Star Plus | Sparkt

BACKGROUND

LEGACY BRAND THAT CHAMPIONS A PROGRESSIVE PHILOSOPHY

Star Plus commands a substantial footprint reaching over 170 mn million viewers all over the country. Star Plus, has always upheld the cause of gender equality, encouraging women to stand up for their identity. Star Plus, believes that when her limitless potential gets unshackled, she has the power to impact and influence her world.

In line with the philosophy, Star Plus in 2017 challenged age-old gender stereotypes stimulating nationwide conversations in the country through the brand philosophy of “Nayi Soch”.

CHALLENGE 1

LEND SCALE & DELIVER IMPACT WITH ‘NAYI SOCH’ , NOT JUST BRAND SPEAK BUT AN EMBODIMENT OF THE BRAND

APPROACH & OUTCOME

CREATING MAGNANIMOUS IMPACT THROUGH TRENDSETTING DISRUPTIONS

‘Nayi Soch’ was announced by leveraging the biggest sport in the country that is dominated by males to break a gender biased tradition at a scale never seen before. The manifestation was larger than life with India’s cricket icons – MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane proudly donned their mother’s name on their jersey instead of their father’s in a live International match

CHAMPIONING THE PHILOSOPHY BY LEVERAGING TOPICAL APERTUREs

Star Plus, continued to reinforce ‘Nayi Soch’ by challenging orthodoxy and age-old gender stereotypes by identifying relevant topical apertures.

WOMEN’S DAY - As a Women’s day special, the brand paired with Aamir Khan to turn the spotlight on one of nation's biggest social issue with a global - first thought &Daughters . The film emphasized the fact that daughters are equally capable of bringing laurels to their families

MOTHER’S DAY - was yet another relevant opportunity that celebrated the impact that a mother has on her child’s life articulated as #MadebyMom as a campaign thought. #Madebymom was uniquely articulated through a music video led by singer & composer Mohit Chauhan and further elevated with Star Plus characters contributing their Made By Mom life stories.

CHALLENGE 2

Affinity for a channel is built through its content, however affinity to the content is driven by it’s characters. This makes it critical for the channel to narrow the divide between the audience & their favourite characters to enable a deeper connection with the brand.

INSIGHT

Relatability, affinity & love for characters deepens only when they go beyond the context of the show & intersperse with everyday life

BUILDING CHARACTER AFFINITY

Character building & affinity require the character units to step out of their immediate domain, going beyond the show story, attaching context that is relatable to the everyday and has interactions/ interventions with the real world

Context & Topicality - For Har Shakh Pe Ullu Baitha Hain, a political satire, the central character Chaitu Lal was brought alive with him commenting in context to trending issues that plague the current political scenario in the country - unemployment, population, reservation, crime, etc.

Creating parallel long format content - Aaj Ki Adaalat, one of the most widely known shows in the country became a schematic to model A parody that ensued used a host interrogating Chaitu Lal the central character in the presence of the public and his family. The film got the audience up, close and personal with Chaitu Lal’s blatant character, ambitions and idiosyncrasies.

The propaganda campaign spread across digital platforms with branded content at its core was an astounding success and Chaitu Lal’s character found his way into the hearts of his voters - the audience

Making ‘character’ relatable to the everyday. - For Kulfi, exploration of the character began from the lens of threading individual aspects of the character core - carefree response to the world, no cognisance to the malicious, cuteness, happiness that is an outcome, innocence, purity, dance. Focused on character building with music as a key and Kullfi’s character and her love for singing and making songs, original 30 seconder video capsules were crafted as web exclusive songs on things she is likely to see in her surrounding and sing about with 30 seconders

Leveraging mobile to intersperse characters with everyday life - Segments & Memorable Moments from various shows of Star Plus were threaded basis characters and their traits, relationship dynamics, iconic dialogues & moments, reactions integrated through a custom channel in the ‘Vyng’ app. The platform allowed users to assign these videos to their near & dear ones every time they call, making delight possible in everyday conversations. This allowed for an opportunity to get into the lives of the consumers reinforcing relatability & aiding long term recall for the shows, characters & thus the brand

CHALLENGE 3

Star Plus as a GEC channel has myriad of shows, however the consumption trends show lack of participation from younger cohorts

INSIGHT

Younger populace seek unique experiences and look at the world through their screens. Conventional, linear frameworks that most brands deploy no longer seem relevant to the audience.

Making it critical to create stimuli which can be leveraged to create memorable experiences that are agile, multi-platform, multi-device.

BREAKING THE FRAME - STORYTELLING ELEVATED THROUGH IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES

Star Plus has been a first mover in delivering elevated experiences, right from Haptic sensory inputs on banners, to 360 degree videos that deliver an immersive experience to being the first Hindi GEC to deploy a facebook video masthead.

First ever haptic innovation was delivered for a show POW, where excerpts from the show were converted into a unique multi-sensory cinematic experience by combining binaural audio along with tactile effects to the trailer’s most intense moments (every time gun-shots were fired). Giving the viewers a chance to immerse in an intense gunfight along the border & to get into the skin of the characters through the vibrations they could feel generated by the smart phones internal motors and the binaural audio design of the content.

LIVE content, with all its challenges was intrinsic to efforts with campaigns dominated with a second screen experience form Nach Baliye 8 to the grand culmination of TED Talks Nayi Soch hosted by Shahrukh Khan as a half hour LIVE interaction on Facebook.

Socially powered non-linear storytelling driven through Innovative content formats enabled thumb-stopping discovery & real world impact. Evidently reflected 8th season of Nach Baliye racking up close to a billion views on social media. followed by Dance+ 3!

Social Experiments as a content marketing format - -Speakers at TED talks India Nayi Soch covered a range of topics. The magnification was provided by an interesting exercise - TED Social Experiments which allowed for the thought to be manifested through a real life reflection. Social experiments as a content marketing format lend a mirror for people to react, reflect & proving to be an effective modality.

Unapologetic Walking

Andar Ka Sona

Success Vs Happiness

Contextual Platform Interventions - To allow for an involved sampling experience, it was critical to aberrate the usual common parlance of consumption. Leveraging the hotstar ecosystem, a first it’s kind mid-roll ads were integrated with Hotstar content where Chaitu Lal abruptly appeared in the videos to deliver a promise in context to the show being watched and the characters.

Leveraging a relevant & polarising stimuli - Younger cohorts gravitate towards stimulus that is polarising and is relevant to the cultural fabric. Thus for Ikyawann, story of a girl named Susheel who challenges the existing norms of society, a powerful polarising stimulus was crafted to invoke substantial conversation through #notshaadimaterial

The activity began with a question to all men asking what do they mean by a girl being Shaadi Material. The outcome was shockingly representative of the age old mindset in the country and was packaged as a vox-pop and proved to be a strong catalyst to drive responses from women questioning the defined mould and taking a stand proclaiming they were proudly #NotShaadiMaterial Supplementing the activity with the effective content marketing that packaged #notshaadimaterial as listicles, articles published through relevant publications. This enabled targeted discovery accounting for a huge upsurge in conversations and a substantial SOV.

The output was substantial with the exercise generating higher organic uptake

Character building efforts led to high-points of engagement in turn scaling up the total reach