ZEE5, India’s largest home-grown video streaming platform, announced its new brand campaign – ‘Dekhtey Reh Jaogey’ to offer its annual premium subscription @ 499 INR. For a long, Indian consumers have evolved to the international concept of Binge-Watching and with this campaign, ZEE5 aims to enable them further to continue watching and unearthing content from 150+ originals and 2800+ movies resting on the platform. The ‘Dekhtey Reh Jaogey’ campaign is targeted towards younger audiences aged between 18-34 to increase share of mind, strengthening ZEE5’s position as India’s OTT platform of choice.
Following a 360-degree approach to target Indian entertainment lovers, a high-frequency campaign across TV, social media and digital was planned. With this new subscription package, viewers will have an influx of unlimited entertainment that is both captivating and binge-worthy, including a rich library spanning 12+ Indian languages featuring Web series, movies (Original and theatricals), TVF shows, Live TV, Alt Balaji shows, Ad-free Catch-up TV, Zindagi TV shows, kids’ content, and much more.
ZEE5 also decided to bring aboard popular cine-darling Sara Ali Khan and OTT’s favorite boy AmolParashar as brand ambassadors for the campaign and aims to unite Indians through their shared love for real, relevant and resonant stories.
Manish Kalra, Chief Business Officer, ZEE5 India, speaks on the campaign, performance during the crisis and much more.
ZEE5 has been on an upward swing in this crisis, your thoughts?
We are grateful to our viewers for placing their trust in us at a time like this and we are happy to see our larger business strategies paying off. 2020 has been a year of reckoning for a lot of us, especially online video streaming. With the COVID-19 crisis boosting consumer reliance on video streaming platforms, the industry witnessed a rapid progression. With more Indians becoming digital savvy and with the audience being able to enjoy personalized, quality entertainment within the safety of their homes, OTT adoption skyrocketed, and the industry grew multi-fold.
As one of the leading OTT players of the country, ZEE5 grew 200% during the lockdown with a steadily stabilizing subscriber base. This translated into a rise of 45% in our paid viewers, and an increase in subscriptions by an impressive 80%. We have been able to achieve this success on the back of our strong content strategy, our superior tech stack, and value driven partnerships. We understand the pulse of our audience and have an eye to meet the needs of our diverse taste clusters. In spite of the challenges thrown by the ongoing pandemic, we have been beefing up our content line-up with new shows and movies from across genres and 12 languages. We are particularly proud of the diverse content offered to consumers in 2021 – right from a Salman Khan starrer blockbuster like Radhe: Your Most wanted Bhai to an iconic Friends: The Reunion, to Sunil Grover’s comedy thriller, Sunflower, and now to some of TVF’s widely popular and much-loved stories, ZEE5 has something for everybody. We have an exciting lineup of 50+ theatricals and 40+ web series planned for 2021 which will further boost our current growth trajectory.
This year you tied up with Alt Balaji& recently TVF, how has this upped the content in ZEE5?
By virtue of stemming from a content behemoth like Zee, we have a strong pulse on our audience preferences. With content being one of the mainstays at ZEE5, we are always on the lookout for stories that are real, relevant, and resonant. We work tirelessly to provide seamless entertainment to our viewers which they can enjoy from any device, anytime, across multiple languages and genres. Content partnerships help us bolster our content library by adding diverse content and help with customer acquisition and engagement. Such value-driven partnerships also help ZEE5 to strengthen its positioning as the platform of choice for consumers and for passionate content creators alike.
Have these tie-ups also increased your footfalls in major geographies and demographics?
Yes, these tie-ups have certainly bolstered our presence, not only in major geographies and demographics but also in key Tier II and III regions, further strengthening our pan-India footprint. ‘Entertainment Inclusion’ while democratizing access to bespoke entertainment content, especially for all the underserved markets and audiences, has been a key priority for us. The overwhelming response and traffic that we’ve received in the past two years is a testament to how well our entire library has been doing, not just the content courtesy these two tie-ups.
The new campaign ‘Dekhtey Reh Jaogey’, the strategy behind this and the timing? Why Sara and Amol as the brand face?
With access to smartphones and the internet at an economical rate, millions of viewers today are binge-watching content across the country, including smaller towns and cities. With ‘DekhteyRehJaogey’ we want to make quality content accessible to consumers at an affordable price in their desired language at the click of a button. Through this campaign, we have a special focus to tap into a wider chunk of the 18-34-year age bracket which currently forms a substantial chunk of our consumer base. Priced at just Rs. 499/-, ‘DekhteyRehJaogey’ will empower this section to easily unlock access to our vast content library spanning 2L+ hours of content, inclusive of 2800+ movies and 150+ web series, across 12 different languages and multiple genres.
Coming to why Sara and Amol, the key reason was their huge follower base across the country, especially the youth. They are exuberant, enthusiastic; love experimenting, and understand quality content. All these align with what we at ZEE5 stand for as well. We are delighted to have them on-board and hope to achieve maximum reach for ‘Dekhtey Reh Jaogey’ with their support.
Now ZEE5 at 499, is this to garner more subscriptions?
As the Multilingual Storyteller for millions of entertainment seekers, our core objective has always been to democratize access to bespoke purposeful entertainment across genres without language being a barrier. This year, our goal is to drive ‘Entertainment Inclusion’, by on boarding millions of digital consumers from newer/underserved markets. The competitive pricing of ₹499/- is to ensure more people get access to our rich content library; subscriptions are a by-product of consumers finding value in what you offer. With this new pricing, viewers will have an influx of unlimited entertainment that is both captivating and binge-worthy, spanning 12+ Indian languages featuring a host of web series, movies (Original and theatricals), TVF shows, Live TV, Alt Balaji shows, Ad-free Catch-up TV, Zindagi TV shows, kids’ content, and much more.
Any more initiatives in the pipeline?
As mentioned earlier, this year we plan to launch 50+ theatricals and 40+ web series across 12+ languages. In addition to the compelling content slate, strategic alliances and exciting partnerships are also in the pipeline. As we proceed, we will unfold all the plans that we have for our viewers.
