MUMBAI: It’s hardly a week since Disney India rebranded its movie channel UTV Movies, and now the network has consolidated its two channels — that is bindass and bindass Play. Along with that, in its promise to be omni-present across platforms, bindass will launch an OTT platform for the millennials who want to consume content on-the-go.
The brand bindass will undergo a transformation this month-end, and after the consolidation with bindass, what will happen to bindass Play is anybody’s guess.
With the addition of OTT, bindass will have complete presence across linear and digital platforms, providing the users with more opportunities to interact with the brand. Also, the bindass channel will represent a variety of content in a refreshing new packaging.
Disney media networks and interactive vice president Abhishek Maheshwari said, “The first big initiative we are taking is that we are launching a bindass app in the next few weeks. The idea is to interact with our consumer directly and they can view all our content on one place and to create an engaging platform. We will start with the content we have and, going forward, we will start building content on the basis of consumer preference — this is the key initiative we are doing with bindass.”
About the ad rate, Disney India says it believes in going with story and finding out the best deal to integrate the brand in the content.
The network is bringing together branded content, original shows, contemporary music and movies on a single platform – bindass. “The second is that — we are re-packaging bindass. As we look at the evolution of the brand, bindass was launched a decade ago, and the brand stood for entertainment for the millennials, the core remains the same but how stories are told is evolving, and now when we will have a digital presence not on just one platform but on multi-platform along with the linear presence while coming up with the bindass’ new look.”
bindass Play was launched in 2014, when Siddharth Roy-Kapoor was heading Disney India. bindass Play replaced UTV Stars as the network wanted to build on a youth-centric brand.
The channel was launched with 13 shows like Tia’s request, Tweet Meri Beat, Ishq Messenger and among others, allowing viewers to choose his/her playlist from social media.
The rebranded channel will have more music and movies, 13 hours of Hindi music spread across the day, every day, starting with five hours of uninterrupted hit in the morning including viewers’ favorite Selfie Wala request show and two-hour block of Tia’s Request show injects a ton load of energy in the evening.
Four hours of great stories are to be enjoyed through the day including everyone’s favorite Yeh Hai Aashiqui and the latest show in the bindass stable – Dil Buffering, which launches on 29 September. The weekends have a little extra with a movie every afternoon on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
“For Dil Buffering, we have a fairly aggressive marketing campaign around that. We will be pushing the brand bindass, not the channel bindass,” Maheshwari added.
Maheshwari informed: “In music, we see lots of engagement from the audience, therefore we will go with 13 hours’ music. We have also done social media integration, and we will continue to do more. Also, we have seen a decent amount of interest in movies. We will have movies in the slot called Filmwaag. The idea is to air movies that appeal to the youth.”
Last year, with Girl in the City (followed by The Trip and Girl In The City Chapter 2), bindass led the wave of disruption with an omni-content, multi-platform strategy to win over millennials in a rapidly evolving digital space with outstanding success.
“We launched three major web series Girl In the City season 1, 2 and The Trip, and we saw phenomenal success. We have got 180 million views across Facebook and Youtube. The core of web — whichever format and medium they are using — is great storytelling, and that’s what brand bindass stands for. Also these are the sponsored content, we worked with brands. We integrate their stories as the part of the content but the core again be true to the story. Even the music was independently featured on Hungama, iTunes etc.”
bindass will now welcome a slew of new series which will kick off with the launch of Dil Buffering and TereLiye Bro in the next two months.
The 10-episodic series Dil Buffering is a love story which will go on air from 29 September at 7pm time slot with simulcast on all Youtube Facebook and TV. The channel has tied up with brands like Micromax, Tinder, Sofy and Ginger by lifestyle. The channel is in talks for their next web series.
