Exclusive | Zee Studio climbs the ladder post repositioning

English entertainment genre has been one of the most fragmented genres in India from the last couple of years. Broadcasters are trying their best to figure out what suits the Indian audience and somewhere they have succeeded in doing that.

Channels have been putting their best foot forward to attract more eyeballs. Like we know, the television industry works on a weekly basis when it comes to ratings. Every week all the channels showcase different genres of movies in their respective collections to make to most of what they have.

One such player is Zee Studio which has consistently being trying to make a mark ever since they repositioned themselves in November last year. They introduced premium properties like “Studio Binge”, “Super Studio” and “The One” airing blockbuster movies and that has definitely helped them grow.

For the last two weeks, the channel is cemented on the number three position in the genre and according to reports received by their team they have a market share of 14% for week 05-06’15.

In the midst of all this, we at Adgully caught up with Sharlton Menezes, ‎Head - Content & Marketing, Zee Studio & Zee Café to know about how the strategies that have worked for them.

On enquiring about the position they stand at this point Menezes tells us, “We did not do any specific study, but one thing we realized that there was enough space to showcase movies in the genre that we had seen shrinking and build a stronger place in it. So what we did was, we procured a bigger library and enhanced the current collection that we have and chased the space.”

He adds, “We acquired movies which were relevant and a lot of planning behind what time, which movie in the prime time. We’re a leading channel in prime time too in the slots, 9pm, 11pm, 7pm. We started promoting our movies far differently than earlier. Packaging changed with that. We made our movies seem more appealing. We also had a new proposition so as to try the fact that we have all of Hollywood on our channel, be it comedy, be it action or may it be adventure films. We also made sure that we have the strongest brand from Hollywood, so we have both the Kung Fu Pandas, we have Madagascar, and we have also lined up The Godfather series.”

Various channels have various properties and so does Zee Studio. Menezes tells us that these are different properties. He said, “Primarily nobody could have put the properties out the way we did. What we did was we tried and put up, we had a property called Double M which we showed throughout the year and we kept reinforcing movies back to back to see the behaviour that the viewer’s spent and we’ve seen results on it.”

Maintaining the position is a difficult task. Menezes tells us, “We have got an exhaustive library and going ahead also we will show selected titles which have been relevant and we have enough ammunition to go and this is just the beginning of the show. You should see more of this in the months to come and keep cementing our position.  Our aim is to be in the top three cemented for the year and hopefully reach out to be the number one in the year.”

On the other hand he tells us, “The movies we will show are going to be the popular blockbusters. Driving the fact that we do not see a particular genre of movie but we will try and embed a mix of genre. So it may be comedy, for action we have a great collection, if its superhero we will be showing Ironman 3. So the overall collection is going to be derived from all of Zee Studio. Therefore Studio signifies ‘all that fits one destination’.”

We should hold our breaths because the channel is soon going to be introducing something new. Though Menezes couldn’t give us much detail on the same, he did mention that we might see some more premium properties in the year to come.

When asked Sanjay Tripathy, Senior Executive Vice President, HDFC Life about how they are best they are using this genre he said,  "We use English Movies to target the Aflluent male and niche English viewer. Depending on the specific campaign objectives, we choose the top 2-3 channels from the English movies genre. This choice is done basis the Channel Share and Effective Rate for the channels."

He adds,  "However, since this genre is niche and highly dependent on the programming and movie titles, a program/movie led qualitative filter is often applied. We have drilled down even to a title level in the campaign period to select one channel over the other." 

It is somewhere difficult to achieve stickiness from a specific channel. Tripathy adds, "I believe stickiness is within the genre or the movies being played and not so much on a specific channel. If an awaited movie is on, it can turn to an appointment viewing; otherwise it is pretty much switching to the best film within the genre."  By Archit Ambekar | Twitter: @aambarchit