Marketing ShOTTs with Shuvadip Banerjee, Chief Digital Marketing Officer at ITC Foods

Marketing ShOTTs – a platform for CMOs and industry thought-leaders to gather and share insights, tips, and trends from the world of advertising that fuel marketing strategies for top brands.

In its latest edition, Shuvadip Banerjee, Chief Digital Marketing Officer at ITC Foods, talks about their brand strategy, and throws light on hosting the much-loved show – Bingo! Comedy Adda – on Disney+ Hotstar.

Bingo! is associated with youth, fun, and excitement. What is the brand’s marketing strategy?

Yes, Bingo! is a brand that represents fun and quirk, and our marketing strategy focuses on creating innovative products and humorous content that leaves a mark on the audience’s minds. As a business with products that cater to the youth, we feel a constant need to evolve and remain relevant in a world that is always changing. We understand the pulse of the youth and leverage comedy and gaming as mediums to connect and engage with them. This has enabled us to stand out and make our presence felt in the modern world.

With Gen Z and millennials being your target audience, what is your preferred media mix to catch their attention?

For the last two years, we have been heavily leveraging the digital medium. We noticed a significant shift in digital usage and a behavioral change in people’s online content consumption as the adoption of OTT platforms saw an upsurge. Earlier, Bingo! Comedy Adda was aired on TV and our social handles, however, with the uptick in OTT viewership, we saw a great opportunity to build brand awareness and affinity amongst the digital-first audiences. We collaborated with Disney+ Hotstar for the 2022 edition of Bingo! Comedy Adda. As a brand, we are always looking for newer ways to connect with our audiences, and hence, every medium plays an imperative role in helping us build brand association amongst the youth of India. Our core audience’s presence on Disney+ Hotstar and the increasing content consumption on the platform made it a perfect match for the show. In fact, the mid-campaign analysis by the platform reflected high viewership in top metro cities, with 70% of viewers between the ages of 16 to 34, which comprises our core TG.  

Please tell us a little bit more about Bingo! Comedy Adda?

Bingo! Comedy Adda as a concept has been around for almost seven years. It is our take on stand-up comedy. We identified that comedy and e-gaming are avenues for the youth to destress and unwind. The youth love these genres as they are means that alleviate anxiety and engage them. They offer both entertainment and a communitarian experience. We started Bingo! Comedy Adda as an initiative to connect with the youth, and hence at first, we leveraged college integrations and on-ground activities to catch their attention. However, the pandemic put a stop to on-ground events, so we swiftly moved to host the show on digital platforms. Bingo! Comedy Adda is a show that houses India’s top comedians under one roof, where they fill the room with entertainment and laughter. The idea is in line with the brand’s personality.

What makes Disney+ Hotstar an apt platform for streaming the show?

We wanted to connect with the young, digital-first audiences who are today heavy consumers of content on digital platforms. Being India’s largest streaming platform, Disney+ Hotstar was key in our strategy to reach this audience. GenZs and millennials are cord-cutters, making it crucial for us to be present on platforms that highly engage with them. Hence, we shifted gears to drive awareness through digital. To amplify the show’s reach, we opted for a 360-degree approach on digital, where we created snackable content to engage with a larger audience. Our content pieces were well-rounded, created keeping in mind our core audience’s interests and content consumption behavior. With Disney+ Hotstar, our audiences can access the content on-the-go, or at least be aware of our show even if they are watching something else on the platform.

How would you evaluate the success of your partnership with Disney+ Hotstar?

While consumers liking the content is vanity, we want them to engage and interact with our content. And that’s the base of creating a show like Bingo! Comedy Adda. The consumers should be able to connect with the show, laugh along, and love the content. Even as the episodes are live on the platform, we continually share behind-the-scenes (BTS) and bloopers from the show to ensure that we drive our audiences onto the platform to watch the show. Through comments and shares on our social media posts and even the engagement that the show has managed to create on the comedians’ personal social media handles, we have received a very positive response and review of the show. Our mid-campaign reports indicate strong engagement on surround chatter. The results of the mid-campaign analysis done by Disney+ Hostar indicate significant uplifts across key metrics such as awareness, association, and purchase intent. Even as the campaign is ongoing, we have seen a +4% uplift in overall brand awareness, even more in the North markets with a +7% uplift. Simultaneously, on purchase intent, we saw an overall uplift of +3% and a good +5% uplift in the North markets. The show is appealing to our male and female audiences alike and has clocked in a daily watch time of 13-14 mins per user.