ALTBalaji recently launched its most ambitious show this year, BOSE: Dead/Alive on November 20, 2017. This 9-part show starring Rajkummar Rao, unfolds the mystery behind Netaji's death and talks about India's biggest cover-up.
An extensively researched work, which took about 18 months of exploration, it's the only Indian show thus far that is shot across locations like Poland, Thailand, Ladakh, Kolkata and Mumbai. The challenge was to launch this show in India and globally in the absence of big budget.
70% of total launch budget, less than 5 Cr, was invested in digital and rest in traditional media. Multiple versions of creative assets were built to reach different audience.
Apart from English, Hindi and Bengali contextual ads were also created to build awareness and acquire paid subscribers. This is also the only show where none of the episodes were released on YouTube.
Once the show went live on ALTBalaji platform on November 20, it turned out to be the most critically acclaimed and loved show that India had ever seen thus far.
Speaking about the marketing strategy for BOSE: Dead/Alive, Manav Sethi, CMO, ALTBalaji said, "Its a bigger challenge when you are 8 months into launching the platform itself and you have to launch the biggest show this county has ever seen! We have been very focused on digital platforms as primary vehicle for growth - both for views and paid subscribers.
"We never had advantage of birth or privilege which our competition enjoys. No big budgets, yet we made BOSE: Dead/Alive big! We didn't have the luxury of doing big outdoor or print jackets as we couldn't afford those. We didn't have any network traffic - online/offline. We carved out multiple affinity containers across various digital properties including Google and Facebook. While we optimized the plan for reach and frequency, we also created multiple creatives and trailers for these affinity segments. We leveraged social and influencers to create the pre-launch and launch buzz around the show.
"Within 10 days of it going live we received 5M views on the show and it's possibly the most binge watched show India has ever seen, as our analytics shows that most of these have watched all 9 episodes back-to- back. Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Uttar Pradesh have been contributed most views from India," Sethi added.
