Making sure there's always something good on TV, worldwide
All over the world, national broadcasters entertain and inform their local audiences with a wide variety of high quality programming bought from Granada International, one of Europe's leading commercial television distributors.
But, until very recently, they had to do it the hard way - searching laboriously for programmes and films through the pages of a massive printed catalogue, produced annually by Granada at enormous expense. A user-friendly online version? Sounds like a job for 3Sixty...
An online library, on a grand scale
To understand the challenge that faced us, you need a sense of the vast scale of Granada's library. In total, it contains more than 35,000 hours of programming, including everything from wildlife documentaries to Hollywood blockbusters, via all of ITV drama's greatest hits, such as Prime Suspect and Inspector Morse. So for broadcasters in over 150 different countries, there's no shortage of choice, when they are shopping for something their viewers will enjoy.
For us, then, the key to a successful site was the information architecture: organising this huge and highly diverse collection of programmes in such a way that potential customers would be able to locate precisely what they wanted, in the shortest time possible.
At the same time, we needed to ensure that visually - as well as in terms of user-experience - the site would accurately reflect the elegantly contemporary look and feel of the Granada brand identity.
An altogether better way to buy
The new site has only recently gone live, so it's too soon to report on its effectiveness in boosting programme sales. But feedback from around the world strongly suggests that Granada International's customers appreciate how much easier it is to use than the old dog-eared monster of a catalogue which it's now replaced.
And it isn't hard to see why:
- Search and you will find: compared with a conventional index, our site makes it incredibly simple for potential buyers to track down the perfect programme. If they don't know precisely what they want, they can search by subject, time-slot or demographic - and be viewing a list of options within seconds.
- Watch before you buy: of course, the obvious advantage of pixels over paper is that once visitors to the site have found programmes they are interested in, they can view as many excerpts as they wish - as essential, we'd suggest, as test-driving a car before deciding whether to buy it.
- Go on, think it over: buying a TV programme or series represents a pretty major investment, so we built into the site a range of features to help Granada's customers make the right decisions - enabling them, for example, to create wish-lists for further consideration and email excerpts to colleagues for their opinion.
It all adds up to one of the most advanced and sophisticated resources of its kind; a handsome piece of brand communication medium and a highly functional business tool that will help to ensure that more people, in more countries, will like what they see when they switch on the TV.
Why you should care
So, assuming you don't have a vast catalogue of TV programmes to sell to the world, how might this little story be relevant to you?
Well, with apologies for repeating what we're always saying in these case studies, we think our work for Granada demonstrates what sets 3Sixty apart from other digital marketing agencies you may have come across: a combination of rigorous thinking and creative firepower that could help your business and your brand achieve their full online potential.
