UTV Bindaas on a buddies hunt

The youth entertainment channel, UTV Bindaas, is out on the streets to promote its campus property, UTV Bindaas Buddies. It has initiated an out-of-home campaign across 100 colleges in 10 cities to reach out to the youth.

As a part of the campaign, the channel will visit each of the 100 colleges and find 10 'buddies' from each of them who will then compete for the much coveted Axe Landers title.

These buddies are the better known faces of the college and their nominations have been taken following a survey. For a male buddy candidate, the votes will be cast by women and vice versa.

For this season of Bindaas Buddies, the deodorant brand Axe is the brand partner for UTV Bindaas. Last year the brand partner was Tata Docomo.

The buddies from each college are put in a tricky situation and the channel gives them several tasks before choosing four buddies and the one Axe Lander. In a similar manner the channel will choose 100 Axe Landers across the country and they will be given free tickets to IPL, F1 Racing and other important events in an attempt to provide them exposure.

The AXE Landers will also be given access to the bindass' microsite where they can share exciting stories of their college online. This will be through a URL accessible only to those people who have been nominated as AXE Landers. They will upload information about fashion, trends, careers and sports and important events for freshers.

Nikhil Gandhi, executive director, Youth Channels - Media Networks Disney UTV says, "The reason behind organising such an activity is that when freshers join the college, they have no clue about anything, so at that point of time, these buddies can mentor them and focus their energies in the right direction."

This will be the third edition of the project and this year the channel has increased its presence from 20 colleges to 100 of them.

Along with the on-ground promotions, the channel is trying to bond with the students using digital promotions via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/bindass), Youtube and www.bindaas.com.

Gandhi says, "Our main objective is to reach to the youth and we are doing it through online and the outdoor promotions. We will later be converting these activities into a 10-part series called Bindaas Buddies that will be aired on UTV Bindaas." The promos for the programme will begin in two weeks.

UTV Bindaas was launched in September 2007. Apart from Bindaas other offerings from UTV are UTV Action, UTV World Movies, UTV Movies and UTV Stars.