Exclusive | Striking the right chord with audiences: Zee Cafe's Anurag Bedi

Zee Café, the 24-hour premier English general entertainment channel from the Zee stable has never failed to entertain audiences with their unique offerings. With a range of different shows including dramas, sitcoms, reality shows and live events there is never a dull moment for the English speaking niche audience of all age groups. Though the year has been slightly sluggish for most marketers and industry leaders and organizations, Zee Café has remained unaffected and emerged the  leader among  English GECs.

Adgully caught up with Anurag Bedi, Senior Vice President and Business Head, Zeel, niche channels to talk about the content strategies of Zee Café, how the English GEC genre is growing, their innovative marketing and digital activities and more.

With the year end fast approaching when asked to share how year 2013 has been in terms of performance for Zee Café Bedi said, “This year has been fantastic for Zee Café as we have been the undisputed leaders of FY 2013. Zee Café has been the number 1 channel for an average of 28 weeks beating competition with a share of 21%. The key strengths have always been a strong line up of world class content and dynamic marketing campaigns. Continuing with their line-up of the best American shows they bring the much awaited ‘Big Bang Theory season 7’ and ‘The Vampire Diaries season 5’ very close to the U.S starting November. America’s biggest show House of Cards (which has record breaking nominations at the Emmys) premieres early next year.

Recently Zee Café telecast Miss World, one of the world’s most prestigious pageants and that too for the sixth consecutive year. Bedi opines that there is always an appetite for LIVE events with the viewer and with their telecast of the prestigious Miss World along with the Emmys they saw a strong pull amongst their viewer base for such events as each of these events are unique in their proposition. Hence the channel plans to continue to telecast them LIVE in the coming years as well.
Elaborating as to how the channel has been keeping its promise to deliver the best of international content to their viewers with the telecast of global events, Bedi said, “Over the years, we have been providing the best of American content for our viewers, whether it is in the form of movies, serials or live and exclusive telecasts of events from across the globe. Today we have the best of international events on Zee Cafe like Miss World, Primetime Emmy Awards, SAG awards, Critic’s choice awards and Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.”

Sharing about how live and exclusive telecasts raise the bar for the channel, Bedi said, “Zee Café is proud to be associated with the legacy of international events such as Miss World which is one of the most prestigious pageants in the world or the Emmys which are the most celebrated awards focusing on the American television industry and top shows in the U.S. “We were also the ones to bring the very exclusive Victoria’s Secret fashion show to Indian audiences.These events have always generated a huge amount of interest amongst Indian viewers and are our flagship events which they look forward to on our channel,” he adds.

Zee Café’s innovative marketing activities have always kept the channel ahead in terms of competition. Their marketing strategies have always been pioneering and have always struck the right chord with their T.G. Explaining further Bedi said, “We make sure our marketing initiatives reach out to all our customers. For our green turn initiative we tied up with Eco roots to adopt trees for each pledge taken by our viewers, we also arranged an acoustic night at Canvas for viewers to come experience Green Turn with an event.”

With a series of digital initiatives which have been tremendously successful to engage viewers while they are watching their favorite shows on Zee Café, their campaigns like Team Grey, Gossip Girl, Happy hour at 3,Tweet hour with the cast of The Mentalist have built an immediate connect with their fans and they have received tremendous responses from them. “We try to do something different each time to delight the audiences,” he said.

In terms of competition they face from other channels Bedi is of the opinion that it is important to identify content that appeals to the viewer and then market the same effectively. Given their strong relationship with their partners he  does not foresee competition as a threat to the channel.

Sharing his view point and thoughts on how the English GEC space is growing and what the current trends indicate, Bedi said, “The English GEC space has seen growth along with fragmentation and now with digitization we definitely see further fragmentation in the coming years. Given the penetration, we see the genre growing and expanding in the future. A few years back the genre catered to 5 metros, today we are reaching viewers in about 1 million plus towns across India.”
Presently loads of activities are happening in the English GEC space. So in terms of strategies that have been planned by Zee Café , Bedi said, “Our strategy has always been to bring the best of English entertainment to the Indian audience. Zee Café caters to a premium and relatively niche audience hence there is no fixed format and we will continue to experiment shows that fit with the Indian audience.”

When asked to share with us the new content strategies on the anvil at Zee Café and also how it will impact the channel and lead to fragmentation of market shares, Bedi explained, “At this point we cannot disclose what our content strategies will be in the future but we will continue trying out new shows, new formats depending on viewer appetite. We are not seeing too much of traction from the newer players, it is mainly a game between the top three players with Zee Café leading the genre.” 
In terms of challenges, he feels that advancement of technology and availability of content on the internet results in Piracy which is the main challenge they face today and will also face in the future. With a view to tackle this issue Bedi concludes, “We are overcoming this issue by offering viewers shows closer to the U.S. We are bringing the latest seasons of Big Bang Theory and Vampire Diaries very close to the U.S telecast starting this November and we will continue to bring more such shows to the viewers as the year unfolds.”

Bedi further shared that there are plans for an HD channel and also on the anvil are innovative campaigns  for their upcoming properties such as Big Bang Diwali and House of Cards.

Zee Café has lined up two seasons back to back of their  biggest show, House of Cards coming up early next year along with more Live events in keeping with their philosophy of bringing the best of international content to  Indian shores.