Adgully Exclusive | We have tripled our spends: Fox History & Traveller's Debarpita Banerjee

In early May Fox History & Entertainment announced that it had transformed into FOX History & Traveller. The channel based on its new tagline of- Fun is in the journey changed gears and announced that it will now focus extensively on travel based content, which will be edgier and focused on young adults.

Speaking about the channel's evolution, Debarpita Banerjee, Vice President ' Marketing, FOX International Channels India, tells Adgully, "Our new philosophy basically talks of how is our channel's and each of our show's journey going to be fun. The fun element is going to come out through the fact that the channel is going to be experiential, will introduce newer formats, explore the many facets of a place and speak volumes about how today's youth travels."

The channel had always been targeting audiences in the age group of 15-45 years, but now Banerjee points out that the channel's core TG will be audiences belonging to the age group of 22-28 years.

The channel already has its first locally produced format for the year- What's with Indian Men running successfully. The show explores the psyche of Indian men across the country through the eyes of two sassy, urban women ' Sugandha Garg and Indrani Dasgupta. The show promises to be high on entertainment, wit and exploration of both ' the geography and the gender.

However from the first week of August a new show called Twist of Taste with Vineet Bhatia will be going on-air on the channel. The world renowned Chef Vineet Bhatia will be travelling across 13 cities with his wife and giving a new twist to popular dishes across the globe.

Well known VJ and film actor Purab Kohli will also be seen hosting a new show on the channel. Banerjee adds, "Purab was planning to go on a holiday and he sort of made a bucket list. We will be branding the show as "Life Mein Ek Baar' and it will be something that he has been waiting to do for a very long time. Hopefully we will have three more travellers with him and who will travel around the world doing things they have always wished to do."

Speaking about the communication strategy she says that it is a very simple and focused strategy. "We want to reach our core TG with the places they would like to go and things they would like to do. Our TG which is centred on upscale youth audiences will be reached out through a 360 degree campaign. OOH, radio activities and digital communication is going to supremely feature in our communication plan. The message will be essentially- "This Journey is fun' and we would want to slightly skew it as an aspirational offering for our TG," Banerjee explains.

She further points out that the channel will be spending heavily on building Fox Histroy & Traveller as a brand. Banerjee says, "We have always robustly invested on on-air promotions but this will be the first time when we are aggressively profiling our channel off-air too. So we have tripled our spends."

As the TG is upscale youth, is digital media an important tool?

Banerjee agrees and adds, "We are very active on social media; we keep adding more and more fans every week to our Facebook fan page. We are actively engaging with them, we have launched a few contests for them; we are also promoting tweets from Purab Kohli and updates about our shows."

Banerjee says that it is very heartening for the team to see that the content has been very well received by the audiences. "Our ratings have increased across the travel and food genre. There is great potential in this space and travel as an industry has grown immensely. Besides the youth in the country have been seeing an increase in their disposable incomes and they are demanding for a good experience. So, we are going to focus more and more on the fun around the place that we are going to showcase," she adds. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]