Exclusive | How an "&" can pave its way on a highly competitive content game

Over the past 20 years, Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEE) has built a reputation for content that is entertaining, profitable and of high quality while at the same time, it has been inspiring and empowering to audiences. In a first in India, Zee will be launching a unique premium and interactive Hindi movie channel, ‘&pictures’ on August 18 that aims to go beyond just another movie channel. It will target viewers with a younger mindset and will be an endeavour to help viewers come close to their favourite movie stars. The channel will be available on all DTH platforms and will be a part of the base pack. ‘&pictures’programming slate is anchored by 24 hours of daily content including the premieres of upcoming big ticket films in its first year. The premieres include much awaited releases, Chennai Express, Zanjeer, Besharam, Ghanchakkar, Commando and Aatma.

Speaking to Adgully, Bharat Ranga, Chief Content and Creative Officer, ZEE sais, “the new movie channel allows Zee to build upon its existing film and digital resources to create a continuing conversation with an audience that is interested in staying connected and engaged with the world around them.” The company has lined up several innovations going 

forward to engage the viewers. As a first step towards interactivity, the channel has announced a contest for India’s first digital crowd sourced film on Twitter. It will be a democratic movie in every sense of the word – of the people, for the people, by the people. The channel will also soon be launching some advanced products that will take interactivity to a new level altogether.

ZEE has also unveiled a new logo and symbl for the new &pictures channel. Says Ranga about the symbol ‘&’ and the new logo, “The Ampersand sign in ‘&pictures’ signifies ‘Udaan’ (flight) & ‘Neev’ (rooted) and celebrates the duality of contemporary Indians. The Ampersand in the logo merges seamlessly with the ‘p’ of pictures and connotes the ease with which today’s viewer blends his ambition to soar high while remaining rooted to his sacrosanct values. The color red similarly radiates his bold ambition as well as the richness of his traditions.”

Speaking to Adgully, Akash Chalwa, ZEE Marketing head (National Channels) said “The name and logo of the channel has been decided post a detailed study of more than 1000 brands across the world and after testing it with consumers in India. The main differentiator for ‘&pictures’ will be the innovative mediums of interactivity initiated to engage with audiences.‘&pictures’ will redefine the consumer experience around content. We intend to spark change through entertaining interactive initiatives. We have just launched the first digital crowd sourced film that will significantly enhance consumer access to the content they're looking for – from wherever they choose to access and consume content. The core of brand ‘&pictures’ stems from the fact that today, viewers are not watching TV as the sole activity that they do…TV viewing is accompanied with time spent on mobiles, chatting on various, social media platforms, etc.”

Adds Chawla, “Internet can be used today in two ways either we just don’t use because of fear or we accept it. We are in the business of content delivery and content creation, so if viewers want to watch our show on internet our work would be to show the content on the internet in much more interesting way. Hence our work is not just restricted to deliver content for television but on all those media where our audiences want to watch our content. That is one reason that crowd source films will be launched on internet, not on channel. We’ll launch it on YouTube first as &pictures doesn’t have a channel to show pictures. Our first digital product would be only for social media platform. 

First we will launch our digital product then crowd source film and then any other thing. So, being an interactive channel, with ‘&pictures’ we want to interact with television and social media.”

He further said that Zee wanted to do something related to films, a movie concept. The duration of the movie will be of 8-12 minutes as they are going to be short films. “With this movie channel we don’t want to do what a classic movie channel does or classic television channel does. We are as big a consumer brand in the television category as any other consumer durable brand such as car,” Chawla added.

Zee is focusing on a lot on digital with digital products 45 days before the launch of the channel. Says Chawla, “If you log in to &pictures.in for the next four days audience across the globe we’ll be able to create a movie right from the title of the movie to the characters and storyline, our audience will create the movie and within three days we will show it on YouTube. At the end of this will reveal the logo. You can log in through Facebook or Twitter, webpage, through your mobile or your I-pad.”

The digital campaign has been devised by Experience Commerce Digital Agency. According to Sandip Maiti, CEO & Chief Creative officer, “Brief from the client was to create an engaging experience for the target audience of &pictures. Since the channel plans to appeal to an audience with a younger mindset, we wanted to lead with an idea born on the digital platform. We conceptualized the idea of co-creating a movie with the TG of this new channel. By keeping movie at the core of our engagement idea and live-blogging the co-creation process in record time, we felt we would possibly deliver the most relevant experience for the audience.

Today the naming contest has started which fetched over 3000 entries in a matter of hours on twitter and the website. Moving forward, we hope our audience will have lot of fine not just creating content with others but helping curate and influence the final outcome which will be released on Monday the 12th. This is certainly the first such endeavor in the world.

On the capital investment in &pictures, Ranga said, “investments are high and the team is quite clear in terms of acquiring the kind of movies. Since our’s is a new channel so we have to acquire most of the movies hence the investment had to be high. We have made aggressive acquisition.” Out of the total investment, about 50 per cent is being spent on content acquisition, 20 per cent on distribution and 30 per cent on marketing. He refused to divulge a figure.

&pictures will have the advantage of being a part of ZEE network, in terms of distribution and ad-sales packaging. In terms of strategies to be adopted going forward, Ranga said, “The most important strategy is to attract masses. Since our viewers are across the country hence a clear target would be to reach out to the deepest rural areas of the country as there is a new mind set in those areas too which may have been different at some point in time.”

In terms of key trends, Ranga stressed upon the fact that that it should be as big network as the cinema so that is the key objective. Also in terms of challenges, he said, “Yes I see certain set of challenges including the fact that primary content would be different than the digital content. There will traditional content too since we are a broadcasting channel hence we would be reaching out to all sets of audiences. The biggest challenge would be how we differentiate ourselves from the others and how &pictures dominate the cinema genre.”

Adds ZEE’s Cluster Programming Head (Hindi movie channels), Ruchir Tiwari, “Our programming model is designed to disrupt conventional wisdom. ‘&pictures’ aims at entertaining and celebrating today’s Indian irrespective of his age and is a reflection of how people across different mindsets are evolving. Our content will be specifically designed for the viewers who also have the strong desire and inimitable capacity to conquer the world and yet stay rooted to their culture. Building credibility and trust with our audience is paramount, so naturally we’ll provide a rich schedule right out of the box…and, we’ll do it the ‘&pictures’ way!”

Citing an instance, Tiwari says, “Mujhse Shaadi Karoge had a contest 'Propose to Priyanka'. The experience of all such interactive campaigns or contests that we have pioneered over the last two decades will be used to make &pictures interesting. These include newer format programming during breaks or on the digital platform.”

ZEE has a library of 11,000 films out of which 600-700 movies are shown by rotation. The library largely consists of films released in the last 10 years. It includes newer titles like Kai Po Che, ABCD, Barfi, English Vinglish, Tanu Weds Manu, Love Aaj Kal, Agent Vinod, Agneepath, Desi Boyz, Kambakt Ishq and Break Ke Baad. Says Tiwari, “Our focus is to change a lot of set rules in the genre. We are a bi-product of how the industry has evolved or is evolving. The changes that we see in the industry at the theatrical level clearly defines how the taste and preferences of the audience are changing. If we see the kind of movies that have come up in the last two years, it clearly shows how the rules have changed. This shows that the audience needs change and freshness.”

ZEE plans to sell the property at premium rates in terms of ad-rates etc. It would be premium since the company would be focusing initially on attracting the mindsets of the viewers and the advertisers.” Says Ranga, “the rates of the new channel might be a bit higher, say 20 – 30 per cent higher than its sister channel Zee Cinema, which will also see a rate hike very soon.”

When asked about the subscription plans, he said, “As of now till December 2014 we are not focusing towards 

acquiring any kind of superlative subscription game plan. Once the digitization is fully settled we know that within these two brands we will get ample revenue.”

On the long-term viability of the channel, Sundeep Nagpal, Founder Director, Stratagem Media, says, "There is an novelty factor to it, young audiences will be able to relate to it. The promotional idea of the channel is very innovative and different and may be able to strike a chord with the young audiences.”

Bedraj Tripathy, Senior GM Marketing, Godrej Interio replies, “Yes and No. No because frankly there is limited time with the viewers. Yes because viewers anyways flip channels to get their kind of movies. Hence content will remain the 

king. One has to see the investment in buying movie rights. That will be the clincher.”

With a lot of innovation being the name of the game at ZEE ‘s &pictures the young viewers are looking forward to it.

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