We want to fill lifestyle & infotainment with unique offering with Indian lens: Amit Nair

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited recently launched its first lifestyle channel – Zee Zest, where one can UNLIMIT Life through its varied and comprehensive line-up of shows. Starting from October 1, 2020, the channel presents content that will be a perfect encapsulation of food, travel, lifestyle, home improvement, wellness, culture, and DIY to enable one to UNLIMIT Life straight from the confines of one’s armchair.

In this interaction with Adgully, Amit Nair, Business Head, Zee Zest, speaks about the newest channel in ZEEL’s bouquet, the focus on the lifestyle & infotainment space, the ‘UNLIMIT Life’ proposition and much more.

How are you widening the content scope of Zee Zest and with that, what kind of TG do you want to attract to the channel?

Zee Zest has gone live from October 1, 2020 and all our efforts are focused towards serving a unique offering for the viewer. It will be a pioneer in bringing some of the biggest names in international Lifestyle content seasons exclusively in India, like ‘MasterChef Australia Junior’, ‘Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown’, 3 new series from Jamie Oliver, etc. The content will be a perfect encapsulation of travel, lifestyle, home improvement, food, wellness and culture.

With Zee Zest, we bring to you a comprehensive line-up of shows ranging from lifestyle, travel, home improvement, wellness, culture and DIY to enable one to UNLIMIT Life with the best experiences. At Zee, we are always on the lookout for serving consumers entertainment needs, Lifestyle and infotainment was a niche that we wanted to fill with a unique offering with an Indian lens, this laid the foundation for Zee Zest – a channel which is unstatic, informative, experimental, imaginative, exploratory in nature and entertaining. Being one of a kind brand with 360-degree presence via TV, Web, Events and Social media, the brand will cover the new age audience using these mediums. 

How are you looking to build traction with brands and which categories are you targeting specifically? How has the advertiser response been to the new channel, especially in the current times?

A lifestyle channel has a wide scope for association with brands. The lifestyle genre is beyond limit and hence, Zee Zest serves as a platform for brands to reach a focused SEC A target audience through the channel. Zee Zest’s unique proposition of offering an enhanced experience with a TV & digital presence ensures we engage with our viewers across all relevant touchpoints and are also able to provide more value to the advertisers with platform agnostic solutions. Zee Zest will capture the consumers’ mind space by offering the best of lifestyle content with shows that not only entertain but educate and add value to our viewers’ lives. 

Digital forms a huge component of Zee Zest’s strategy. Could you take us through your digital plans for the channel? What avenues of interaction and engagement are you introducing on digital for your audiences and how are you creating synergies with the TV part?

The digital business of Zee Zest will act as a force multiplier to TV, thereby offering a differentiated and distinctive offering in the market. The publishing site will have multi content verticals that will go by the philosophy of Discover Engage and Fulfil. The site will have catchup of TV content, digital first originals and trending stories in lifestyle which will be action oriented. This will be backed by best in class design with a mobile first strategy. The social handles will drive new ideas for brands to engage via content publishing. 

Could you tell us more about the channel’s ‘Unlimit Life’ proposition? How will it create differentiation for Zee Zest?

The audience we hope to entertain is the Global Desi, who looks for global exposure with an Indian Twist and is constantly looking for newer experiences. The Brand Zee Zest will be the catalyst and enabler to UnLimit the horizon of their experiences and, therefore, add zest to their lives. The identity of the brand is of high energy, Desi cool twist and to add Unstatic to one’s life through its offerings. 

Please tell us about the promotion and marketing strategy for Zee Zest.

Content is the first step towards a strong marketing push, and in our case, it has been extremely well curated with a lineup of shows from across sub genres that sets us apart. We have used extensive data to ensure we have the right mix. To further amplify our efforts, we will leverage our robust outreach enjoyed by our network TV channels and strengthen our position as the purveyors of UNLIMIT LIFE. We are also leveraging the Digital medium to reach out to every Lifestyle & Entertainment enthusiast and get them to sample our channel’s offerings. 

What are your observations on the performance of the food and lifestyle genre during the COVID and lockdown period? What does the road ahead look like?

The Lifestyle and Infotainment genre fared very well during the lockdown period and saw an upswing in numbers. Since the content is aspirational, stress free and helps satiating one’s curiosity we hope to get a warm reception from our audiences. With the gradual opening up, we expect audiences to get inspired from the content and take up their own explorationsof doing the new and UnLimit themselves.

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