Ex | Viacom18 betting big on mobile to engage with today's youth: Rajneel Kumar

Looking at the growing trends of digital market and internet, Viacom 18 is all set to launch three new mobile products under three of their biggest kids and youth-oriented brands in the country – MTV, Vh1 and Nick. Understanding the importance of the mobile digital space and its significance in connecting with the target audience, Viacom18 brings MTV Gupshup, Vh1 Hub and Teen Nick Mobile Game – three cool mobile platforms for all youngsters to interact on.

MTV India in association with Altruist presents MTV Gupshup, a unique chat service providing an opportunity to make friends anywhere in India! Dedicated specially to the youth, it will be the perfect search engine to befriend whilst being anonymous.

Adgully, in an exclusive interaction with  Rajneel Kumar, VP and Business Head, Digital Media, Viacom 18, learnt more about their new products in the mobile digital space. Speaking about the first property he said, “MTV Gupshup is primarily targeted at the  youth where they are already having  conversations on the social media on the MTV page. Available in 13 different languages, users can change their preferred language setting at any given point. The chat service will enable searches through various options like friendship, flirting and serious relationship. Searches can also be optimized according to age, zone, circle and gender.”

When asked about the rationale behind the step taken, he said, “We want to target the VAS ecosystem between operators which has a great market for chat. The chat space is around 400 to 450 crore market but there are no brands associated with it so MTV Gupshup becomes the perfect fit in that eco system and this takes the engagement to a different level altogether where from text it gets into voice so that is the idea behind getting MTV Gupshup.  Hence with MTV Gupshup giving the users a different platform altogether, we wanted to create a brand property in the chat space.” 

Taking their passion for music a step above, Vh1 India brings Vh1 Hub - a one stop mobile content shop for all the international music lovers. Powered by Techzone, Vh1 Hub lets the fans download mobile content like songs, ringtones, caller back tunes, videos and wall paper’s by logging on to the Vh1 Hub WAP/Mobile site or the website.

Sharing his views on this property, Kumar said, “International music in India has been  growing significantly  over the last couple of  years. If you look at television or live events they have grown with most of the international artists coming to India and performing and so the digital medium too has been growing. As a result in this whole channel which exists in the entire VAS ecosystem the procedure for simple tasks such as finding a ring tone or a caller tune are still time consuming. Hence with a motive to simplify the entire process of going to the operator and buying stuff, with Vh1 Hub we wanted to give the users one single and easy destination that has everything in it hence making it easy for the consumers when it comes to downloading songs, caller tunes etc.”

The songs are picked by Vh1 ,ensuring the best of the best songs are handpicked for the consumers . Available only for Android, Blackberry and Symbian platforms, users have the facility of sampling the content before downloading.

The third product is a mobile game which will be launched under Nickelodeon’s newly launched channel Teen Nick. Available on iPhones, iPads and Android phones, it will be a role-playing, simulation game aimed at teenage girls. The object of the game is to become a celebrity star and the girls will be given virtual currency to manage their status.

Talking about the third property, Teen Nick, Kumar said, “We have launched a channel called Teen Nick targeting teenaged girls. So looking at the fact that teenaged girls of age group 13+ too  are avid users of smart phones and all that come with it viz. casual gaming , social networking etc, we found an opportunity to address this market and so we came up with an app. called the ‘Stardom Saga’. ” 

The users can dress up their avatars at the salon and boutique, hire an agent to represent them, audition for movie roles and earn some quick coins from commercials. They can also play mini games within the game like brushing up on their acting skills at an academy. At higher levels they get to enjoy the life of a movie star by dining at the best restaurants, holidaying at exotic locations and getting featured on magazine covers. It is a free to download game.

He also went on to  inform that with  Teen Nick they are offering a very  targeted ecosystem and since games are launched  for teenaged girls this becomes  a property for advertisers to come on board and reach out to them .

When asked if the new products will be relevant across all platforms or only with certain operators Kumar said “MTV Gupshup and Vh1 Hub is available across all operators  while Teen Nick is primarily available on the IOS and Android app stores.” Of the three products, only Stardom Saga is monetised through advertisements and the other two will be charged on usage to the consumer.

Commenting  about building a connect with the youth today through these products he said, “The fact of the matter is today as digital penetration increases the time spend is increasing across other devices other than only television so our  idea is two pronged . First is to make our content available to our viewers across any device consumers could be on and secondly how the user can go into the eco system which will be relevant for him so that is the second part of our strategy .”

With regard to avoiding overlapping between the MTV Gupshup and Vh1 Hub audience he said that both products will cater to the needs of the respective users and what they may be looking for in the mobile space. It basically addresses two different needs of the users.

Viacom 18 has been  constantly working , innovating and building a connect with the audience today digitally. Elaborating further on this he said, “Digitally we are one of the leaders as far as social media engagement is concerned with our brands like MTV , Vh1, Comedy Central etc. Secondly on the internet on all our platforms we have created great consumer destinations which the users come across and on the apps eco system also we have been one of the forerunners in innovating and launching new products .”

Where applying specific marketing muscles to push the new products is concerned   Kumar said , “ Our marketing mix usually consists of three things. First is how do we connect with audiences on air , the regular source of advertising like adspots etc. which we run across on channels . Second is where  we reach out on the social media because being in digital if we have the users there it is easier to build traction from the social media and third is marketing across the digital medium ourselves to reach out to the consumers.”

He also spoke about the specific research that was conducted before launching the three new products . Kumar  explained that the starting point for all the three products was the need gap analysis that was conducted   and  relevance of their brands to fulfil that particular need gap.   The growth for all three according to him is  fairly optimistic and aggressive but went on to add that only time would tell how the products  will actually grow.

Nowadays more channels are opting for the digital route to connect with the youth  and audience . Sharing his views on this Kumar in conclusion said that from their perspective they are definitely looking at connecting with more audiences, on whichever devices they may be, through any new opportunity coming in the market and with innovations happening constantly, Viacom 18  always intends to  be at the forefront in this endeavor.