Fever FM, one of the youngest radio channels in the city, plans to take on the top slot within the next six months outshining the other hot favourites like Radio Mirchi, BIG FM and Friends FM with aggressive brand promotion activities and marketing strategies in the pipeline.
Speaking to Business Standard, Neeraj Chaturvedi, national marketing head & station head-Delhi,Fever FM said, “We are no more into our launch year and we are there in all the cities. Kolkata is one of our youngest channels. A lot more will happen in Kolkata in the next six months. With the promotional activities all in line, we are optimistic to make it to the top slot within the next six months.”
The channel very recently launched the “I love Fever 104” campaign and spent about Rs 1 crore on media promotion activity.
“The campaign was well worth it, it raised us to the No 5 position. We will continue to understand our audiences and give the right mix of programmes to increase our listenership base,” said Chaturvedi.
The channel enjoys a listenership base of close to 2.8 million in Kolkata.
Speaking on the kind of promotional campaign the channel is exploring, Chaturvedi pointed out that for Kolkata, the audience is more mature and would like programmes involving events and personalities compared to Delhi which is sports frenzy. So there will be more of event-based and personality-based programmes, small promotional contests in this part of the country.
To woo the Delhi and Mumbai audience, the channel became the official radio partner of Delhi Daredevils in the Indian Premier League and conducted a promotional campaign called Captain’s Knock.
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“We did the campaign for the second year running and it was massively successful. We took 25 winners to South Africa. The results have been promising. We are at present No 1 in Mumbai and No 2 in Delhi. We would continue with such innovative campaigns,” he said.
In Kolkata, the channel is planning a mega promotion for Durga Puja this year.
The detail planning is still underway, pointed out Chaturvedi.
Although companies have reduced on their adspend, the slump was to some extent arrested by the election fever and the results.The channel for itself has reduced its promotional budget.
“Although there will be a 30 per cent reduction in adspend and promotional activities given the downturn, we would continue to be promotionally very active with small topical, region specific contests,” said Chaturvedi.
In terms of revenue contribution, Delhi and Mumbai are the highest contributors.
However, from October last year, there has been almost a 15 per cent drop in revenues, especially from the corporate front.
To tackle the slowdown, the company plans to launch more aggressive brand promotional campaign this year and is in talks with a couple of big-budget movies and forming alliances in different cities and tapping the retail basket. “We obviously want to double our revunues, looking at more retail clients. It is always better to have more of retail clients. We have better realisation in terms of revenues than corporates,” said Chaturvedi.
The share of retail and corporate clients worldwide in terms of revenue contribution for radio is 70:30. But in India the situation is just the reverse, retail contributes only 30 per cent while corporates 70. “Given the recession and the market conditions and now that we have completed our launch phase and are into the second year of operations with a listener base of 11 million roughly across the four major cities, we are looking at sustenance and going up the ladder in terms of market share and position,” he added.
According to the Radio Audience Measurement (RAM) data for Week 19 for Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore, Fever FM continues to remain the undisputed leader in Mumbai, said Chaturvedi.