Hitting the high note

BRAND LAUNCH MOST SUCCESSFUL

Indian Idol opened up entirely new ways of marketing to television audiences

Like his future, Ravinder Ravi's old mud house is now firmly cemented. The former house painter from Ludhiana now travels by air to perform "live" shows in Dubai and has bought his wife a Maruti car.

This is the same man who reached Delhi for the Indian Idol auditions on money borrowed from his neighbours. He may not have won the grand prize, but India's first "real reality show" certainly changed his life.

It also changed forever how audiences and marketers viewed television. Now, those on the other side of the screen could be as much a part of the action as those under the spotlight. And as brand teams realised that audiences would actually pay to watch their favourite programmes, you could almost hear them singing all the way to the bank.

Marketing professionals interviewed for the Business Standard annual Brand Derby certainly found a lot to admire in the Indian Idol business model.

Seventy-four per cent of those polled considered the programme a "very successful" launch, while 17 per cent gave it the top rank among successful launches of the past year. Just 5 per cent considered it a flop. "Huge publicity and advertising", "unique, Indianised concept" and "good marketing" are just some of the accolades heaped on the programme.

Even Sony Entertainment Television (SET) couldn't have predicted Indian Idol would get so big. That it would grow into a show that transformed the fortunes of not just the participants but, as Tarun Katial, SET business head, eloquently puts it, "millions of middle-class Indians who held their dreams close to their hearts, waiting to change them into reality".

To be fair, Indian Idol was not the pioneer of reality talent shows. Rival channels such as Zee and Channel V had similar shows running long before Indian Idol was probably even conceptualised.

So, what was the strategy that made this show such a success? "Indian Idol," says Katial, "was made from the stories of real people, some of whom were typical rags-to-riches tales."

The concept was borrowed from Freemantle Media "" which produced American Idol "" and captured on camera all the drama, emotion and controversy that's inevitable in such shows "" but makes for excellent ratings.

More importantly, the programme was quick to latch on to the other craze sweeping middle-class India: SMS. Audience involved was not just allowed, but encouraged "" the number of votes a participant got decided whether he stayed or went.

As music director Anu Malik, who was a judge on the show, points out, "Indian Idol succeeded because it gave the nation a chance to choose its own singing sensation."

The strategy worked and TAM ratings showed the programme overtaking daytime sob sagas such as Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki. With 55 million votes pouring in from across India, Indian Idol's debut was truly impressive.

What also worked, according to Nina Jaipuria, vice president, marketing, SET, was the 360-degree approach to the programme's advertising, which began six months before even the first round of auditions. "There was a layered marketing strategy to build all the hype and frenzy," she says.

That included road shows where special, "out-of-queue" passes were handed out to a few, randomly selected participants and a website that contained information about audition dates and locations and how to apply, apart from trivia and fun facts.

"We never put a stop to our campaigns and continued to encourage people to vote," recalls Jaipuria. Apart from print and television campaigns, Indian Idol even had innovative promotions like morchas on railway platforms.

SET doesn't reveal how much the channel spent on promoting the programme: "It was one of the most heavily marketed shows ever seen on Indian television, with a reasonable amount of money thrown in for good measure" is all Katial says. Industry estimates, though, place the figure at Rs 15-20 crore; and the celebrity judges are said to have been paid fees of Rs 1 crore each.

Of course, the money was pouring in. A 10-second ad spot cost Rs 1.25 lakh, but SET had already tied up six main sponsors for the show: Airtel, Nokia, Rejoice, Godrej Ambipur, Marico Silk & Shine and Pepsi. Reverse advertising, too, helped. Jaipuria points to an ad for Rejoice shampoo where the Indian Idol logo appeared prominently.

SET was able to cash in on the Indian Idol craze long after the show ended in March 2005. Follow up stories of the top 11 finalists ensured that interest in the programme "" and, therefore, advertising "" remained alive.

And now, there's the sequel: Indian Idol II. What further proof of the brand's success do you need?