Exclusive | Fearless at heart: Bindaas' Bikram Duggal

Bindaas is all set to launch ‘Yeh Hai Aashiqui’, a show which deals with love and relationships. It will focus on unconventional love stories and be presented to audiences in a dramatized format. Relationships have always been an important part of a youth’s life and hence the new show is based on this thought.

The youth general entertainment channel from Disney has been known to air love based reality shows in the past but Yeh Hai Aashiqui will showcase true and unusual love stories. Testimonials from people who were actually involved in the real stories at the end of the show will be an added attraction in this new offering from Bindass.  The show will go live from 25th August 2013 at 7 p.m.

For their upcoming show the channel has planned extensive marketing initiatives in the digital space. The channel is making full efforts to take its brand where the youth are and hence have planned innovative initiatives to engage with them.

Adgully caught up with Bikram Duggal, Director, Marketing, Media Networks, Disney UTV, to gain more insights about the show.

The conversation with Duggal began with him speaking about the concept of the show and how the thought emerged.  He briefed us saying, “This show is basically based on the insight that relationships are one of the most important parts of youth's lives and this was one of the reasons for Bindass to come up with this new show, Yeh Hai Aashiqui.”

“We did loads of research, and constant consumer research was done with young people to find out more about things meaningful to them and that is what we have tried to utilise in our show. Today a relationship, is one of the key priorities among young people who are the channel’s TG and hence from channel’s perspective we have taken it very strongly and we’ve showcased multiple facets of relationship in our show. It is different from our show Emotional Atyachar which dealt with betrayals whereas this show is based on trials and hardships people face in relationships and these love stories are not linear,” added Duggal.

Coming to the content part, the show will not showcase a regular love story, but unique and difficult love stories. The show will have stories where a woman stuck in a bad marriage  falls in love with a young boy in the neighbourhood or  about a young woman who falls in love with a terminally ill patient.

Earlier the youth channel had taken the digital route during IPL to reach out to their main target audience through  platforms like Facebook , Twitter and Youtube. They were giving out behind the scenes insights on cricketer’s wives and how they were egging on and cheering or their spouses as they battled for India on the cricket pitch.

Duggal, sharing with us the marketing plans for this show said, “For Yeh Hai Aashiqui, we have a full-fledged marketing plan to create maximum reach and impact. Starting off with digital plans which we will be doing on Facebook and Twitter we have created a Facebook app called ‘F.L.A.M.E.S. which is an entertaining relationship game that predicts the relationship you will have with the person whose name you enter; be it friendship, love, attraction, marriage, enemy or sibling. Also running on Facebook is a quiz named ‘How crazy is your love?’ which will judge how crazy or not users are  in their current relationship. Twitter will be circulating love stories in 140 characters with the hashtag, #YehHaiAashiqui and create conversations around it. ”

For the very first time for this show the channel has organised a contest on Instagram for the First Ever Instagram Movie to create further buzz for the show. For this contest, Bindass will upload a promo that will showcase half a story, leaving the latter end open to interpretation. Those participating need to complete the story in 15 seconds and upload it on their Instagram page, tagging Bindass. The three clips with the highest number of likes will each win a Canon mark 550D. The winners also get a chance to make a short movie with duration of 1 minute which will be posted on Instagram and could be aired on the channel as a vignette.

He went on to say, “Today youth are more receptive to digital and social media platforms. They engage well with all digital and social mediums. Smartphones have increased the level of engagement amongst the youth. We got 6,000 responses in four days through a video which was circulated on smartphones. On Facebook we have 3 million fans on our fan page and everyday 1000 people are engaging with content there, with that 4 lakh people are talking about us and this kind of engagement and induction works well for us only on these mediums in comparison to other mediums.”  Part of their plans include going to 40 cities and also  promoting on their network channels such as Movies, Star and Action with 1800 spots. Theatres will run the promos of ‘Yeh Hai Aashiqui’ during the movies  that are expected to release in the next one month. An out of home campaign too will be launched in Mumbai and Delhi.

For Bindaas digital and social media platform have worked well in past and even for this show they are extensively using this platform to engage with the youth.

Vini Cosmetics has come on board as the title sponsor of the show while a couple of other  associate sponsors too are expected to join the team soon.

The cast includes several well-known actors from the  Indian television industry who will be seen portraying different characters on the show. The show will be hosted by Vikrant Massey who was last seen in film Lootera and is currently seen in Zee’s Qubool Hai.

“All our shows are based on one notion which is ‘Fearless at Heart’ and it reflects through the insights that we get from our consumers. The whole concept is about being frank, fun loving and fearless and channel will always stick by it,” concluded Duggal.

The subject matter viz. dealing with relationships has always been a priority for Bindaas and their new show focuses on specific aspects of relationships faced by the youth presently. To know more about the show tune into Yeh Hai Aashiqui which is all set to launch on 25th August 7 p.m. only on Bindaas.