Nickelodeon India has established itself as a thought leader by being the No. 1 franchise in the kids’ category with a household availability in about 120+ million households across 8 languages. With that being said Nickelodeon’s Kids Choice Awards has been growing with innovation and has successfully become one of the most prominent IP in the kids’ category.
Kids Choice Awards is glowing sparklingly with their successful six editions which incorporates 1 virtual edition, and now they are back with another exciting virtual edition to entertain and empower the dynamic audiences. With an objective to provide kids with an opportunity to express their opinions and voice their choices, Kids’ Choice Awards has built itself to become a one-of-its-kind noteworthy IP in the kids’ category.
Sonali Bhattacharya – Head of Marketing – Kids Entertainment Cluster – Viacom18 in conversation with Medianews4u.
As Nick is the number one in the kid’s genre and Sonic is soon catching up. What and how have you sustained yourself and kept in the number one position for so long? Because kids are so fickle that something today excites them so much, probably after two hours, they’ve lost interest in it. How have you been able to maintain this number one position, not only for Nick, but for Sonic also?
We create characters that have such an amazing bond with the kids like our latest launch Chikoo aur Bunty, which has topped the charts almost immediately. The fact that we have constantly innovated and have pushed ourselves to think out of the box has helped us be the leaders we are. We conduct a lot of research with our audiences, talk to them regularly. We keep a pulse on what makes them tick, pioneer, take risks and bold steps when doing new things. We try to connect with kids at every possible touch point. And I think the other thing that sets us apart is we do have the kids’ best interest at the core of all that we do. One is of course entertainment. We do it in a very fun, safe and non-preachy manner. We recently launched our Together For Good Campaign where we encourage kids to take a break, something that no one is speaking about. Kids are so stressed out these days and the entire campaign is sensitizing parents and kids to just take a break. We’ve tied up with partners like Little Yogis, where we are conducting yoga classes or visual therapy classes, movement therapy classes for kids. We don’t want them to be so anxious. So I would say initiatives like this have kept us ahead of the curve. Our promise to be there for kids will continue this year and even year after year.
Catering to kids via an omnipresent approach?
We ensure we don’t miss out on any avenue where we feel kids are present. Be it on ground below the line, digital, social, we are present on every possible touchpoint. Of course, our biggest strength is our very own, our platform – the Nickelodeon franchise, which reaches out to 52 million kids in a week. We try to connect in every possible way with our audiences be it in the form of our brand partnerships, integrations, etc. We give it an as well-rounded approach as possible.
This pandemic has seen a surge in technology. How are you connecting with kids other than the urban centres in tier two/ three demography or geography?
The interesting part of technology is that it’s a great leveller. A person in Bombay, Indore, Lucknow, Delhi, all of them have access to the same Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. It has given kids access to good content, no matter which part of the country they reside in. The days of being dependent only on a Smart TV or a great cable connection is no longer a hindrance in the way kids connect with your brand and the initiatives and content you put out. Everybody has a device nowadays; they are able to access things no matter what the demographic. I would say it has definitely been a boon.
It has been six years since the Kid Choice Awards were introduced so how has the journey been for Nickelodeon?
We started Kids Choice Awards on a very large scale with on-ground events with all the glitz and Bollywood glamor that you could ever imagine; this continued for the first few years till the pandemic hit all of us and we all had to pivot our plans overnight and continue to engage with our audiences. The beauty of KCA is not whether you do it on-ground or virtually, but the fact that we empower kids to voice their choice. Our promise to stay true to the kids to give them that empowerment would remain constant whether there is a pandemic or no pandemic. We were certain about not going away with it and instead giving the property a completely new look and feel and taking it across as many screens as possible. We gave it the virtual fame that it deserved. I think our belief in the property and our promise to always stand by kids no matter what is happening outside, is really what paid off. We garnered the maximum number of votes –1.5 million – last year and touched the same number this year which is actually great given that the market is slowly opening up. We saw the same amount of voting excitement around the property and kids engaged with the campaign. The campaign is still ongoing. We culminate on 27 with our finalist and the first ever Metaverse screening this year. I’m very certain it’s going to be far bigger than what it was even last year and as well as than what we expected.
Challenges in connecting virtually to this TG?
The Nickelodeon franchise has been category leader and Nickelodeon has been the number one kid’s channel for eight years now with Sonic being in the number 2 position. So there’s a great responsibility. We engage with our young audiences very passionately in a manner that it entertains them, engages them, and keeps them gainfully happy and motivated when they interact with us. The surroundings did get in difficult because a large part of the activity that we do with the kids would sit outside of screens as well. Kids today are tactile. I would be lying if I said that the first few months did not seem a little daunting to all of us. We actually engage with kids without letting them feel like they’re missing out on a big aspect of interacting with the tools they were used to and were delighted with the kind of response we got through our multi-screen approach. Our innovation spanned not just through the content and the way we curated stories for kids but by doing so creatively. Everything was pivoted to a virtual platform. We taught kids things like art, craft, pottery, cooking from the comfort of their house virtually. They were taught dance because we realized that kids need to move a bit and being sedentary is not going to help the mental or physical development of the child. We used a great deal of influencers, vloggers, content curators, to partner with us through this journey. Even the content that we’ve curated has been so platform agnostic to any barrier. It has just transcended those screen barriers and is connected with kids that are very real. The pandemic taught us very well and we learned on our feet. So I think we did manage to turn our challenges into great opportunities.
What will be out of the box marketing issues you strategized to engage with the audiences for this virtual event?
A lot of the innovation stemmed from the kind of touch points that we used which were in the virtual space and across all screens. We saw a big boom in gamification, and gamified classics like ludo and snakes and ladders with a twist with our cartoon characters. It gave kids and families an opportunity to engage and bond at a time when they were forced to be indoors 24/7. Parents saw great value in this as they too were looking for avenues to keep their kids busy, meaningfully. Influencer engagement also helped us curate very customized content for every social media platform be it Instagram, MX TakaTak. It gave a very different dimension to the way the kids engaged with our characters and our properties. Most recently we introduced AR games and AR filters for Holi.
Influencer’s platform and influencers are growing at an alarming speed. There a lot of do’s and don’ts. How are you educating your viewers in what they should for in an influencer ?
As a kids brand and a leader, it’s imperative that we keep a tab on our filters. We use a certain kind of tonality in our communication. We partner with influencers that share the same vision and appeal as us. They are wholesome, they are funny, they are good spirited, and they reach out to kids in a very happy, healthy and safe manner.
