By GAURAV LAGHATE
Indiantelevision.com Team

(22 July 2008 9:30 pm)

MUMBAI: Colors, the new entrant in the Hindi general entertainment (GEC) space, has a launch marketing and promotion budget of Rs 350-450 million, sources in the industry say.

The plan includes a high profile coverage in top 90 cities and towns, spread across the Hindi speaking markets.

“I can't comment on how much we are spending, but it is the biggest marketing campaign ever in Indian television industry,” avers Colors marketing head Rameet Arora.

The channel from the Viacom18 stable has so far placed its campaign across 1300 hoardings in the country. It has booked 65,000 spots on television while 15 million SMS have been send across all telecom operators. Special tie-ups have also been done with McDonald's and Future Group for Pantaloons and its Big Bazaar chain.

“We have made our presence everywhere - be it television, radio, out-of-home media, print, websites, mobile and movie theatres,” says Arora.

The marketing campaign with road shows have reached cities like Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur, Jhansi, Allahabad and Meerut, among many other towns.

The flavour of the marketing campaign, according to Arora, is scale and innovation. “Our programming is differentiated and disruptive. With our marketing, we want to make a point that we are unique and different,” he says.

In the pursuit to touch more people, Colors has branded 3,000 taxis in Mumbai and 2,000 auto rickshaws in small towns. Local trains and school buses in Mumbai are also carrying Colors brand to the public.

The channel is sending its fixed point chart (FPC) with 200,000 dabbas (tiffin boxes) across Mumbai.

In Big Bazaar, the helpers and counter-guys are wearing Colors T-shirts and giving out information about the channel. In McDonald's food chain, Colors brand is present on the menu where with every special meal, customers are given merchandise of Fear Factor Khataron Ke Khiladi. At Pantaloons also, gears of Fear Factors are made available.

For the mythological show Jai Sri Krishna, Colors has a tie-up with International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), where the show will be promoted at every ISKCON temple in India. Also, Colors has touched 1,000 temples across UP, Gujarat and other key Hindi belt states for the promotion of the show, bannering the prasad stalls, giving out Krishna merchandising, literature, calendars.

For Mohe Rang De, the channel is organising street plays in Punjab and Delhi. The street play team will also visit different cities to promote the show.

Colors has so far roped in 10 advertisers including Idea Cellular, ITC, Reliance, Nestle, Airtel, Hygienic Research, Boots, Emami, Paras and Ayur.