Viu launches first brand campaign to connect with millennials

With an aim to become the go-to destination for the millennials of India, Vuclip has rolled out first-ever integrated brand marketing campaign for its ‘freemium’ video-on-demand platform Viu. After its successful launch in India last year, Viu claimed an exponential growth in the audience base at 18 million users. The company that focused on original programming since its launch is planning four more original series by the end of this year. The platform will soon expand its content offering in other regional languages from the current offering in Hindi and Telugu.

The brand campaign titled ‘Kaafi Feels Bro!’ will run through six weeks and will be followed by another campaign targeted towards customer acquisition after which the company expects three to four-fold increase in its subscriber base.

Conceptualised by Bates Chi & Partners, the campaign encapsulates the essence of the brand that delivers fascinating stories to today’s young and digital-first audiences. While showcasing an array of genres that viewers can choose from, the campaign focuses on riveting, fresh and original stories available on the platform. including movies and Korean shows.

The 360-degree marketing campaign will be rolled out across TV, print, OOH, radio and social platforms. The TV campaign will run across the genres with focus on general entertainment channels in order to reach out to the masses. While the company refrained from disclosing the marketing spend, it claimed that the scale of the campaign will be that of the launch of a FMCG product.

Created in Hindi and Telugu, the campaign signifies the availability of multilingual content on Viu, both original and licensed. Titled ‘Kaafi Feels Bro!’, the brand film echoes the essential intent of offering content that appeals to consumers’ emotions in a variety of genres such as horror, drama, romance and comedy on Viu.

The TVC shows people who are immersed in the viewing experience to the extent of feeling they are a part of the story, going through the fears and joys the show has to offer.

Commenting on the launch of the campaign, Shantanu Gangane, Head of Marketing, Viu India, said, “At Viu, our endeavour is to offer great viewing experiences and riveting content with a dose of local flavours to our audiences. With compelling content that is bound to evoke various emotions from viewers, our first brand campaign is a reminder of the diverse genres, moving stories, interesting and original content available for our viewers on the platform.”

Gangane added, “While our TG cuts across the age group between 18 to 40 year olds, most of our consumption came from 18-24 year olds with much younger skewed. Also it came from places beyond metro cities which were not expected.”

Bates Chi & Partners India CEO V.S. Srikanth, said, “The collaborative effort of the Viu and Bates teams has led to this piece of communication; a perfect representation of youth and their viewing habits. We knew we had a winner when we first presented the line ‘Kaafi Feels bro.’ After much deliberation, testing and market research, here we are today. The rest, as they say, is history.”

Talking about the challenges in competing with OTT platforms run by broadcasters, Gangane said, “We take it more as an opportunity. Aggregators like us have the advantage to pick the best of content available without any compulsion. We are not under any compulsion of simulcast, data bundling and content created by in-house production house. At the same time, the culture of our company supports the whole flavour of creating an audience which is very local, regional and lapping up. Operationally there could be challenges but strategically this is much better way to take the product and brand in the market.”

The TVC:

Credits

Creative agency: Bates CHI & Partners

CEO: VS Srikanth

Head of Office: Samrat Bedi

Business head: Sachin Ramchandani 

Creative team: Bates Creative Team

Account planner: Nishu Raina

Account management:  Bhavesh Nainani, Hemchandra Shah, Prashant Motwani

Producer: Dev Chugani, Rupali Mehta 

Production house: Greenlight Productions 

Film director: Karan L Butani 

DOP: Rishi Punjabi

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