MUMBAI: “At this moment and time, our mandate is very clear – to build the live industry in India, for which you need to have real ticketed events.”
Standing true to his words, Viacom18′ Integrated Network Solution (INS) and consumer products business head Saugato Bhowmik is focused on building the industry in the live entertainment business for Viacom 18 through ticketed events. Of the five IPs under Live Viacom18 banner, the gigantic music event VH1 Supersonic is all set to take Pune by storm by taking the viewers to a fantasy world. Transforming into a multi-genre international music festival with this edition after a successful run in the past three years, the mega event claims to have doubled its sponsorship value since it’s launch.
With Gionee as the title sponsor, the festival is powered by Budweiser and has locked deals with as many as 18 other sponsors from various sectors such as — Fastrack, Mexitos, Ajio.com, Reliance Digital, Bisleri, Spraymint, Dot Shot, etc, several hopping on board for the first time. If media punters in the events space are to be believed, the three-day festival has managed to get approximately Rs. 12-15 crore from their sponsorship deals.
“VH1 Supersonic has nearly doubled its sponsorship value since the previous editions by partnering with brands from diverse sectors on the back of tremendous success in the past editions and a transformed genre line-up. We have got the highest number of partners for this edition. Apart from the several partners that we have already on board, more sponsors are always welcome,” said Bhowmik.
The network has signed a long-term partnership with all the brands on board. According to Bhowmik, only in the long run can a true brand’s value be maximised and leveraged for the people to associate the festival with the partners’ brand value and vice-versa.
In its fourth year, the music festival has adopted a unique approach to promote its brands across platforms. Going beyond the conventional route of sponsorship, the festival is in the process of creating customised branded content for its sponsors.
After movies for two of it’s main sponsors, Gionee and Budweiser, webcasts as well as web-series are in the making. A six-part web series on music hosted by Nikhil Chinappa titled Gionee VJ Hunt and another six-part web series bringing the lives of Supersonic fans on the screens is also in the pipeline. All this, plus some highlights from the festival, will be aired across the network’ bouquet of channels mainly VH1 and it’s OTT platform, Voot.
The brands associated with the music festival would be able to successfully reach out to 90 million viewers through the campaigns running in their TV channels and Voot, claimed Bhowmik.
As far as the promotions are concerned, the network is heavily marketing the festival across print and its TV channels. Apart from this, they are heavily leveraging social media platforms. They have also set up over 100 OOH sites across India.
With the venue moving to Pune from Goa, the festival and its philosophy remains unaltered. “The change in the venue was part of the journey and a transformation for the brands itself. Our philosophy is to provide transformational experience and we, at this venue, can develop a lot of experiences that we have always promised the audience. We want more and more people to experience us at an affordable rate. Our prime audience is the youth and the young professionals. A large part of them is right in the heart of the youth capital ie Pune. It was a very easy decision to make. The vision of the brand was well communicated and everyone was excited about the multi genre festival,” added Bhowmik.
The promising artist lineup for this year comprises over 50 artistes with three headlining acts. After sending fans into a frenzy with Eric Prydz and going in for an encore with Macklemore, Vh1 Supersonic recently unveiled Zedd as its third headliner.
In addition to the immaculate lineup, the music festival has unique on ground experiences. The audience can also enjoy a gamut of experiential activities and can lose themselves in numerous hangout zones, filled with fun and adventurous activities, enjoy in a curated beer garden, weave through engaging art installations, shop at flea markets, etc.
Apart from the wide expanse of three stages- main strange, spectrum stage and Gionee bass stage, the festival has taken on several social initiatives such as women safety, zero drug policy, fire safety, health and sanitation, ets so as to send a resounding message to the young audience. Pune police would be providing security to the event besides private agencies. The venue has been converted into WiFi cloud zone for the audience.
Going ahead, Live Viacom18 plans to scale up its IPs to lot more. The network has already mapped clear consumer segments and will fill in the gaps in its portfolio. “IP interactions and crafting is a very difficult taste and has to be done in a detailed manner. We are crafting those ideas at the moment. There is no lifeline to the launches as it requires a lot of preparatory work and will take sometime. Without worrying about the timeline, Viacom18 assures to launch many more IPs in the future,” concluded Bhowmik.
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