Viacom 18 kicks off marketing for 'Voot'

Launching the marketing campaign today, the broadcast network will be majorly focussing on initially promoting the three aspects - kids, originals and regional content, along with the regular Hindi content

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | May 18, 2016

Starting off with three brand films for its OTT platform Voot, Viacom 18 has promised an extensive marketing campaign along with close to 50-60 more ad films to come along. With a detailed marketing campaign to be rolled out in the next twelve months, the major push will be seen in the coming three to four weeks.

Gaurav Gandhi

According to Gaurav Gandhi, COO, Viacom18 Digital Ventures, the network has set a goal of getting three million viewers a day, with the launch of this marketing campaign. The campaign has a dual objective of explaining the brand proposition and consumer adoption at the same time.

The campaign will go live across Viacom18 channels today, May 18, with an extensive mass media push across outdoors, radio and outside network TV. In line with the earlier announcement, the network will be launching Voot Originals - Chinese Bhasad and Sinskari, while Badman and Soadies will follow soon. While 'Chinese Bhassad' is a web-series written by Raahil Qaazi (Co-writer of Do Dooni Chaar) and 'Sinskari', produced by Monozygotic, is a 'sinful' chat show with the 'Sanskari' Babuji Alok Nath!

Badman will be another series - mockumentary film starring Bollywood's biggest bad man Gulshan Grover; and Soadies – a sitcom tribute to the iconic reality show Roadies – starring Baba Sehgal.

The creative idea of the national marketing campaign has been conceptualised and executed by Mullen Lintas. A special focus of the campaign will be on the six markets of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. With over 17,000 hours of programming (across languages and genres) including TV shows, blockbuster movies, favourite toons and Voot originals, Voot has tried to focus on the content quality.

Ayappan Raj

Ayappan Raj, Executive Vice President, Mullen Lintas said that the communication brief was to focus on the high quality content of the platform. “The proposition of anytime - anywhere has been established since the time YouTube came on the handheld device. We focussed on the content strength.”

With so many OTT platforms in the market, and some from big broadcast networks too, the differentiation in communication is ought to be a challenge. To this Raj confidently said, “Be it any brand that the creative team is working on, one has to take cognizance of the competition and work accordingly. There are many layers to the campaign which have created differentiation. First is, we have tried to give a personality to the brand, this is after all, the first time that Voot - the brand is saying a 'hi' to the world. We added humour to extend that and the stickiness of the content came in as another layer.”

Gandhi further explained, “The main motto was also to create a recall for the brand, which is why the 'wanting wanting' and 'what voot' tones are added. Making it in Hinglish is to reinstate the casual way of speaking. Content is at the heart of this business and therefore our marketing campaign also needed to revolve around the addictive nature of the content available on Voot. The singular message that you will see in all our communication - You are most happy when you Voot, but being away from Voot will leave you restless and wanting for more!”

About two to three months were invested in bringing out the campaign. While the three films will be promoted on TV and digital both, there will be 50-60 more films, each specific to content, genre and TG. So, the upcoming films would be 'drama wanting wanting', 'toons wanting wanting' and so on and so forth.

Akash Banerji

Akash Banerji, Head of Marketing and Partnerships for Viacom 18 digital venture explained the regional content game on Voot. “We already have a strong content in Bengali, Kannada and Marathi markets. We will be putting it on Voot and the promotions will go on there. We will tap the other regionals too, but our initial focus will be these three markets.”

As for the advertising on Voot, Gandhi mentioned that since all the advertisers have been positive about the platform, a lot of advertising will be introduced in the month of June. “We have an overwhelming response for kids and Originals. In fact, there are brand placements also being looked at in the Original series.”

The campaign comprises three TVCs with different protagonists in each of the films- a woman, a kid and a young boy - thereby highlighting the appeal of content available on Voot catering to multiple TGs. The TVCs highlight Voot's key proposition of having content so addictive that once you start watching, you just can't stop (Ek bar watching toh non-stop wanting).

EXPLANATION OF THE TVCs

The films start with showing the protagonist watching one's favourite content on Voot completely engrossed and the viewing gets interrupted because of a situation that is not in their control. And they are forced to move away from their phone. While the interruption continues our protagonist is shown to be helplessly looking back at his/her phone screen with Voot playing on it. With every passing second that keeps them away from the phone, the agony increases and the craving to getting back to Voot becomes unbearable. There comes an inflection point when they can't wait anymore and the burst of restlessness leads to a dive towards their phone and start Vooting again.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com