Adgully Exclusive | Consistency, music and innovation: Fever Entertainment's Puja Sharma

Fever 104 FM, a radio station operated by HT Media Ltd., was first made available in Delhi in October 2006). The station is currently spread across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata. Fever is HT Media Ltd's association with Virgin that brings global strengths and expertise in radio markets across the world including Bangkok, South Africa, Paris and Malaysia. The company formed Fever Entertainment for the purpose of creating engaging properties. The vertical recently created the concert platform- Fever Unplugged which has been a big hit with artists like Hariharan, Kailash Kher etc performing live for audiences.

Adgully caught up with Puja Sharma, Business Head- Events, Fever Entertainment, to know more about the vertical's growth plans.

Talking about the growth of this vertical, Sharma says, "I think its consistency. We have always been all about the music and I think what we have done is we have opened another vertical Fever Entertainment. The vertical primarily does concerts but we also create a lot of IPRs. The unit is going to be responsible to build properties and music being our core brand promise we started off with our Unplugged series which has been a huge success across. We have gone to most of the major cities across the country and now we plan to take it to Singapore next."

So is Fever planning to expand across the smaller markets?

Sharma says, "There are some plans but I do not think that we will expand into too many cities. When the Phase III comes up we certainly have a few potential markets in mind which we plan to reach out to."

Sharma says that Phase III will make it easier for the operators because currently there are too many restrictions and help in fast expansion of radio stations.

Identifying three key strengths of the vertical as consistency, music and coming up with newer innovations, she adds, "We have been consistently doing new things based on music and on sports etc. We have partnered with the Delhi Daredevil Team for four consecutive years now and our music based content is simply of a good quality.

Sharma further adds that off air initiatives coupled with a strong on-air content is the best way to engage the listners. "Our partnership with the Delhi Daredevil Team is our biggest initiative where we interact with our listeners, we conduct the junior Daredevil, we do a contest for the mothers etc. Plus we also do a lot of promotions and contests on-air which also engages our listeners a lot," she adds.

Talking about intial hiccups experienced by advertisers' response, Sharma says, "When we entered five years back, the way the advertisers' used to use the medium then as compared to now has tremendously changed. But I think there is a lot more potential in this medium which the advertisers can use this medium for, but a lot of smaller units of advertisers have started using this medium. However there is certainly a long way to go."

The radio channel grew by 93% quarter on quarter and Sharma adds that the team is positive that the channel will grow consistently this year too. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]

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