'We went with 60:40 traditional to digital approach to promote Bhuvan Bam's Dhindora'

Over the past half-decade, the Indian audience has closely witnessed the stellar rise of independent content creators in the industry. Starting on YouTube & Facebook and then reaching other new-age content apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and the likes of TikTok, a number of content creators not just put their work out but also developed clouts, if not better, as fine as that of A-list stars from the film and television industry. 

Showcasing how enabling this whole ecosystem of digital platforms has become, BB Ki Vines-fame Bhuvan Bam – one of the oldest and most successful creators on YouTube in India – released his own web series ‘Dhindhora’, produced by Rohit Raj under BB Ki Vines production, recently. Bam became the first independent digital creator to pull something off of this standard and what made the feat even more special is ‘Dhindhora’ ranking number 2 in IMDB 2021 India’s ratings, just within a few weeks of its launch. 

While the series is getting a lot of love from the audience and slightly mixed reviews from the critics, another aspect that catches attention is the marketing effort put behind the series. It was probably the first time that a YouTube original relied heavily on traditional marketing to get to the viewers. In a recent chat with exchange4media.com, show producer Rohit Raj talks about the idea behind the show and the marketing strategy that pulled millions of viewers towards it. 

Raj shared, “Bhuvan (Bam) as a creator doesn’t really believe in talking about things he is working on before the release. But because it was something very different we were working on, something never done before, we realised it was important to spread the word around it. So, we started with talking about the show on Bam’s social media and tried to maintain the conversation going.” 

He added that much like the show’s name, the basic idea was to proclaim the show even before it went live on YouTube. “This is probably the first time that we were not worried about irritating the audience by talking excessively about something we were creating. Because the show was a product of four years of hard work, many sleepless nights for the whole team, and especially for Bam, who was shooting nonstop for at least 16 hours a day for 41 days straight.” 

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A post shared by Bhuvan Bam (@bhuvan.bam22)

Once the show was ready, Raj and the team decided to elaborate the approach more and used various media to reach out to the audience. They started using traditional media in a big way, a thing seldom done for the promotion of a YouTube show. 

“We took a 60:40 traditional to digital approach. We went heavy on mediums apart from Bam’s forte because we wanted to reach a larger cohort of people – a prospective audience who probably did not even know who Bam was. After all, the show is all about common people and it would have been a failure on our part if we couldn’t take it to them,” Raj highlighted. 

Spread over four months – the time taken to release all the episodes of the show – ‘Dhindhora’ was heavily marketed on BEST buses, billboards, newspapers, radio, and even television. 

Raj said, “We took a very conscious decision to make the episodes snack-sized so that people can watch it on the go while travelling in public transport or during little breaks in the day. Then we invested in billboards across all the big cities. We plastered our show on 60 BEST buses for two months for a top-of-mind recall. The poster had Bam donning the look of all six characters he is playing on the show, which would obviously intrigue anyone to at least explore what the show was all about. We had our posters near the Bengaluru airport too. And it was heartening to see so many of Bhuvan’s fans especially taking rides to the airport just to click selfies with the hoardings there. It really speaks of the love that they have for him.” 

??❤#Dhindora @Bhuvan_Bam @Rohitonweb pic.twitter.com/cmrUURbuIP

— ShrutiAcharya (@shrutiacharyaa) October 23, 2021

Bam also shared the stage with the likes of Salman Khan and Farah Khan on their respective TV shows, Bigg Boss and Zee Comedy Comedy Show to promote the show. 

Speaking about the same, Raj quipped, “(Promotions on) TV shows happened because of the goodwill we managed to create within the industry over the years. A lot many people from the creative and production departments of these shows helped us take the show there. We knew that the audience who is watching a show like Bigg Boss would definitely love to watch Dhindhora as well. And we are glad that we could reach out to so many people at once.” 

Apart from all these, Dhindhora’s promotions also went live at Times Square and the show also used radio extensively for promotions using its original music album. 

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A post shared by Bhuvan Bam (@bhuvan.bam22)

Dhindhora also partnered with apps like Swiggy, wherein Bam was present on their social media channels to talk about the show. According to Raj, Bam’s promotions drew 2X CTR for Swiggy for the promotional posts. 

Concluding the discussion, Raj also talked about the music video that was released after all the episodes of the show went live, “Usually, music album is the first thing to get released when a movie or series comes. But we wanted to push it in the end so that people could enjoy all the songs and relate them back to the episodes. We partnered with leading content creators for the big music video release and it got a massive response as well.” 

Created by Bhuvan Bam and produced by Rohit Raj, Dhindhora is an 8-episode web series available on BB Ki Vines’ YouTube Channel.