How desi OTT platforms are trying to edge past Netflix and Amazon on the back of festive special programming

As the festive spirit peaks, over-the-top (OTT) players are all gearing up to make the most of the season by launching Diwali programming. Different OTT players are adopting different marketing techniques to promote their content. BestMediaInfo.com spoke to a few OTT Heads about their content and marketing plans for this festive season.

Sameer Saxena

Sameer Saxena, Chief Content Officer and Head of TVF Originals, believes collaboration is a good option to reach out to a bigger audience as they released ‘Flames’ Season 2 and plans to launch the second season of much-awaited series ‘Father’. With innovations in genres such as horror and thrillers, Saxena said their target is to keep fresh content for their consumers.

“The shows are in collaboration with MX Player, which means these shows will release in both TVFPlay and MX Player, which will help us reach a massive audience. The whole marketing and promotional idea about the shows will be based on the fact that it’s the festive season and everyone should watch these shows along with family and friends. You can call it an innovation or experimentation but what we do is keep our content fresh for the consumers. For example, we are now planning to do horror and thriller shows, which will be something new to our consumers,” said Saxena.

Several series are being launched around the festive season such as Diwali special episode of ‘What The Folks’ with Figaro Olive Oil (Dice Media), ‘When you go home for Diwali' with Unacademy, 'First Diwali with In-laws' with Swarovski and 'Office Waali Diwali' with Pantaloons (FilterCopy).

Aditi Shrivastava

Aditi Shrivastava, Co-founder, Pocket Aces, said partnering with popular content creators is a better way of marketing compared to vintage organic and performance marketing, as it helps to attract consumers associated with creators and stand out amid the crowd.

Shrivastava said, “The plan of attracting new consumers is again our content. We are partnering with different content creators such as Be You Nick, Ashish Chanchlani and Mostly Sane or even with our own channel like FilterCopy.”

“What this does is, it attracts many more consumers who are associated with these creators, which I feel is much better than performance marketing. One more advantage is that it really helps to stand out amid the crowd. A lot of people are putting ads out there and you get lost in the crowd. All our marketing will be through our content only. Our people share it on different platforms, which is our marketing strategy,” Shrivastava said.

After the success of ‘The Great Indian Festival’, Hungama has combined with No. 1 Yaari Jam to feature young budding artists along with popular artists, such as Sunidhi Chauhan, which will be organised at multiple locations across cities.

Siddhartha Roy

Siddhartha Roy, COO, Hungama Digital, said the manner in which content is packaged and offered to the users plays a critical role in discovery and further exploration.

“Our aim has always been to provide our users an exceptional streaming experience on our services — Hungama Music and Hungama Play. This is driven by our technological innovations and content strategy. Through our content creation, associations and partnerships, we aim to increase our user base by 2X by the end of this financial year,” said Roy.

Earlier, Vijay Subramaniam, Director and Content Head, Amazon Prime, said the main focus of its marketing is always on digital as it provides an opportunity to interact with customers.

He said, “The main focus is on the digital medium. This is because a lot more interactions happen. There is a lot of content-related marketing that we can do, and we can segment it very tightly. We are a digital service, so there is a natural extension of the service itself within the digital media.”

Aparna Acharekar, Programming Head, Zee5 India, announced the premiere of ‘Gods of Dharampur’ on October 23 and Bhram (a Zee5 Original psychological thriller series) on October 24.

Netflix will launch several shows on November 1, including ‘Drive’, ‘My Next Guest with David Letterman and Shah Rukh Khan’, ‘The King’ and ‘We are the wave’.

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