MUMBAI: After about a year and a half of building its content catalogue and also on organic customer acquisition, the Hong Kong headquartered PCCW-owned-VuClip-promoted freemium VOD service Viu is now looking at upping the tempo through an integrated marketing and advertising campaign from 28 August.  Titled Kaaf Feels Bro, it is targeted at the new millenials and aims to encapsulate the very essence of the brand that delivers fascinating stories to today’s young and digital-first audience.  While showcasing an array of genres that viewers can choose from, the advertising seeks to focus  the customer's attendtion on the riveting, fresh and original stories available on the platform, including movies and Korean shows.

Since its India launch in 2016, Viu claims to have showcased over 15,000 hours of content and has managed to log in a subscriber base of four million.

And since this is the first ad campaign it is resorting to, it is hoping to get a of  lot of bang for the buck and also help it make up for lost time.

Says Viu India head of marketing Shantanu Gangane:  “The concept comes right from the heart of the product which is content. The whole plot was to look at the millennials as the TG, and also we had some data from YouTube and our own app that who is actually consuming our content. We had a vision of our TG but the actual consumers were really different -- that was the first thing,"

One needs to dress up the content from the TG's perspective, Viu realised.

"What will the content deliver" -- was the brief given, and that's how the emotion and plot emerged in the spot: "the content versus consumer" in the campaign.

Conceptualised by Bates Chi & Partners, the ads have been created in two languages, Hindi and Telugu, signifying the availability of multilingual content on Viu, both original and licensed.

Produced by Dev Chugani and Rupali Mehta's Greenlight, the film echoes the essential intent of offering content that appeals to consumers’ emotions in a variety of genres such as horror, drama, romance and comedy on Viu. The TVC shows people who are immersed in the viewing experience to the extent of feeling they are a part of the story, going through the fears and joys the show has to offer. The film has been directed by Karan L Butani and DOP is Rishi Punjabi.

“The campaign will go on air on 28 August and will run across GECs, Hindi movies, music channels, English movie channels for five to six weeks. It's a packed week coming for us,” shares Gangane.

 The ads are being  rolled out across TV, print (Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Pune), OOH (across key markets) and radio. The social platforms are ensuring buzz for the highly captivating content that the OTT platform has to offer.

“At Viu, kaafi is happening. We are planning to launch four shows by December this year, so a lot of things are happening. And, 2018 will be overflowing. You will be having a number of originals even from a television standpoint and not from OTT standpoint. There is excitement coming your way, consumer's way and our way,” adds Gangane.

“We have to look at few things. First is that we are not the only OTT player out there, we are the late entrant in that space. Also, we are focusing on originals. We have to make sure that whoever we get on board should have a mass appeal, has popularity. There were two problems that we needed to get sorted.  First, that we have to make this familiar fascinating concept but there were other facets. They sound like synonyms but they are not. The intensity of the content, the pace with which the content moves is not same. But, all this content makes you feel something. That inspired us to take the idea that this is the content that will make you feel something. We were very focused who is our target audience. You are talking to millennials and that's how we came up with Kaafi feels bro!,” says Bates Chi & Partners India CEO V.S Srikanth.

Creative agency:
CEO: VS Srikanth
HEad of Office: Samrat Bedi
Business head: Sachin Ramchandani
Creative team: Bates Creative Team
Account planner: Nishu Raina
Account management:  Bhavesh Nainani, Hemchandra Shah, Prashant Motwani
Producer: Dev Chugani, Rupali Mehta
Production house: Greenlight Productions
Film director: Karan L Butani
DOP: Rishi Punjabi