‘&pictures’, India’s premium movie channel, was launched a year back on August 18 with a promise of being an interactive channel, and offering a higher and unique platform for engagement with its viewers. With various initiatives in the past year, the channel continues to create an impression on its audiences with its exceptionally interactive format and innovation-driven content.
Standing true to its brand promise, &pictures now brings the biggest innovation in the digital world – ‘Dil Se’. It is a digital platform which enables viewers to record and upload a 15 second video message using the channel’s website: www.andpictures.in/dilse. With ‘Dil Se’, &pictures endeavours to bring the fans and their video messages on the television screen… and if this is not enough, ‘Dil Se’ also endevours to capture Bollywood celebrities’ messages back to their fans (whenever possible). &pictures has partnered with YouToo and Zee Americas to ideate and launch Dil Se for the Indian market.
On the eve of its birthday (August 17-18), the channel ran a unique on-air contest giving its viewers a chance to win exciting prizes every hour. All one had to do was tune-in to &pictures and the guess the names of Bollywood stars from their childhood photos that was displayed on the channel every hour from 12 pm to 12 am. The audiences had to SMS their answers and one lucky winner received a unique gift.
& there’s more… for the lovers of High Definition pictures and superior sound quality, &pictures is now also available in HD! The HD channel will now bring to the viewers the greatest Bollywood blockbusters, mega premieres & the biggest Hollywood hits under one roof.
Speaking on the occasion, Bharat Kumar Ranga, Chief Content and Creative Officer, ZEEL said, “The last one year has been a year of differentiated interactivity and continuous engagement with our viewers. The unique campaigns we launched not only got &pictures the highest skew of youth and premium audiences but also won several accolades from the industry. The channel won the Silver Abby Award for the Best TV Launch, Silver IDMA award for Best Use of Blogs and Silver Designomics award for the Never Ending Film. Such appreciation has further firmed our belief that the audiences today are looking for much more than the regular movies on television. In the coming year, we have many more exciting plans that should set new standards in interactivity in the television industry.”
Zee Dil Se was created and launched in 2012 in North America to enable viewers to personalize and record video messages for their loved ones and view their video messages on ZEE TV – The No.1 South Asian channel in North America! Since then Zee Dil Se has been successfully launched in the United Kingdom and is now venturing into the Indian market with &pictures.
Chris Wyatt, CEO, YouToo Technologies expressed his delight on partnering with &pictures, “To celebrate the first anniversary of ‘&pictures,’ YouToo Technologies is proud to be powering the interactive ‘Dil Se’ allowing viewers at home to record video messages and be part of the engaging television experience.”
From giving the industry its many firsts to the award-winning campaigns, there is nothing that &pictures hasn’t delved into. Beginning with India’s first crowd sourced Never Ending film – ‘Online Milo Sajna’, the channel launched an array of interactive campaigns to keep the audiences engaged throughout the year. For the airing of the World Television Premier of blockbuster movie ‘Chennai Express’, &pictures initiated a distinctive blogger engagement activity where select bloggers were taken on a train from Mumbai to Rameshwaram just as the journey Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone has undertaken in the film. The channel also initiated the first ever ‘Aamir&You’ campaign that created a benchmark in the Indian television industry with the LIVE interactions of superstar Aamir Khan with his fans during the screening of his first unreleased film, ‘Chale Chalo’.
Speaking on the occasion, Ruchir Tiwari, Deputy Business Head, Hindi Movie Channels, ZEEL said, “It has been a fantastic journey for us at &pictures and within a year, we have been able to capture the hearts of our viewers. The channel started off with a reach of 11.9 % in the launch week last year and today it stands at 34%. The market share in the Hindi Speaking Markets (HSM) has also increased from 3% in the launch week to 7% today. (Source: TAM, CS4+, HSM, updated till wk 33). &pictures has not only kept their promise of engaging and interacting with its viewers but it has also taken the quality of Hindi movie viewing a notch higher with its clutter-breaking campaigns. The completion of its first year has marked a very important phase for the channel. We will continue to enthral the viewers with many more creative campaigns.”
Join in our birthday celebrations… only on &pictures!