New Delhi Disney+Hotstar: With nearly 50 million subscribers, Disney+Hotstar is the leading video streaming company in India, but its dominance is constantly threatened by 60 platforms that are upping their game by investing in content and marketing. In an interview, Siddharth Shakdher, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Disney+ shared his insights on setting up the brand in India and how it is looking to establish relationships with audiences across all segments of the game. Looking beyond: Edited excerpt:
It has been two years since Hotstar was rebranded as Disney+ Hotstar in India. How was the journey of the brand?
We are now on par (with Hotstar) in terms of recognition and recall top of mind, and with the advent of Disney+ the perception has become more positive. It has opened up new segments and found wide acceptance, for example, among people with children. Whereas earlier, it used to be young adults, now families have come under its purview. So, in that sense, thanks to Disney+, there’s been a positive increase in our brand equity.
How has your marketing strategy evolved during the pandemic as more customers come under the ambit of OTT?
What has been very clear and important to us from the beginning is that Disney+Hotstar should be meaningful to people’s lives. Over the past six years it has been our goal to be a purpose-driven brand that helps you speak to all audiences equally. Otherwise, you’re talking to different people in different ways to position your brand, and recalls and equity go nowhere. The second cornerstone of our marketing is to be meaningful to the lives of people not only in one or two segments, or metro and urban areas, but across India. When we did marketing in the first two or three years, it was more about creating the category – talking about convenience, mobility, ways to control, etc. Over the years, it has transformed into a more experiential, meaningful life-driven push. We have clutter-breaking stories in Indian and international content. Plus, we’re expanding regionally.
With more people coming to OTT, we started looking more at micro-markets, and things like micro-influencers and regional print became an important part of our agenda. And for four and a half years, we never thought of bringing any celebrity on board, we got Shah Rukh Khan.
You have done promotional films with Shah Rukh Khan. Is he your brand ambassador?
He is not a brand ambassador in the specific sense. I think he is someone who gives the message that this is the platform which has the best quality content and connects in terms of getting exposed to different things in your life and growing as a person. We are not going to shoot hoardings or stick her face on the hoarding and ask her to stand and promote it with Disney+ Hotstar. The compromise we have in place is around using it to deliver meaningful messages in building the brand’s purpose. Because in the end, we want the brand to be the hero, and SRK is the one who is helping the brand become that. I can’t really reveal my other plans with him, but he’s with us for some more time, and we’ll be working with him again.
How is overall marketing split between sports and general entertainment?
I would classify my marketing efforts into three types. At the most functional level, we have specific titles, be they entertainment or sports. Then we have category producers like multiplexes, which are direct-to-digital films. The third is about the purpose of the brand. But we have reduced our reliance on cricket in those communications. Three years ago, cricket would have been 60-70% of that communication; Now, it is 20-30%. Also, back when cricket was so big, we didn’t really have our own originals, and we didn’t have Disney as a library. We now have the finest international content and local originals. If you are a sports lover, then of course there is cricket too, but we don’t need to grab that point now. What we need to build on is that we are a platform that has the best of Indian and international content, so now there is a huge inclination towards it in our campaigns.
Does this become even more important as the IPL media rights are set to be grabbed again?
of course. We started out as a destination for cricket, but now we are a destination for any entertainment that is meaningful to you. So we should not be seen through the prism of cricket. When we started with Hotstar, it was a transactional relationship where consumers would come when it was Cricket or Koffee With Karan, but when one wanted entertainment in general, it might be that brand. Not what has come in anyone’s mind. It is very different now, the brand occupies a meaningful and purposeful place in people’s lives, where it is not tied to any particular content.