Hotstar’s new campaign plays up its fresh, free content library

by Suman Gupta

National, March , 2020: Post the TRAI NTO ruling, consumers have resigned to watching dated shows and repeats on local TV channels. Hotstar, India’s largest premium streaming platform, aims to fill the void by restoring access to fresh content. Their latest advertising campaign, “Hotstar Ka Vaada, Free Entertainment Sabse Zyada”, targeted at the Hindi-speaking markets, talks about its high-quality, vast content library which is available for free.

The campaign, conceptualized and crafted by DDB Mudra Group, has multiple legs across TV, outdoor, print, radio and digital. It aims to reach a wider audience, including making inroads into Tier II and III markets, via on-ground consumer activations.

The storyline is about two brothers on a plummeting plane with just one parachute. The younger one offers it to his brother as a gesture of respect, but he declines, saying he’s seen it all. The younger one then pulls out his phone calmly and shows him the content on Hotstar. With so much left to see, the elder one is now worried about crashing. The product window talks about Hotstar’s offering of a wide range of entertainment available for free.

Speaking about the campaign, Shagun Seda, Creative Head-DDB Mudra West, says, “Catalogue-range films often run the risk of being functional and generic. We had to find an entertaining way to say that Hotstar has the largest library of free entertainment. Its distinctive voice as a brand helped us deliver the message with a droll sense of humour. The idea came from a popular expression – ‘now I’ve seen it all’. In a plane that’s going down, a passenger performs a soliloquy with mock gravitas about having seen it all in life. That’s when his younger brother introduces him to Hotstar – there’s just so much left to see with Hotstar’s vast library of free content.” 

According to Sidharth Shakdher, EVP & Business Head, Hotstar “The marketing communications, driven by the sharp insight that a large number of entertainment consumers in Tier II and Tier III cities have no option but to watch reruns of dated shows on TV, highlights the vast library of quality entertainment content available for free on Hotstar. We are excited by the huge opportunity in encouraging trial and building adoption from the non-metro cities, thereby enabling a behavior shift towards online consumption of high quality entertainment.”

The campaign will roll out a unique Out-of-home initiative which will culminate in a billboard spanning 10,000 sq. ft., the longest ever set up in India. It will feature the variety and scale of content available on Hotstar. Other high-impact activations are billboards and wall paintings across 80 small towns, along with a branded mobile marketing canter van campaign. The canter will travel across 30 cities for a month, conduct roadshows across 150 congregation points, and showcase Hotstar’s breadth of content. This will be amplified with unique interventions such as Nukkad Natak and on-the-spot engagement activities.

Hotstar has changed the way Indians watch their shows, from their favourite TV series and movies to sporting extravaganza. With the widest range of content in the country, Hotstar offers more than 100,000 hours of TV shows and movies in eight languages, regional and national news, and coverage of every major global sporting event, including the VIVO IPL.

Team Credits

Agency: DDB Mudra Group

Creative: Rahul Mathew, Shagun Seda, Ashish Phatak, Godwin D’mello, Sanket Wadwalkar, Gagandeep Bindra, Sourabh Dubey, Amit Bisht, Mayur Gawkar, Ronak Ramraje, Divya Nenwani

Account Management: Anurag Tandon, Rakesh Varma, Hemant Joshi

Strategy: Mehak Jaini, Ketan Rambhia                       

Films: Meenaz Lala