Mumbai: Greek yogurt brand Epigamia owned by parent company Drum Foods International, and home and furniture marketplace Pepperfry have partnered with Pocket Aces for Season 2 of their super hit web series “What The Folks!” as Title Partner and Powered By Partner respectively. The 6-episode series will go live on Dice Media’s Facebook and YouTube channels on 17th October 2018, airing every Wednesday.
What The Folks! is one of the most valuable web series properties in India currently. Season 1, released in August 2017 with Epigamia as the Title Partner, was a huge hit with over 30 million organic views and an audience engagement rate of over 2.5%. The series portrayed a welcome twist in the age-old saas-bahu saga, with Nikhil (Veer Rajwant Singh) is caught in a bittersweet relationship with his wife Anita’s (Eisha Chopra) parents. Season 2 will now introduce the audience to Nikhil’s parents and his strained relationship with his sister, and portray how Anita’s relationship with this side of the family evolves. Season 2 sees the entry of veteran film and television actors Renuka Shahane (Hum Aapke Hai Kaun, Surabhi, 3 Storeys) and Shishir Sharma (Raazi, Talvar, Dangal) who play Nikhil’s parents, and popular digital star Kriti Vij (Dice’s Media’s 2By3, Scoopwhoop’s Baked), who plays Nikhil’s sister.
Speaking about the partnerships, Aditi Shrivastava, Co-founder, Pocket Aces shared, “Web series are our tentpole properties, and partnering on these can give brands much more premium mindshare as compared to other content formats. What The Folks S1 resulted in high ROI, and our brand partners became household names for our audiences. With Season 2, we are thinking even bigger – the trailers are playing on Tata Sky QYou, we are having invite-only theater premieres in 3 cities (Mumbai, Gurgaon, Bangalore), and are also marketing offline in corporate parks. In addition to YouTube and Facebook, the series will be syndicated to some large OTT platforms, providing further visibility to the brands.”
This marks Epigamia’s year-long relationship with Pocket Aces, during which they have partnered on content across formats including web series, short video, food videos, written content, and influencer activities. Siddharth Menon, CMO at Epigamia said, “We are so excited to bring back What The Folks as a property to the audiences. We believe that the series in its essence beautifully portrays what we stand for – pushing boundaries! Season 1 gave us high ROI in terms of brand awareness with consumers, which we saw in the form of comments and shout outs, inquiries from around the country, and first time trials of the product. Season 2 is so much bigger and we believe that this will be a perfect platform to launch some our new products – Greek Yogurt Smoothies, lactose-free curd, and Mishti Doi.”
For Pepperfry, the web series concludes a 6-month long campaign with Pocket Aces, that included short videos and written content. Kashyap Vadavalli, CMO at Pepperfry said, “This is our first big bet on digital, and we’re excited to partner on a seasoned property such as What The Folks. It gives us the perfect opportunity to bring out the Pepperfry messaging through this modern family, and showcase our aesthetic furniture and furnishing range. We spread our marketing spends across various mediums such as TV, radio, outdoor, etc. but believe that digital can give the best value for money. Digital reach is not far behind from TV – for example, we expect over 100 million impressions from the series, with close audience interaction and detailed engagement metrics. Our content with Pocket Aces so far has yielded great ROI in terms of website traffic and app downloads.”
With the success of Little Things Season 2 on Netflix, the ecosystem is looking at Pocket Aces as the only digital player that has created a high quality series franchise. The team is currently working on 3 additional large series to be released in the coming months, including Season 2 of their web series Adulting.
