Adgully Exclusive | Steadily moving up the ladder; Aiming for No. 1 spot in English movie genre: Sony PIX's Amogh Dusad

With a lineup of engaging, entertaining and superlative content mix of movies and sporting events, PIX has been succeeding in engaging with its audiences and drawing in viewers consistently. The movie genre till about some time back was thought to be a very niche genre, but with the entry of big players and with the efforts they undertook the genre no longer is viewed as a niche genre . After giving a tough competition to HBO, Sony Pix has reached at the number two position. Their properties like, Their newest volley to counter the competition "The Sunday Breakout' has helped them again in coming to the forefront.The channel has consistently delivered on the expectations with blockbusters like The Hurt Locker, Oliver Stone's South Of The Border, Slumdog Millionaire, Michael Jackson's concert film This is It, and Push.

While speaking exclusively with Adgully, Amogh Dusad, Vice President and Head - Programming PIX at Sony Entertainment Television, shared some insights about their success.

Speaking about whether they are pushing the envelope to go forward, he said, "Yes we have always been doing that and have been clearly on the track from past ten to twelve months. The year 2011 started with a big strategic shift towards acquisition. We had a good strong long term arrangement with the Sony studios so that we can premier all the movies of 2011 and will be doing this for the next year as well. So that has been a very big push. It is really heartening to see the response of the consumers and we are essentially at a very very strong place challenging the brands like Star movies, HBO which have been there since long."

The channel is known for its unique and innovative initiatives to promote its "star' titles e.g. last month with reference to Oscar award winning film "The Hurt Locker' premiering on the channel, it tied up with the local Bomb Detection & Disposal Squad in the metros to honor the efforts taken by the BDDS in protecting our country. Through this initiative, the channel provided them with a platform to help them share their real life experiences and help our people recognize the efforts they put in to keep the people safe in their city

The best part of their performance is that it has been steady, stable and with some amount of planning at place. He says, "We knew that we will reach at this point. It was our aim. We had planned at every month to reach there. That is the reason you can see big movies like social networking, salt etc on Sony pix. We have showcased all the big movies up till now."

On asking about how his rich GEC experience will benefit the channel and if he could share two key insights that will work for Pix, Dusad said, "GECs and English movie genre are two different worlds. There we used to cater to female audience and here it has changed to cater a wide range of consumer audience. The common part is that because the GECs involve a lot of content creation and consumer satisfaction is the integral part of their strategies and similarly in our whole channel presentation we acquire consumer satisfaction as quickly as possible and as early as possible so that you can even predict the performance of your channel."

Further explaining his point, he said, "The other thing that GECs have ingrained to you is the power of scale, so you will be looking to kind of push the boundaries. One would try pushing in the things that have not been done in that genre and so we have initiated a couple of them and we obviously cannot do everything according to the GEC set up because it cannot be adopted in this platform."

So after conquering HBO, the team now moves towards taking over the no 1 channel of the genre. He says, "The biggest challenge for us is to target the no 1 player of the channel in the coming quarters. We want to move up the ladder. We planned at the outset in taking on the no two position and I think it was this part of the year when we started working in the direction of taking over the no 2 position from HBO because we as a policy do not dwell much on weekly fluctuations or weekly numbers. "

TAM data revealed this week brings some joy for English movie channel Sony PIX. During the week 47: PIX had beaten Star Movies in Prime Time whereas during week 46: PIX took over Star Movies and HBO in all day and during week 45 also PIX had beaten HBO in Prime Time and was no. 1 in all day slot

Dusad adds, "So as per the entire year that has gone by, we have been ahead of HBO and this convinces and motivates us as they can't catch up the lead. So 2011 is our year. And this convincing and stable performance which will now be taken to the clients, to the consumers, to the advertisers and will prove that we are not talking about one week numbers, some market or some TG but we are essentially comprehensively ahead of them."

Talking about their most appreciated property, Sunday Breakout, which has been a stunner for the channel. He says, "During the launch week itself we were at the top position, which is really appreciating. The launch was really phenomenal. We wanted to give the consumers a better time to relax as Sunday afternoon is the time when people want to sit and relax so we wanted to cater that need. We have picked up all the most wanted and waited movies."

Well with so much planning and homework, the channel has marked its presence with its innovations and uniqueness. If we talk about advertising, we could see the channel really active in this side; regular marketing promotions and campaigns that help advertisers gain higher visibility. Number of categories has increased substantially and their hot properties such as Awesome Saturdays and Sunday Breakout has added flavor to the advertiser's bouquet. Sony Pix has many sponsors in different categories Nestle, Nivea, Loreal, Olay, Tata Docomo, Reliance, Idea, Hyundai, Tata Motors, Honda, General Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Kerala Tourism, Australia Tourism, Bestylish.com, Myntra.com, Yatra. With this we at Adgully wishes the entire team a great success ahead. | By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal(at)adgully.com]