Cartoon Network

Elaborate on the history of the success of Cartoon Network. How has Cartoon Network been able to run successfully in the Indian Television Market for so long? Discuss the strategy used by Cartoon Network to capture the Indian Market Cartoons were introduced for the first time on TV in 1950 with Jay Ward's 'Crusader Rabbit' in the US. But at that time, cartoons or animated movies was focusing on the big screen. Movies like Aladdin, The Lion King and some super hero movies were doing exceptionally well for almost 10 years. The production houses earned handsomely. When cartoon TV channels came into popularity in the 60’s, many of the production houses ran out of business. This was the outcome of not understanding the demand of customers. There was demand for animated movies but there was higher demand for cartoons which customers could watch daily in their homes. The industry was expanding and the ones who sensed and rode the forthcoming tide of change became the major players of the market. Targeting a niche market of youngsters and kids, the industry later catered to millions of subscribers. Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) launched Cartoon Network in October, 1992 with the goal of achieving majority share of the niche market. The purpose of Cartoon Network as a channel was to broadcast animated cartoons from the galleries of Warner Bros, MGM and Hanna-Barbera. Within a few years, Cartoon Network started operations in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific regions. At this point, it had come up with some of its wonderful original shows like Ed, Edd n Eddy, Johnny Bravo, The Powerpuff Girls, and Dexter's Laboratory. Personally, watching these cartoons with my cousins made my childhood awesome and have given me some of my fondest memories. These cartoons became extremely popular across the world, making Cartoon Network one of the leading children's entertainment channels during the 1990s. In March 1998, Cartoon Network launched CartoonNetwork.com, a website offering cartoons on the net. According to Nielsen Net Ratings, CartoonNetwork.com stood as one of the world's top ten Websites, in terms of time spent on-site, during March 1998. Cartoon Network had huge advertising and promotional agreements with leading companies such as Reebok, McDonald's, Disney, and Nintendo. With the launch of cartoonnetwork.com in 1998, the TV network reached new heights of success as the website had huge audience who spent hours streaming cartoons and playing games. In 2001, the network had 75 million subscribers worldwide. Analysts attributed the success of Cartoon Network to its appeal to the entire family, its original programming content and its advanced programming technologies. Cartoon Network entered India in October 1995 as a pioneer of the industry. Sharing airtime with Turner Network Television (TNT), Cartoon Network was shown in the morning slot (5 a.m.-9 p.m.), TNT showed classic Hollywood movies in the night slot (9 p.m-5 a.m.). Owning the first movers advantage, CN was heavily gaining popularity and admiration of subscriber. Having to compete only with a primate channel like DoorDarshan was easy. Never the less, for a business to succeed, occasional viewership would not help. What they needed was brand loyal customers. Operating in an industry with low barriers to entry, it had to create brand equity and unique value proposition quickly to maintain its advantage as a first mover. By the time Kermit and Nickelodeon entered Indian market to challenge CN, it had already build a strong bond with the children as well as parents of India with its original and family friendly cartoon contents. Despite of being the only paid channel for cartoons, it stayed ahead of its competition for years. The reason behind it was carefully derived strategies. The first strategy was localizing the product. After gaining popularity and acceptance, CN started to dub their cartoons in Hindi and they also launched some original cartoons which had Hindi language. When these cartoons were dubbed in local language, a sense of belonging was promoted. Children connected more with the characters of the cartoon as they could understand the language flawlessly. Later they also dubbed in Tamil and other local languages of India. They also allocated more air time to dubbed cartoon. By mid-2000, CN had around 100 million subscribers which was huge. A reason for the success of this strategy could be the fact that not all children had formal education or the ability to understand English language easily. But all children loved cartoons. They realized cartoon was a common need of kids and localized cartoon was its satisfier. With the increasing demand, on July 2001, CN became the first dedicated cartoon/ animation channel where animated shows and cartoons were aired 24 hours. In addition to that, they imported famous anime like Pokemon which till date is adored by kids (also the 90’s born adults) all over the world. Cartoon Network is well known for its promotional campaign. In May 2000, it introduced the concept of 'Super-Size Cinema,' that premiered new cartoon shows and involved children in various games. The first Super-Size Cinema in India was the 'X-Treem Toon Challenge' show. It was featured on a 35-foot inflated screen at Mumbai's Andheri Sports Complex. An estimated 10,000 children attended this event. The challenges involved climbing a wall and rope ladders to climb up. Later on, Super-Size Cinema was offered in other cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai. Dream Diwali, Cartoon Network Sound Machine, Toon Hunt for Scooby Doo were other promotional activities that had direct involvement of children. Upon reading of this case, Save Dexter's Brain campaign intrigued me. Here, the cartoon character, Dexter, disappears from the network on account of amnesia. Children were asked to help restore Dexter's memory by talking to him (an actor) and reminding him of people, incidents and things related to him. This campaign reinforced the technique of Remember, Remind and Recall. Children remembered the show when they saw it in TV. To remind them of the show and what they watched, the marketers asked the children had to remind the actor which was subliminal messaging. Now, as a result of this fun and interactive campaign, whenever the kids who participated hear the word cartoon or Dexter, they will recall the happy incident and with that the TV channel. Technology was booming and people were being internet savvy. Availability of technology and computers was increasing. Adults wanted their children to learn the ways of digital world. At the same time, the concept of working parents was evolving which meant parents had less time to spend with their children and teach them how to use a computer. There was an opportunity to gain customers via internet. CN instantly grabbed the opportunity by creating cartoonnetworkindia.com, where children could chat with their favourite cartoon characters, watch new cartoons, and download games, Scrap Book, e-cards and a customized homepage. The kids were happy to spend time in a virtual reality. Simple user interface aided kids to use it by themselves. Most importantly, it was family friendly which assured parents that their kids are watching cartoons as well as learning from it. CN is one of the early users of user data collected from their website subscription. They smelled the opportunity of optimization linked with the Big Data before many companies in the industry even had an accurate data base. They figured out 30-40% of their viewers are adults. So they provided a new satisfier, Night Shift, which addressed the need of entertainment of adults. Showing the data, they attracted companies like BPL, Intel and the National Egg Coordination Committee to advertise in their channel. Luxor, Archies Cards, Novartis, Nestle, Pepsi, CocaCola, Parle, and Cadbury's advertised to influence kids and teenagers where as other ads appealed to the adults. Bottom-line, they earned a fat amount from customization and optimization which was possible only with strategic use of data in hand. By using these strategies, CN became the only cartoon entertainment channel to attain 7.4% audience share (second in chart), even after charging a subscription fee in a market where competitors were offering their content for free. Despite the attractive strategy used by Cartoon Network in the Indian Market, most of the people have criticized the approaches used by Cartoon Network. What were the reasons for such criticism? Do you agree with such criticism? Express your view. Cartoon Network tried to differentiate their channel from the competition by localizing the product. Initially, they benefited from the strategy. It gained new viewers. However, their growth was not all about happy subscribers. A large group of subscribers found the dubbed cartoon less entertaining. Recreating programs in a different language can be challenging. No matter how hard you try, the program loses its original sense of humour. The change in language was not a big issue for the kids as they were happy just to watch and understand cartoons. It was the 3040% of adult viewers who complained about this the most. The local language and music which was changed in original shows were annoying and it did not meet the standards set by the original cartoon. Thus, it had a significant impact on viewership. Another group of subscriber did not appreciate this strategy as they could not teach their kids English language with the help of cartoon. When the expectation and reality did not match, the level of satisfaction derived for the subscribers. Cartoon being an important part of entertainment in a kid’s life, parents had the opportunity to playfully challenge their kids to learn new words or phrases in English while watching cartoon with them. Associating learning with entertainment was their strategy. When the language changed, there was no particularly useful learning derived from cartoons as it was mostly based on fantasy. However, with localized language, children learned Hindi language in a negative way. The language used in some of the shows were “Tapori” and children started using rough words that were used in the shows. This aggravated the parents because the channels, instead of teaching good language unintentionally promoted use of cheap language. Commenting on this, a Cartoon Network spokesperson said, "It has been our observation that no real industry standard has been set for the quality of Hindi dubbed children's TV content. We have also observed that what is considered acceptable language differs widely among the small minority of parents supervising their children's TV viewing." Following the review, Cartoon Network decided to use the lower end of the tolerance scale as a new benchmark for measuring the quality of its Hindi content and also began to re-dub shows that needed language corrections/improvements. The network restarted its Hindi transmissions in May 2002. Another criticism that came from the customer side was the use of children in promotion of various products that could easily persuade the innocent minds of children. As there was no standards set by the government as to what was ethical, CN, using its own judgement, advertised products like action figures, noodles, chocolates and fast food products which were not necessarily good for children’s health. The ads created temptation in children and not all parents could afford to satisfy those demands. From parents’ point of view, it was unethical. Parents also criticised the fact that CN was focusing on horror and violent shows. They said that such shows have negative impact on mental health and way of thinking of children. In no way did those shows foster creativity. In my opinion, CN had to produce what their audience demanded. The young viewers did enjoy watching the cartoons in Hindi. For the people who wanted to watch cartoons in English, a time was dedicated for the shows to be aired in original language. The company was simply responding to the demand of the market as majority of their viewers better understood Hindi. However, the company could have used least objectionable standard of language where children could learn proper Hindi not a Tapoti language. In case of ads, I do not believe it was unethical. Marketing is not creating new needs but making the potential customers realize they have a need and there is a satisfier to satisfy said need. CN did not promote violence or terrorism. In my opinion, promoting candies and toys in front of kids in a cartoon channel is in no way unethical. It is the responsibility of the parents to filter what their children buy. The same ads might be aired in a movie or a news channel. Children could have seen a product in other channel and asked for it. Parents choose what is good for their children and should make purchase according to their best judgement. A disclaimer regarding the drawbacks of the products along with the ads could have helped CN avoid the charge of being unethical.