MUMBAI: Love just got difficult to get. With 16 youngsters fighting with each other to not only win a show, but to also (ostensibly) find love, Splitsvilla 6 has got all the right ingredients to make the perfect youth sizzler. The latest season promises to be ‘Hotter than Hell‘ with lots of scintillating moments and breathtaking participants which are definitely pleasing to the eyes. Not to miss, are the trademark back-stabbing, hating and fighting elements adding the required spice to the tale. Splitsvilla Seaason 6 promises to have higher doses of all these and much more to sustain and increase its cult following among the young and restless.
The tagline very aptly says ‘Hotter than Hell‘ and to make the show as hot as hell, Viacom18 has launched an interesting campaign introducing newer elements, targeting both digital and Out of Home (OOH) media. The show has been created by an in-house creative team, headed by Bhavya Sharma.
The network has roped in Fiama De Wills, Karbonn Mobiles, Zinga and Kama Sutra as sponsors for this season. Revealing further details, MTV business head Aditya Swamy says: “We have integrated our sponsors in the show. We are giving exclusive coverage to them by having exclusive Fiama and Karbonn tasks. We also have their logo presence during the show.”
So what‘s new? The sexy siren Sherlyn Chopra will be the all new sizzling co-host. (We thought Nikhil Chinappa was sexy enough: editor chuckles). Also, the popular ‘Break up Diary‘ segment wherein the female contestants narrated their break-up stories to introduce themselves will now also feature the male contestants. Well, ofcourse, what is more interesting than a bunch of ‘hot‘, bare-chested men talk about how they faced and ‘survived‘ heartbreak, right?
The channel tells us that extensive research has gone into this season to better understand the pulse of the young generation. The research team, headed by Sumeli Chatterjee tried to spot the current trend. “Changes in Splitsvilla 6 have been created based on the opinion from our research group, whom we refer to as trend spotters,” says Swamy.
After research, it was time for the right kind of promotion and what better way than to target the buzzing college campuses. MTV reached out to around 200 college campuses across India, including Kolkata, Lucknow and Chandigarh, during its pre-launch. They also hired campus ambassadors for ‘word of mouth‘ marketing. “We have promoted the show in a big way, keeping 20-30 per cent of our total advertising budget only for social and digital platforms,” informs Bhattacharya.
It‘s the digital front where Splitsvilla aims to create the maximum buzz. “MTV Splitsvilla is the ideal product to proliferate on digital media,” says a media observer. “It‘s for young people who zoom in like bees on outlets such as Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and it‘s about relationships. Hence, it‘s good its building up itself on digital media.”
With a humongous 2.7 million likes and 1.5 million active fans on Facebook, more than 3500 avid Twitter followers, MTVSplitsvilla 6 has managed to carve a decent online following for itself.
But, apart from the usually explored territories of Facebook and Twitter, Splitsvilla ventures into the space of mobile apps and also includes a fan mobilising concept.
“We have learnt a lot from MTV Roadies and have applied those lessons to Splitsvilla 6,” says MTV digital head Eklavya Bhattacharya. “What we have done within the digital space has helped us gain a lot of recognition worldwide as one of the best initiatives.”
What more?! Remember that sweet little angel of a daughter in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai? Yes, she is Sana Saeed who was recently seen in Karan Johar‘s college flick Student of the year as a co- lead (read hot bimbo), Splitvilla 6 gets you a web show featuring ‘Sexy Sana‘ who will be analysing (read: Bitching) about all that the contestants did in the televised episode each weekend.
Swamy adds: “Sexy Sana is an exclusively new property this season, which gives Sana‘s takes and reviews on extended videos, unedited parts and behind the scene clippings of the show.”
Entering in the app world, the channels has added ‘I Dubba‘, which allows its 50 million viewers to not only tweet to the show on air, but also chat with fellow fans. Another interesting app is ‘Tickr 2 fame‘, which helps viewers to tweet and chat on Facebook, these conversations are shown on the show.
The additions have helped Splitsvilla connect with its audience. “We have seen a 100 per cent rise in the response from the audience with the addition of new apps. On each show we get 300- 400 people chatting on I Dubba and 1,000 to 2,000 people tweeting on Tickr to Fame,” informs Bhattacharya.
With five episodes already aired, let‘s wait and watch how impressive these new additions prove to be for brands Splitsvilla.
Recap of previous seasons of Splitsvilla…
Splitsvilla Battleground – has been the highlight of all seasons. Being one of the medium to get selected for the show, by performing a task given ‘on the spot‘, this section of Splitsvilla still engages maximum audiences.
Audiosodes – an application though which one can listen to entire show in the voice of popular video jockey, J. Man.
Hottie of the Day – get likes and comments on facebook.
Urban Cupid – text articles about love relationship and break ups on facebook pages.
Splitsvilla Prediction App – It is a proper live prediction and live betting engine for making virtual money. This is available on Vas platforms and these have been distributed to mobile
operators across the country.
