We believe in multiple release strategies: Vijay Subramaniam on Amazon Original Breathe

Amazon Prime Video and Abundantia Entertainment have released the trailer of Amazon Prime’s second Indian Original series – ‘Breathe’. Directed by Mayank Sharma, ‘Breathe’ is an 8-episode gritty, psychological thriller that explores the lives of ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances. The series will be released on January 26, 2018 in three languages – Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, across 200 countries and territories worldwide.

“The success of our first Original, ‘Inside Edge’, showed us how much our customers value content that is created especially for them,” said Vijay Subramaniam, Director - Content, Amazon Prime Video India. “We remain committed to creating more high-quality original content for our customers to enjoy, and we’re pushing boundaries of content creation by exploring new genres and unique content themes. We are thrilled to start the New Year with the launch of our second Amazon Prime Original – ‘Breathe’, produced by Abundantia Entertainment.” 

Vikram Malhotra of Abundantia Entertainment commented, “Abundantia has been at the forefront of creating genre-breaking and impactful content and we are excited to collaborate with Amazon Prime Video to produce our first Original series – ‘Breathe’. With ‘Breathe’, Abundantia extends its content and story-telling prowess to a new platform with a show that I believe will excite not just Indian viewers, but also appeal to a global audience. The talented cast and crew of ‘Breathe’ have done a fine job of bringing to life a thrilling yet emotionally anchored story. I am confident that the audience will find themselves hooked on to the plot and follow the intriguing stories of our characters.” 

Mayank Sharma, Director of ‘Breathe’, added here, “Writing and directing ‘Breathe’ has been an absolutely exhilarating experience. I am proud of the content that my team and I have put together and can’t wait to share the series with the world! A unique storyline, a deep emotional insight, top technical support, supportive producers and stellar performances – we’ve gone all in with ‘Breathe’. The audience will also see Madhavan and Amit Sadh in never-before avatars and I hope audiences enjoy the show as much as we have enjoyed creating it.” 

‘Breathe’ synopsis 

How far will you go to save the life of a loved one? ‘Breathe’ explores this very question. Kabir Sawant (Amit Sadh), a brilliant but unconventional officer of the Mumbai Crime Branch, puts together the pieces of seemingly unconnected deaths of organ donors that lead to an unlikely suspect – the affable Danny Mascarenhas (R Madhavan). As Danny faces the difficult choice between morality and the slim possibility of saving his dying son’s life, Kabir will not stop till he cracks the case and delivers justice. 

Danny is the single parent to six-year-old Josh, who suffers from lung failure (Cystic Fibrosis), a congenital life-threatening disease, and is in dire need of a lung transplant. A God-fearing family man, his life revolves around his son, his widowed mother and the soccer academy that he runs. ‘Breathe’ captures Danny’s struggle to save the life of his son, as he tries to create his own fate, to alter his son’s destiny. 

Will the relentless cop catch the killer? Will Danny be able to save his son? What drives Kabir? Who will the next victim be? All these questions and more will be answered through the course of this gripping, emotional and psychological thriller. The difference between a man becoming a ‘Protector’ or ‘Predator’ is simply what’s at stake. 

The ‘Breathe’ Team 

Created by: Abundantia Entertainment

Directed by: Mayank Sharma

Produced by: Vikram Malhotra

Cast: R Madhavan, Amit Sadh, Hrishikesh Joshi, Sapna Pabbi, Neena Kulkarni, Shriswara, Master Atharva Vishwakarma 

Adgully caught up with Vijay Subramaniam, Director - Content, Amazon Prime Video India, to know more about 'Breathe', the marketing strategy lined up, focus on different markets and more. Excerpts:  

What is the marketing strategy for ‘Breathe’?
Everything that we do is aimed at connecting with our customers in a meaningful way. We have lined up a multimedia campaign for ‘Breathe’. Since this time it is a unique release strategy, the marketing campaign will support the weekly episodes, building up to the finale. We have kicked off the campaign with the launch of the trailer and it will continue till January 26, when the series goes on air. Following this, there will be a sustained campaign for the next four episodes every week, culminating with the finale campaign. Our creative team has designed the campaign keeping the respective medium in mind and also how customers interact with those mediums. So, digital will be extremely interactive, which one can already see. We are doing the marketing in a very innovative manner. 

Which are the markets that you will be focusing on more?
For the Tamil and Telugu markets, you can isolate them from a media standpoint, so we will leverage that. As far as the Hindi speaking markets are concerned, we are focussing on the entire length and breadth of this market. In digital, we will look to uniquely leverage the language of the storyline. 

What is the scale of the marketing budget for the series?
I would not be able to share the numbers with you. What we do believe is that the campaign must support the scale of the story that we are telling, so this will be just as massive and impactful like the other campaigns. 

The campaign is in three phases. We have the launch phase, which is currently running; then we will have the sustained phase, which will be from January 27 onwards, where every week there will be a campaign before the airing of the episode; this will build up to the finale, where we will have another big burst. 

With just 8 episodes, isn’t the series too short to build a strong connect with the viewers?
We believe that there are multiple ways to release our content, one of them is to put all the content together on the site. The other is being able to create a stack at launch and then keeping it steady as a weekly output, depending on the genre. We believe ‘Breathe’ lends itself beautifully to that because it is a psychological thriller, where there is a constant question on what’s going to happen next. Thus, it allows us to build the anticipation, which lends itself to this kind of release format. We believe in multiple release strategies. 

Are there any brands associated with ‘Breathe’?
No, all our Originals are focused on the base of our service.

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