A few days back, if you were at Mumbai’s Dadar Railway Station or at Delhi’s Rajiv Gandhi Chowk Metro Station, you could not have missed a man sprawled on a sofa with a cushion that read: “Reserved for Abhishek Bachchan classes”. Is Bachchan Jr preparing for an alternate career? Not really. This is on-ground activation aimed to create a buzz for the newest reality show on Colors, National Bingo Night. It will of course be anchored by Bachchan Jr.
There is a mad clutter in the Hindi general entertainment space. Close to a dozen channels vie for the viewer’s attention. Some channels like Colors have managed that with reality shows — celebrities have in the last couple of years done hazardous stunts, stayed in isolation for months, and spent time in dense rainforests. But other channels caught up quickly. So the next rage was reality shows anchored by superstars from filmdom. When that too became passé, channels began to spend vast sums of money to promote their shows. The activity around National Bingo Night should be seen in that light.
It is a show about riding the gravy train without any special effort. The show is based on an international format called Bingo and owned by Fox Television Studio. Here, not just the studio contestants but also the studio audiences and television viewers can play. While the contestant plays in-studio games based on game ball numbers, the studio audiences predict the numbers and try to match them with their tickets. No special skills required to bag prizes. This is the big differentiator of the show.
And this is the theme that will run through the promotional campaigns. Bachchan Jr claims to have won the title of Super Aarami for his expert laziness skills. “Are you an aarami (fond of rest)?” he asks on his promotional website www.abhishekaaramclasses.com. The digital initiative clearly shows that Colors hopes to get young viewers to watch the show.
“In our busy lives, one hardly finds the time to chill. And most of us laze while watching television. So what better way to relax than through a television show?” says Colors’ Head of Marketing, Rameet Arora. The show will break later this month.
And how did the idea for the creatives come about? “We were sitting around discussing when one of the members asked if one could actually win all this stuff, even money, without doing any work. And, as a bonus, be entertained, meet his favourite star,” says Hemant Kumar Sivan, the executive creative director of Orchard, the agency that did the creatives for the show. “It was an insight that inspired a volcano of ideas. It is the only show in which you don’t need to do anything to be on top. And the ‘don’t need to do anything’ led to aaram (rest) and a very big creative idea — Abhishek Aaram Classes.”
Innovative shows call for innovative promotion. Thus, hoardings in five cities were booked, which showed giant pillows that read “Abhishek Aaram Classes”. Buses across ten cities displayed banners of Bachchan Jr lazing on a beanbag with the message “Abhishek’s Aaram Classes”. “When we launched the first campaign, nothing suggested that it was a show to be aired on Colors. That’s how we wanted it to be,” explains Arora. The website, which witnessed almost 100,000 hits on day one, runs contests to test your laziness, tips on how to chill and so on. It now has 5,000 to 10,000 new visitors each day. The application for Aaram Classes on social networking site Facebook has around 5,000 fans.
National Bingo Night was revealed in the finale of Bigg Boss 3 on Colors hosted by Amitabh Bachchan. Big B called his son from the studio and asked him what classes he was organising. That’s when the first promo of the show broke. “People have been made aware of the Aaram classes with Bachchan Jr and now the show feels like a natural extension of the classes. The initial campaign didn’t come across as a gimmick to viewers,” says Arora.
Idea Cellular is the title sponsor of National Bingo Night. Promos are already on air. As the show gets closer, multimedia will build the surround sound. This will include the media, radio, out-of-home and on-ground activation. The mass engagement of young audiences on the internet will also be milked. Will this be good enough for Colors? Will it be able to repeat the magic of Khatron Ke Khiladi and Bigg Boss? Over to Bachchan Jr.
