BIG CBS SPARK's digital campaign strikes a chord with Indian youth!

With its aggressive and innovative social media strategy, BIG CBS SPARK, India's first English youth entertainment channel, has managed to strike a chord with its Indian audience BIG time. Reaching out to its target audience of the youth and to increase SPARK's instant connect, the channel has launched a series of digital and social media innovations. The Channel has chalked out an extensive social media marketing plan and had allocated media spends of approximately Rs. 5 crore to reach out to its audiences ranging blogging, interactive contests, polls on social networking sites and other digital platforms.

BIG CBS SPARK started an interactive WAP site for initiating contests and polls and passing on information about the shows to the users. The site has received over 113120 hits till date. Also, the contest on the mobile site attracted more than 13800 leads in just a few days of launch. Concurrently, the Channel's facebook page also attracted 40000 plus members within just a few days of initiating the campaign.

During the recent IPL series, the channel targeted he youth through blue casting (a tool that enables brands to deliver content and applications to Bluetooth enabled mobile phones). Mobile users were able to receive information on contests, polls and download from the channel in the stadium. With blue-casting, the channel got a staggering 68000+ downloads during just two IPL matches.

Understanding the youth's internet behavior, BIG CBS SPARK took over the home page and the "listen page' of in.com. They also created a roadblock on the movies page of rediff.com and home page of Games2win.com and captured the masthead of the most famous video website, youtube.com. The campaign helped the channel to receive an astounding 62 million impressions.

Commenting on digital innovations undertaken by the channel, Anand Chakravarthy, Executive Vice-President Marketing, Reliance Broadcast Network Limited, said, "The aim was to not just increase brand awareness but also to actively engage with the core TG of BIG CBS SPARK ' the young urban youth. We went with a predominantly Digital led campaign, leveraging the mobile platform, social media, online portals and used cricket as a great opportunity to seed the channel. Given our audiences high affinity for interactive mediums, the campaign was designed to enable this and delivered great results, ensuring high awareness and sampling of the shows."

BIG CBS SPARK launched in the beginning of May, bringing an engaging mix of shows that are Edgy, Cool, Entertaining and Sexy. It airs international shows like Cheaters, Hawaii Five-0, 90210 and show The Jerry Springer Show. BIG CBS SPARK is available on more than 400 networks, reaching more than 30 million households. The channel is also available on DTH platforms like Hathway, In Cable, Digi Cable, DEN, 7 Star, WWIL, ICC, Sun Direct, Reliance Digital, VideoconD2H and Airtel Digital TV.