 a 4:20 pm
As an emerging Writer and TV producer from New York to JHB to Nigeria- the big gap is the dearth of edutainment in local TV programming, and as branded entertainment is the way forward for Generation X- the output channel should not only be limited to TV as we have experienced - Nigeria has electricity problems which cuts into viewership by far- so while the TV stations are excited no one is really measuring how many of the so called viewers actually saw the show when it flighted in it's original time slot :) Until Brands can get their heads into not only TV but emerging media channels such as mobile tv... ROI is not going to be high or measurable- speculation is all we're selling until we have lifestyle orientated entertainment that the audience can choose to engage with on their own terms
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