Bhojpuri market has the maximum migration: Amarpreet Singh Saini, CCO, ZEEL

This Mother’s Day, ZEE Biskope is honouring and recognising mothers for their unwavering contributions to our lives. The brand will be dedicating Mothers’ Day this year to the one who sacrifices her goals in order to fulfil, to the one who loves us unconditionally without expecting to be loved, and to the one who perseveres in the face of adversity in order to secure our happiness. This Mother’s Day, the company is using the hashtag #MaaiKeNaam (in the name of Mother). This effort is divided into three categories by the channel: Channel #MaaiKeNaam, Maai Ke Din #MaaiKeNaam, and Maai Ke Movie #MaaiKeNaam.

Amarpreet Singh Saini, Chief Channel Officer, Bhojpuri Cluster, ZEEL, in an exclusive interview with Adgully.com, comments on ZEE Biskope’s new campaign launch on Mother’s Day.

About the differentiated offerings that make Biskope stand out from other Bhojpuri channels, he said, “When we launched ZEE Biskope, our strategy was very clear, because in the Bhojpuri category, movie channels have always acted as a commoditised offering. We wanted to start a curated channel and a movie plus channel.”

The whole idea, according to him, was to create a more professionally managed channel.

“And that is the kind of channel we created, and then the rest was history, because it’s the first channel which got leadership position; it won so many awards and in different forums. Today, we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the channels by claiming and trying to be a movie-plus offering. Movies are one part of it, but a lot of associated content has not been explored in the category. One of the verticals that we are bringing this year is the events vertical; we will be introducing a lot of IPs, Bhojpuri Films Awards IP, Bhojpuri Music Awards IP, etc., so that is an integral part of Bhojpuri film mania which has not been explored. The other vertical is Zee Biskope originals, whereby we will be producing movies in-house and these will be in genres which have not been explored in the Bhojpuri category and then the third vertical is the non-fiction series which will be around the film mania of common people. It is not just movies but a lot of associated content with movies which make a whole sum of it,” said Saini.

About the audience response to the previous campaigns on women and his expectations from the recent ZEE Maaiskope, he responded: “In all the initiatives like when we did ‘Tu Chinta Mat Kar Mai’ it was our first emotional IP, and we were wondering that we are an entertainment brand may be the viewers will not react very well to a very emotional IP, but the response was overwhelming. We got more than 5,000 videos of people sending emotional videos, where they are promising and taking a pledge to their mother claiming they will be following all the Covid protocol. Then we did ‘Vratin Ki Sahae Bani Chhati Maai’, which was an on-ground initiative, again people in thousands arrived. In fact, it was difficult to manage because a lot of people came and we had the floating lanterns which people have to light, and it was overwhelming to see that so many people came to participate in Ganga Ghat. In all our initiatives, in most of our initiatives we have seen more than 10-20% of growth in the reach of the band or in terms of participation from the previous activity.  Every initiative fetches a huge growth in terms of participation. Because this is so unique and stands out as that one day is dedicated to the mother we are obviously expecting a far better response now, creating another benchmark.”

Commenting on the reach outside the Bhojpuri industry, he said, “Bhojpuri market is a unique market as it has the maximum migration. This is the case with the Bhojpuri channel viewership in other markets as well. Apart from Bihar and Jharkhand, ZEE Biskope register very good growth in UP, especially Eastern UP and then Mumbai and Delhi which are the biggest migration hubs. Here also we register very good viewership. In markets like Rajasthan, Punjab, and even Gujarat where there is a significant amount of the Bhojpuri population, we get viewership in these markets as well.”

About the plans for launching shows for the other gender, he said, “We have initiatives across gender and age groups, like ‘Kamariya Kare Hip Hop’, which is meant for youth. We have ‘Talent Camera Action’, which is open to all age bands and all genders. And then we have initiatives like ‘Love Dangal’ which are gamification of a theme of the movie where very young boys and girls participate in gaming. We have initiatives across segments, but the emotional one stands out because usually the emotional ones are centred around women, that is why today we are talking about it.”

Sharing his plans and views about getting into Web 3.0, Saini said, “The media space is evolving and everybody is now looking to push the frontiers, but I guess it also has to be timed well with the evolution in your viewer segment. It has to be one step at a time. In the TV space itself, the Bhojpuri category is much more nascent as compared to other more evolved and more matured categories like Bangla or Marathi. There is yet a lot of room to explore and grow and move the viewers’ horizons within the TV viewership space itself.”

Media
@adgully

News in the domain of Advertising, Marketing, Media and Business of Entertainment

More in Media