India is still battling with Coronavirus outbreak and the recent numbers suggest that the pandemic isn’t going to be over soon. With everything coming to a temporary standstill including schools and educational institutes, kids are still homebound.
Hence kids broadcasters continue to put their best foot forward to keep them engaged and entertained even beyond TV screens. During the lockdown, many kids channels including Sony YAY! launched an array of activities and campaigns to interact and be in close proximity with kids.
The YAY! team launched #WhatsYourSummerPlan campaign to create avenues for kids to keep themselves busy and entertained in summers. Few of the campaigns are :
> YAY! Summer Camp
- Art and Craft workshop with art genius Lalon encouraging kids to learn art and craft
- Curated series of workshops for Gardening, Science, Yoga, Zumba, Dance, Storytelling with popular influencers and professionals.
> Celebrated Mother’s day and invited an Ex-BBC chef to conduct a live session for kids and teach simple cooking.
> Introduced Honey Bunny ka Jetpack game besides KickO and Super SpeedO game, which went on to feature in Top 10 games.
Speaking about the channel’s digital campaigns, Sony YAY! Business head Leena Lele Dutta shared with AnimationXpress, “These are unexpected and tough times for everyone, especially kids who have nowhere to go and can’t even meet their friends. Given that they are confined to their houses, they will consume more content targeted towards them and will eventually explore more platforms to satiate their needs. Taking those insights and in order to cater to their needs, we adopted a holistic approach and conducted 360-degree marketing campaigns and contests in the best interest of our viewers.”
Online content consumption and engagement has witnessed sky high increase even in the kids space, who now most of the time prefer OTT or digital platforms for seamless, undisrupted consumption and engagement. Many working-from-home parents find it easier to manage their office and household work when their kids are kept engaged by shows or interactive lessons on digital platforms which are available anytime.
Sony YAY! thus carefully curated and launched digital campaigns as well as
workshops to make quarantine, fruitful and fun for kids. The channel celebrated World Music Day by releasing a song on – Hope, The song titled Phir dil bolega YAY! is all about instilling hope amongst kids and to give them a sneak peek of the playful days that lie ahead. Sony YAY! roped in prominent YouTubers, Influencers and Mommy Bloggers to spread the word for the song across social media through conceptual videos and unique track renditions.
One of their latest campaign, Gift Pe No Break, saw Sony YAY! associating with influencers across multiple markets and driving digital buzz for the activity through quirky artworks, concept-driven videos in addition to regular engagement generated via Instagram posts and stories, leveraging the social-community’s network to the best of its potential, all this translated into tremendous response through on-air, The channel received 7.33 Lakh entries!
The channel also celebrated Father’s day inviting kids and their fathers to participate in an art and craft workshop with Lalon, encouraged kids to post their simple creatives, funny engagement videos and posts, interactive contests besides shooting conceptual videos and driving mileage on their platforms (stories and posts), leveraging their network to the best of its potential.
Dutta added, “COVID and our summer vacation plans came almost at the same time. We started with our campaigns almost immediately as our on-ground activations and contact programmes wouldn’t be possible. The category peaked at almost 700 GRPs at that point, which was pretty healthy for us including production pipeline and viewership on the TV channel. Our entire digital initiative, the summer camp, on air and online including our YouTube channel got a lot of traction even from the influencers and mommy bloggers.”
The channel then created a network of mommy bloggers across the period of three months, reaching out to an average of 3,00,000 followers and through the influencer community, Sony YAY! social media handles leveraged 20,809 views (and counting) organically. The channel also introduced new digital formats like Instagram listicle opposed to the traditional listicle format, and designed creatives pertaining to the shows and characters with key hooks that drove brand and character visibility.
“As a responsible kids brand, we made sure that our communication doesn’t suffer and we emulate positivity, productivity and fun through our campaigns and activities. We tried to reach out to our TG audience with relevant media available as on ground activities weren’t possible, but we have been pretty much out there though our social and digital media platforms and thankfully, we have been receiving positive feedback from kids and parents alike,” noted Dutta.
Sony YAY! further curated videos in partnership with Sameera Reddy, TV stars Karan Mehra, Nisha Rawal, Tik Tok sensations Jannat Zubair, Ayaan Zuber and YouTube stars Praniti and Soumali to create more buzz and attract more eyeballs.
“I don’t think before COVID, kids have had such a lengthy vacation, and as kids broadcasters, we are at the top of our game whenever kids have their vacations. It was important to not just focus on the awareness and flow of content, but ensure difference and freshness of content that is going to make an impact. We created content for kids on shooting home-shot live action videos, and digital classes. We’ve done tonnes of workshops partnering with popular names so that kids are engaged with us not just through a television, but are experiencing this brand and their favourite characters beyond TV screens. We also launched a few games, and the numbers are looking better than they’ve ever had because kids now have the time to do a lot more, and thus our numbers in terms of digital has grown tremendously,” concluded Sony YAY! OAP(On Air Promotions) and marketing head Sujoy RoyBardhan.
