Exclusive | Celebrating 10 glorious years of Vh1 with Ferzad Palia

A channel that re-defined the English entertainment landscape in India, Vh1, beating all odds, recently completed 10 years of its existence and has carved a niche for itself. The channel that came into existence with only 40 music videos today stands tall among the category and is synonymous with the best in international music and entertainment with being the home to the greatest awards shows in the world.

Since its inception in 2005, Vh1 has been committed to bringing the best of international music genres including EDM, punk, rock, reggae, hip hop, pop, jazz etc. to the Indian audiences. Today, Vh1 has expanded its range of shows to include shows such as Vh1 Playlist, Catfish, documentaries such as ‘No Cameras Allowed’ and ‘The Class of ‘92’, reality shows and much more. Interestingly, today out of the entire 175 Cr English Entertainment category, Vh1 stands tall with 20 to 22 percent market share.

To know more about their plans ahead, Adgully caught up with Ferzad Palia, EVP & Business Head, English Entertainment, Viacom18 who spoke about the glorious 10 years and how the channel grew to becoming a number one English music destination in its genre in India.

Glorious Journey:

From just a 40 music video channel in 3 cities to being the #1 English entertainment channel across India, the journey surely is a remarkable one. Describing the journey of Vh1 Palia said, “It is not been an easy ride and we managed to cope up to the needs and demands of our viewers. The initial years were really challenging but post that we saw quite a sufficient amount of traction coming in as the seeds of investment started to deliver. We started with 40 videos, as that was the time when the English music genre was re-energizing itself.”

After realizing the changing and differentiated needs as well as the demands of the evolving consumers Vh1 got first two musical blocks Hip Hop Hustle, which was born out of their event and Rock rules. While later when the need increased the channel started strengthening its weekend slot with Vh1 Classic and then with peppy music to cater the gymaholic audience.

After carving differentiated content and keeping the game of music videos the channel got into differentiated programming like ‘Pimp My ride’, Fabulous 5 which were not the biggest shows of the world though but stood out beautifully in the Indian scenario thus becoming a cult in themselves.

Palia said, “We were clear with a fact that rather spending Crores of money in marketing our channel we would enhance our presence in a different way hence we tied up with captive places like coffee shops which included Barista, Café Coffee Day etc and popular gyms to have our channel played on their screens which would help gaining recognition about the differentiated content that we air on Vh1. Also, interestingly we never ever faced a phase of pushing people to switch to our channel as the audience by then started switching themselves after sampling the channel.”

Today the channel has become a super-power brand which attracts the best talent from across the world. Playing home to every big awards ceremony from the Grammy’s to the Golden Globes to the Billboard awards, getting the biggest and the best names from international music to India for live performances, to two successful houseful years of the dance music extravaganza Vh1 Supersonic, the channel has come a long way from its early days. 

Not only that but also in 2014, Vh1 bagged the rights to exclusively air two immensely popular talent shows – Britain’s Got Talent and X Factor.

Perception Management:

The biggest challenge that the channel faced was to make the consumers feel the emergence of new channel called Vh1. Apparently, the consumers misread Vh1 as Vhr or VHI and clients misheard Vh1, especially sales guys who rather embarrassingly said as “Which one?” Elaborating further he said, “That was the first task in hand to make the consumers understand the brand is Vh1 and not Vhr. After trying and testing to rectify visually we, with an aim to correct the brand name quite deeply, went ahead and optimized Radio and launched a lot of radio shows which clearly pronounced it as Vh1.”

Radio became a powerful medium of communication for Vh1 and not only that but in the print media the channel took Vh1 logo with a byline first which said Vh1, India’s only English entertainment and lifestyle channel. “While later on we realized that it is not working to be just at the bottom of the creative and the name needs to get recognition in itself, we made it a headline,” he said. Interestingly, today Vh1’s logo is the most distinguished one.

Key strategies:

Since it was a niche genre the team thought that it will never be able to beat the number game hence they decided to create customized opportunities for the brands and many of these learnings the brand custodians shared with their international counterparts as well. Elaborating further, he said, “Though everybody recognized the power of our content but making the marketers/advertisers realize the power of the channel’s reach we decided to innovate a bit. We started enhancing customization of content for the brands/advertisers and started integrating the brand with our content.”

During the time of ‘Hip Hop Hustle’ the channel reached out to a few brands to create a realization for the brands that Vh1 is much beyond just a TV shop and that is how when the channel started its first events category and Nokia opened the match for them. “In 2005 with an aim to make our reach visible and recognizable for the brands we did our first ‘Hip Hop Hustle’ which later turned into a TV show on Vh1. After that we consciously opened up for a lot of category of brands including Jewelry brands to hand set manufactures to automobile to Chewing Gum manufactures to Shampoo brands to Oil brands and so on and so forth.”

Distribution:

Initially when the channel was launched it catered to only three cities Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore as the distribution system was not so robust at that particular point of time but eventually they expanded their footprints into a lot more other cities like Chandigarh, Ahmadabad, and Pune etc. Also the icing on the cake was the emergence of DTH (Direct to Home) platform which made them build a better reach. Palia revealed that initially Mumbai and Bangalore were among the top performing cities but later on Delhi picked up really well and followed by tier 2 and 3 cities like Chandigarh, Pune, Ahmadabad etc.

Celebration day and Way Forward:

As the year progresses each day will be treated as a celebration day and in-fact the celebration started a while back with having 15,000 fans sing ‘Happy Birthday Vh1’ on the sands of Goa during Vh1 Supersonic 2014, it’s been an exciting and fulfilling journey so far. This was followed by six mega-anniversary parties hosted on New Year’s Eve by Vh1 across six cities in India; namely Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata and Hyderabad. To mark the 10th anniversary of Vh1, the channel will be hosting a month long celebration on air for its viewers in January 2015 including special programming which will be a throwback packed anniversary special month with the best of Vh1’s songs and shows.

Vh1 also annually airs world’s most popular international awards live on the channel. Awards such as the Grammys, Video Music Awards, Europe Music Awards, American Music Awards, World Music Awards, Golden Globe and Billboard are viewed by the Indian audience at real time on Vh1 hence the major pie of the focus will remain on the same. | By Aanchal Kohli | Twitter: @aanchalkohli

 

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