MUMBAI: Every Thursday is a reality check for the channels and its shows. And more so when it gets a new show onboard. The success of any marketing campaign is reflected in the ratings and so when Sony Entertainment Television launched its new soap Kehta Hai Dil…Jee Le Zara, it built a big marketing campaign to create the right buzz to get good viewership numbers.
Sony which is the highest gainer this week, as it added 48,804 TVTs (Television Viewership in thousands) taking its cumulative to 349,377 GVTs (Gross Viewership in thousands) (300,573 last week), launched Jee Le Zara, on 15 August in the 9:30 pm slot.
The show which entered into a very competitive time slot with Star Plus’s Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai and Zee TV’s Qubool Hai ruling the ratings chart in this time slot, has received 2,620 TVTs in its launch week and all this after some good marketing campaigns.
“Every time slot today is competitive, we need to get audiences and so created a huge marketing campaign to inform people of the new show,” says SET senior VP & head-marketing Gaurav Seth. From a ‘Van Flag Off’ by Sangeeta Ghosh, the protagonist of the show to running of Twitter contests, the channel went a whole hog to hit the right cord with its audiences.
The promotional activity started with the three promos shot for television. “Similarly, we had radio spots, which spoke on Sangeeta’s character in the show. We also launched a big multi-media print campaign on the day of launch of the soap which sustained till the first week of it going on air,” informs Seth.
To sustain pressure and ensure that the promos went viral, the channel launched several social media activities and outdoor innovations. “One of this was when on 13 and 14 August we had a Jee Le Zara bus ferrying women from one part of the city to the other. The idea was to inform people of Sangeeta’s return on TV and also to promote the idea of Jee Le Zara,” he comments.
The channel which launched the #Jee le zara moment contest on Twitter received over 7700 tweets with nearly 5.37 million people joining the conversation. “We were trending on Twitter on the launch day,” he informs. The channel also ran promos of the show in major cinema chains nationwide for one week during the screening of Chennai Express.
With Sony targeting not only the metros, but also UP, Rajasthan and Gujarat, with a 360 degree marketing campaign, we wonder if the numbers are enough when compared to the 7,435 TVTs of Qubool Hai and 7,284 TVTs of Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai. The show will need some catching up to do in the coming weeks.
