Colors creates outdoor innovation around couples for new show

While telecom has been a big spender on outdoor; media and entertainment channels, too, have made their presence felt, with wide outdoor advertising and creative ideas.

Hindi GEC, Colors, which has been among the top performers since its launch, has now launched two new shows. These shows replace the reality show, Bigg Boss, which came to a close recently. Thus, to build salience for the new shows, the channel wanted to pack a punch; and what better way to do that than innovative outdoor advertising.

Interestingly, not one, not two, but five innovative ideas were executed. One of the innovations is a frame on a stand, where the rim of the frame displays the channel logo and the name of the show, 'Yeh Pyar Na Hoga Kam'. It has been placed at key locations in Mumbai where couples usually hang out, such that it frames these couples sitting arm in arm.

For the same show, another innovation was done on billboards at main city junctions, where a bench was placed on the hoarding, with large cutouts of the show's characters sitting on it.

In the second show, 'Lagi Tujhse Lagan', a mother becomes insecure after her elder daughter elopes with a boy. So, in order to prevent the younger daughter from venturing out, she makes the young girl look hideous. Hence, in the show, Nakusha, the second daughter, always hides herself with a dupatta.

To translate this into a catchy outdoor ad, the agency draped the tall billboard with a long brown dupatta. The copy on another billboard alongside read, 'Kya hai Nakusha ke chehre ka sach?'

Another idea involved placing a mirror on bus shelters, such that it seems like Nakusha is looking at herself in it, from behind her dupatta.

While the channel's creative agency, Orchard Advertising, has worked on the print and other ads, the outdoor advertising, including innovations, have been ideated and executed by Milestone

Brandcom.

Nabendu Bhattacharyya, founder and managing director, Milestone Brandcom says, "We received a detailed brief from the client for both the shows about a fortnight in advance. Hence, we had enough time to develop so many creative outdoor ideas."

He shares that most of the ideas that his young creative team came up with were approved. Sudarshan Waghmare ideated the frame innovation; Anusha Arora came up with the bench creative; and Vinay Chauhan conceptualized the mirror and dupatta ideas.

Discussing the ideas, Bhattacharyya adds, "Yeh Pyar Na Hoga Kam is a love story. Hence, we came up with real-life media touch point innovations, which the audience can relate to; and it stays relevant to the show as well. Similarly, the bench idea has been picked up from the show's promo and translated to outdoor, where we tried creating a bench on a billboard, which has added strength to its original creative look and feel. We also branded a boat at Chota Kashmir's water body, where couples take romantic boat rides."

He shares that for the campaign, the client's brief was to build awareness and demonstrate the largeness of the shows through clutter breaking strategy. He also points out that since the shows were replacing the mega programme, Bigg Boss, scale was used as a strategy everywhere.

Rameet Arora, marketing head, Colors, tells afaqs!, "OOH gives you the opportunity to keep doing new things; it allows customization. You can be area specific, target specific, time band specific; all these things that TV doesn't allow. The two new fiction shows are very different. Thus, outdoor gave us the chance to think fresh and surprise and engage the audience."

The campaign commenced on December 20 and will go on till January 4. It has been launched in 25 cities across West, North and Central India; while about four innovations for each show were executed in Mumbai, Delhi and Lucknow. Sources working on the outdoor suggest that the channel spent close to Rs 2 crore on the campaign.

Bhattacharyya adds, "You get very rarely get to work with a client, who will give you a free hand to execute good ideas. Our young creative team went crazy coming up with a bundle of ideas. The client was happy to approve most of the relevant ideas. Many times, the best of ideas never see the light of day; but in our case, it was the opposite and we are truly grateful to our client."