Rogers to rebrand with digital strategy in March, focus on social media engagement

TORONTO—Rogers Communications Inc. is looking to track, target and engage customers across a variety of media platforms as a part of a corporate digital rebranding strategy to be launched in March, Jason Tafler, Rogers’ chief digital officer said at the NextMedia Conference Monday. “One of the biggest opportunities and where we’re focused is really looking at consumer behaviour across all devices and understanding that it is the same consumer ... no matter what device they’re on,” Tafler said during a panel discussion about broadcasters’ plans for an increasingly online media world. Tafler said there will be cross-platform smartphone and tablet applications for Rogers’ Citytv viewers to access extra content while watching the countdown on New Year’s Eve, including options for chat, online games, and additional fireworks demonstrations. He said consumers will be encouraged to use social media while watching TV, using their mobile devices or laptops to research a television series or a program. “You’ll be amazed at how many people will be watching the Bachellorette on Citytv and chatting or reading about past episodes or watching past clips on their iPad,” he said. Social media engagement gives broadcasters additional branding, advertising and commercial opportunities by allowing them to reach targeted consumers more easily, he said in a follow-up interview with The Wire Report. “As we have a much deeper understanding of our audiences, we can leverage that to create a much more relevant content experience plus leverage it for marketers,” he said. Tafler said the company will rebrand its its corporate image with a new digital strategy to be launched March 1, 2012. The company’s strategy, he said, will focus on tracking people across devices in a way that will allow Rogers and its advertisers to target individuals more effectively while not giving consumers a sense that their privacy has been invaded. Recent test projects involve exclusive “augmented reality” content for Rogers subscribers, he said. One project allowed Maclean’s magazine readers to view a 3D image of Sydney Crosby’s contused brain by holding their iPad over a recent edition of Sportsnet Magazine. The company is also looking at applying QR Scan codes into its print products to offer consumers an easy link to websites where they can purchase advertised items, he said. Eventually, Rogers will provide consumers promotional offers across a variety of devices and to allow them to pay for them with their mobile devices and tack the cost onto their monthly phone, Internet, or cable bill. This was a key part of the company’s recent application under the federal Bank Act. “That actually isn’t about branches on the street where you can go in and make a deposit. It’s about wireless wallets and credit cards and tying online to offline,” he said. Other members of the broadcasting panel highlighted the importance of finding ways to capitalize on digital trends and the rise of over-the-top television services without “cannibalizing” the traditional broadcasting businesses. Experts spoke about the difficulty of figuring out when new media personnel should be separated or integrated from colleagues on the traditional broadcasting side of the company. “From a structural point of view, we’ve largely tried everything,” Scott Dyer, the executive vice-president and chief technology officer at Corus Entertainment Inc., said. Initial plans to separate new media and traditional media departments at Corus led to a “silo effect” that stifled the growth of the company’s new media functions. “Then we’ve tried to completely integrate it with our traditional businesses,” he said. “But that tends to change the focus from what new media’s capable of into simply becoming an adjunct to your broadcast.” Corus has since come to the conclusion that some aspects of its new media departments must be integrated with their traditional media efforts while others are best-served as stand-alone units, he said. Paul Burns, vice-president of digital media at Shaw Media (a Shaw Communications Inc. subsidiary), said that digital continues to represent a small but growing part of Canadian broadcasters’ revenues. New media revenues are still “relatively insignificant when you look at the big picture,” he said, but “it’s the fastest growing media segment that we have, the fastest growing revenue segment for the business.” Burns agreed that it is important for broadcasters to build online and mobile experiences that interact with programs aired on traditional TV. Jon Taylor, senior director of content at BCE Inc. division CTV Digital Media, added that broadcasters may also be looking to the web for the next hit show to add to their lineups. He pointed to “back-door pilots”—where producers create a web-based pilot to pitch to broadcasters—and to web-only series as potential sources of broadcast material. “It’s no longer a philosophy of protecting television,” he said. “We’ve now clued into the fact that is enabling television.” In another panel at the conference Monday related to publishers’ experiences during digital transitions, Dominique-Sebastien Forest, vice-president of digital at Transcontinental Media Inc., suggested that content providers should look to the experiences of the pornography industry for lessons about monetizing content online. “When you look at ... the cable business, the video-on-demand business and the video format in the last 15 years, the change always happened in the porn business about four or five years before it happened in the traditional business,” he said. He also rejected the suggestion that paywalls would serve as publishers’ primary revenues from online products. “The porn business has tried a paywall, and it failed,” Forest said. “Look at the porn business and usually it’s a good direction of where you should go.” nkyonka@thewirereport.ca

Rogers to rebrand with digital strategy in March, focus on social media engagement

Broadcast | December 6, 2011

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