Addictive content is at the heart of Voot's business: Gaurav Gandhi

Viacom18 has embarked on a marketing drive for its digital VOD service, Voot. In a massive push, Voot is unleashing a national marketing campaign with a special focus on the top six markets of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. The campaign has been launched with the objective of making Voot a preferred destination for quality entertainment content consumption through over the top (OTT) services.

The campaign, which breaks today (May 18) includes airing of the ad films during primetime across all Viacom18 channels. The massive digital push includes takeover of the home pages of The Times of India, MSN, Rediff, Dailyhunt and YouTube mastheads. Along with this, Facebook innovations are also in the pipeline. Extensive mass media push across outdoor media and radio has also been planned. Voot will be carrying out exclusive radio activations in partnership with Radio Mirchi and Radio City.

With over 17,000 hours of programming (across languages and genres), including TV shows, blockbuster movies, cartoon shows Voot Originals, the VOD service assures its viewers of great content that is addictive in nature. The campaign leans on the insight that when one is addicted, they need to get their fix as soon as possible and as often as they can. Any interruptions tend to make them restless.

Commenting on the launch of the brand campaign, Gaurav Gandhi, COO, Viacom18 Digital Ventures, said, “Content is at the heart of this business and therefore, our marketing campaign also needed to revolve around the addictive nature of the content available on Voot. All our efforts have been to create the Voot experience – both in terms of content and the product offering – that will leave our viewers addicted and therefore keep coming back for more anytime and anywhere. And that is the singular message that you will see in all our communication – You are most happy when you Voot, but being away from Voot will leave you restless and wanting wanting for more!”

Ayyappan Raj, Executive Vice President, Mullen Lintas, which has conceptualised the campaign, added here, “With the kind of content Voot plans to offer and the anytime, anywhere access to it, we wanted the brand to take the high ground on entertainment. The greatest attribute of great quality content that is available on your terms is that it can be quite addictive. Hence, through this campaign, the brand promises that ‘The Voot content is so good that you will never want to be away from it’. We are excited with the way the entire campaign has shaped up.”

Speaking more on the Voot platform, Gandhi said that so far over 3 million people had sampled the service so far.

The campaign

The campaign comprises three TVCs with different protagonists in each of the films – a woman, a kid and a young boy – thereby highlighting the appeal of content available on Voot catering to multiple TGs. The TVCs highlight Voot’s key proposition of having content so addictive that once you start watching, you just can’t stop (Ek bar watching toh non-stop wanting).

The films start with showing the protagonist watching one’s favourite content on Voot completely engrossed and the viewing gets interrupted because of a situation that is not in their control. And they are forced to move away from their phone. While the interruption continues, our protagonist is shown to be helplessly looking back at his/her phone screen with Voot playing on it. With every passing second that keeps them away from the phone, the agony increases and the craving to getting back to Voot becomes unbearable. There comes an inflection point when they can’t wait anymore and the burst of restlessness leads to a dive towards their phone and start Voot-ing again.

Viacom18 has a planned an aggressive media campaign for Voot that includes all Viacom18 network channels as well as several other third party channels in the Hindi Movies, English movie, News, kids, Infotainment, lifestyle and music genres across languages.

With the marketing blitz, Voot will also launch the first two Voot Originals – Sinskari and Chinese Bhasad. ‘Chinese Bhassad’ is a web-series written by Raahil Qaazi (co-writer of ‘Do Dooni Chaar’) and directed and produced by Saurabh Tewari. ‘Sinskari’, produced by Monozygotic, is a ‘sinful’ chat show with the ‘Sanskari’ Babuji Alok Nath.

Voot will shortly be launching two more originals – Badman, a web original mocumentary film starring Gulshan Grover; and Soadies, a sitcom tribute to the iconic reality show ‘Roadies’, starring Baba Sehgal.