Kingfisher Launched Season 2 of 'Kingfisher Strong Backstage' Music Video Series on YouTube

Youtube has been consistently neglected by brands in the social media domain, with very few creative campaigns managing to make a mark among users. Youtube serves as a second screen to television and has immense creative scope that is yet to be tapped. Video consumption in India has seen a fast growth, with millions of users boarding the platform, and yet, brands have consistently failed to capitalize on its potential. However, Kingfisher has been an inspiration to many, owing to its high success on Youtube.

The brand launched Kingfisher Strong Backstage – A musical Journey, a web video series which encouraged aspiring artists to showcase their talent to the world. Season 1 of Kingfisher Strong Backstage was launched on 12th June, 2013 and after a series of music videos on Youtube and Facebook, it successfully ended on 18th September, 2013. 18 singers and 18 music videos featuring fresh songs were launched during this period. Out of the songs released each month, the most voted song by the users is declared the ‘Most Popular Song’ of that particular month.

Youtube was used as a platform to launch an online music show which users are accustomed to view on television. Kingfisher Strong created a second screen concept and converted its success into over 6 lakh video views that the property received in its first season.

Season 2 kickstarted on 2nd October 2013, prior to which Kingfisher Strong ran teaser campaigns for the show. The teaser showcases additions to the show which has been added after Season 1. Duet performances, regional songs and a larger scale of the show are some of the add-ons this season. The popularity of regional songs is creeping into the mainline song industry and Kingfisher Strong is encouraging this by giving regional songs a chance. This is definitely a bold step by the brand since not many people appreciate/listen to regional songs.

The new season is being promoted through the Facebook account of Kingfisher which is a 6.6 million strong community. A dedicated hash-tag has been created #KFStrongBackstage for the same. During season 1, the posts were touching on an average 5,000 interactions per video.

Original content creation has by far been the only success factor for brands on social media and will continue to be so. On its Youtube channel ‘King of Good Times’, there are more than 4.4 million views and it has been able to maximize its reach with the launch of various shows. Along with the main show, the channel has also uploaded Behind the Scene videos to keep its audience engaged and delighted.

Creating a Web Show

Creating web shows on Youtube involves associating with a production agency and a digital agency to create the much needed success. It is a step by step procedure that involves immense coordination among team members. Having said this, brands in India can easily allocate budgets for this, but lack the innovative interest to do so.

Kingfisher Strong partnered with Friday Moviez to create interesting content and scout talent. Season 1 was about finding talent and sourcing music artists who were featured in KF Strong Backstage. Since the show became very popular online, season 2 saw aspirants applying themselves to be a part of KFS Backstage, applying through Kingfisher's social platforms as well.

The execution of this show had many logistical challenges too. Creating a web show requires similar logistical requirements as a television show especially if you are targeting an excellent production quality of the videos. Usually, digital videos are created with an exceptionally low quality output and this has long been a trend among Indian brands. Kingfisher however has now set a benchmark of producing a web show without any compromise on the output. The production quality is so high that it can easily be adapted to the television screen.

The video below showcases one of the popular song.

User Engagement

Television reality shows strongly concentrate on user engagement through public voting mechanisms for their favourite contestants, with eliminations based on the same concept. Kingfisher brought in user engagement for Kingfisher Strong Backstage through the ‘Most Popular Song of the Month’.

Users were asked to give a missed call on a number that was associated with a song in order to vote for their favourite songs for that particular month. Though the web show is not a talent show which eliminates users based on voting, it is purely used to involve an audience and understand their preferences. The users are also interactive about the show on other social media properties of the brand.  

Business Objectives Fulfilled

Kingfisher Beer has been promoted as ‘The King of Good Times’ and associated with music for the last 20 years. Kingfisher Strong Backstage reinforces the connection with Indian Music. ‘Fresh new Talent, Fresh new tunes," the tagline of the property, is in turn a celebration of the brand spirit.

The first of its kind online music property helps the brand become a market leader in this domain. Kingfisher has set a standard on Youtube and moved from the herd mentality of dumping advertisements on this platform. The brand has taken a bright initiative of creating a community around their content bucket using videos. Kingfisher Blue Mile is another such example where Kingfisher is creating adventure based content for its brand Kingfisher Blue and creating a community that revolves around adventure.

In spite of the video market growing tremendously well in the last few years, brands have not capitalized on this to generate strong branding. Creating a web show around your business goals and achieving it is a risky task owing to the large investment. However, Kingfisher has led the way and showcased excellent results in doing so, not just with Backstage but also other exclusive digital properties such as #KFBeerUp, #KFBlueMile, #Brewdolph, #KFBeerGod, #KFTicketTrail etc.

Brand messaging needs to be an integral part of the consumption experience, something that has been attempted by the brand through Kingfisher Strong Backstage. Kingfisher confirmed that they receive a lot of messages and tweets since people await a new release. This makes them believe it is working towards connecting them with the user.

Conclusion

Kingfisher’s ideology behind committing to such a long term heavy involvement campaign lies in the fact that digital content lives on forever. Moreover, they wanted to build the concept of appointment viewing on digital media by releasing it on a weekly webisode format. On Kingfisher Strong Backstage, a new song is released every Wednesday at 3 pm. Their fans and followers across social platforms have something unique to look forward to every week.

The belief behind Kingfisher Strong Backstage showcases the importance of long term initiative on digital platforms, considering that the memory span of a user is very low and it is necessary to keep hitting the users more regularly with content to build a connect and develop a habit.