Discovery Plus, is all set to turn the festive season into a season of knowledge and learning with the launch of a first of its kind festival called the Discovery Plus ‘The Big Learning Festival’. The Big Learning Festival is dedicated to celebrating the platform’s key target audience of lifelong learners, between Oct 7 and Oct 11th, 2020. To make this festival extra special, India’s top sporting and entertainment celebrity couples- Lara Dutta- Mahesh Bhupathi, Saina Nehwal- Parupalli Kashyap and Riteish -Genelia Deshmukh will engage with fans on social media with interesting quizzes, chats, watch-lists and never-before-seen nuggets of trivia.
Issac John, Digital Head– APAC, Discovery, speaks about the Campaign, the six month journey of Discovery Plus and much more……
The Big Learning Festival.
I think a couple of things, we have been in the market now for six months, and in these six months, three things happened. One, we have seen that our customers really love our product. And this is not me saying it, it is our user ratings, etc. that have come in on Apple and Android. When we look at those ratings, we see that one thing that everybody mentions is that, Discovery Plus is great for my family, it is learning based, and this helps me gain knowledge.
Our consumers are essentially saying, I am here because I get to learn new things about the world and my world view is better. I think there was an innate connection with learning that Discovery Plus users see with us as a brand. The second part is that all of us are lifelong learners, some of us, like travel to know about the world, some of us might want a baking recipe, some of us would want to know more about space. We sort of combined both these insights about what the consumers are saying about us, and the fact that there is a lifelong learner in all of us, and then we took a celebratory twist to it, to essentially gamify these two insights and put up something for our consumers, which rewards them for various things and hence the name is very simple, it is called the Discovery Plus ‘Big Learning Festival’.
We launched yesterday and we have seen some amazing traction so far. We roped in a few sporting couples, celebrities etc. who have come on board. That is the genesis of the campaign.
Short window for the campaign.
Well, the typical way when we look at things which are celebrating nature and are gamified, we looked at two things. One is that our reward should be absolutely top of the notch aspirational stuff. Today, for a middle class family in India, a laptop would mean a lot in this time. Similarly, a smart TV, which emulates their viewing experience gives them access to internet and world class apps would mean a lot. Same thing with an iPad, we have really stretched ourselves on ensuring that the best rewards are available and it is for a limited period.
TG
Actually an interesting question that you asked, who is your target audience for this campaign? The target audience for this campaign is every Indian household who sees value in learning. I think that is where we are, one of the things that is very unique to Discovery Plus, if you see our reviews, what our consumers say, they come and watch our shows. But what they come for is actually more than just that single show, they come to know more about the world, they come here so that they can become more interesting. They have some conversation currency when they are talking to their boss or they are at a job interview or their kids are going in for a school admission. I think that is essentially the target audience. And again, it just ties back the fact that we believe that there is a lifelong learner in all of us and that does not change. It is actually one of our widest campaign reach and the core audience and the core subscribers of Discovery Plus who see value in the product, but apart from that, I would say that this is actually our widest campaign that we have ever run.
Drive new subscriptions.
Well, yes, to actually play, this particular experience, you have to subscribe to Discovery Plus, but it does not mean that you have to subscribe only for these five days, any of our existing subscribers can play and new subscribers can subscribe any time between October 7 to 11th, and you are eligible to win. In a way we know that this will be a subscription driver. But we are not keeping our old subscribers out of this and saying that this is only for people who are new subscribers. It is actually very broad based in that sense. The idea is to, for the existing subscribers, we are really hoping to elevate that experience of the app. And obviously, for people who are not subscribers of the app, we are just giving them an extra stimulus for them to be a part of this celebration of learning, as we are calling it.
Increase in subscription rates
It has been 6 months and we are not increasing the rates in the near future.
We believe that our consumer proposition or rather, the consumer, should never think twice about subscribing for Discovery Plus, as far as price is concerned, 299 price point is a real sweet spot, it is less than a rupee a day. We believe that there is a lot more that we can do with this price point before we increase the rates.
Performance in the last 6 months.
It has been very encouraging, heartening and the expectations on usage, adoption, in terms of the ratings etc. the reviews about the product, it has actually delivered way beyond our expectations.
But having said that, I think unlike a lot of other OTT apps, we do not necessarily have a pre lockdown and a post lockdown comparison for us, we launched on the eve of the lockdown. In that sense, we have to essentially just continue to build on the adoption, subscription conversion, and continue to offer more amazing content, more amazing experiences on the product, like this particular gamified experiences. Ensure that, our technical capabilities are absolutely on par with the best in mark. I think those are the three levers and we will continue to invest on content, product and technical capabilities.
Marketing initiatives.
This is actually a third campaign in a very short period of six months. The first one was basically about the core proposition and our core proposition is Discovery Plus makes you a more interesting person that can help you win the big moments in life. It was all about establishing the brand and what the brand really stands for.
The second thing that we did and the thought of the campaign actually came from our users, they were saying we want to watch this on fire TV, when are you launching Fire TV? When are you launching Android TV? I think that gave us a hint that consumers actually want to watch Discovery Plus on the big screen. We did a campaign promoting our fire TV and big screen partnerships.
This is the third one. This again, like I mentioned is stemming from what our users are telling us and the idea of this campaign is to make the point that you know Discovery Plus is actually an app that every Indian household can own and it became a bit more accessible. This is our most accessible campaign, in terms of thought and reaching out to the widest possible media. As part of a media campaign we are advertising on Hotstar, KBC, Big Boss and we have gone the full hog ensuring that the Discovery Plus ‘Big Learning Festival’ reaches each and every Indian household.
Festive Season Line –up.
We have two very interesting, documentary specials in the sports space that we are launching next week right after the Discovery Plus Big Learning Festival ends, we will be announcing those very shortly.
On top of that, we have also just launched 34 exclusive shows of BBC which are available on our platform. These are specially hand curated, these feature shows like the Icons, Ganges with Sue Perkins and The Birth of Empire – East India Company. Towards the end of the month, we will actually be launching a few more very exciting unique, premium Sports Documentaries on our platform.
