A television ad with walking, talking, singing fingers will be aired from Monday to promote Star India Pvt. Ltd’s new venture into entertaining mobile-phone users. The commercial will showcase PLUS—a portal where mobile users will be able to catch a synopsis of last night’s soap opera episode of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, play a game, bank with HDFC Bank Ltd or book a ticket on travel booking website travelguru.com.
The ad will be part of a marketing blitz on the Internet, on hoardings and in the mail, and there also will be on-the-ground support to help customers figure out how to get PLUS onto their phone.
The launch of PLUS marks a movement in the mobile content industry towards more interaction between those who create the entertainment and those who consume it. In the past, companies which specialize in creating entertainment for mobiles have not had much direct interaction with the young Indians playing their games and downloading their ringtones. Most of the interaction—be it advertising or selling—has gone through the mobile telephone companies.
But mobile content creators increasingly want to talk with their end-customers. “We want to go direct to the consumer by building our own brands, marketing and creating our own WAP portals,” said Ravi Garg, chief operating officer at mobile gaming company Nazara Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which has the rights to any mobile content using Sachin Tendulkar’s name.
Mainly, they want to increase their brand recognition and ultimately use that as leverage to increase their current 20-30% revenue share with the mobile operators.
They also want to help the mobile operators expand the entire market—which is dubbed in the industry value-added services (VAS) and includes SMS contests, ringtones, wallpaper, movies, music and games.
Star has tied up with the mobile operators for PLUS, but has its own marketing budget, and will work directly with consumers who have trouble figuring out this new technology (it requires the more advanced service called GPRS).
“The industry wants to go directly to the consumer in order to drive richer content and better revenue share,” said Viren Popli, senior vice-president of mobile entertainment at Star who is leading the charge for PLUS. “The first step is to build recognition as a destination with the consumer and then monetize that relationship in different ways.”
Star, a newcomer to the industry of mobile content providers, may help in paving the way for others to interact directly with the consumer.
“We have not been able to move the market in terms of revenue share,” he said. “But the operators have said, ‘we’ll give it a try and if it becomes popular we can talk again.’”