7 Marketing Lessons from TVF Pitchers

“Content Marketing is the only marketing left.” – Seth Godin

As of today, TVF Pitchers stands strong at #24 in the IMDb Top 250 TV Series list, having crossed the likes of House of Cards and probably your favorite evergreen comedy series.

Those who are yet to watch the first season might wonder: How did a web series, without a TV release, manage to redefine Indian TV and create such a ruckus with just 5 episodes?

It’s not about the digital medium or paid marketing campaigns, but the content.

Right from the depth in the name “Pitchers” to that amazing answer on Quora telling you why you should watch TVF Pitchers, there is so much to absorb from TVF’s latest web series.

Here are 7 lessons TVF Pitchers teaches you about marketing:

1. Purpose Driven Content

It was exciting to see the TVF Pitchers Preview video being aired on YouTube before the official trailer. The preview helped us discover the purpose behind the web series. Similarly, the witty TVFPlay exposition at the end of the official trailer got us even more excited.

Portraying the purpose of your content with finesse keeps your target audience engaged and craving for more of your content.

2. Context is King

Just as we love using a “leader” to set the context of our blog post (like Seth Godin’s quote at the top), every episode of TVF Pitchers includes a quote at the beginning.

Besides setting the context, these quotes make an instant connection with the viewer (or reader).

3. Content is Divine

Every digital marketer hears these three magical words every week: Content is King. Web series like TVF Pitchers and Permanent Roommates assure us of the power of using quality content to keep people hooked on to a brand.

The writer for these series, Biswapati Sarkar, amazed us with his realistic dialogues, strong supporting characters and the layers added to every plot. Right from the dialogue “Tu Kya Hai?” (What Are You?) coming full circle in the final scene, to the amazing backward compatibility between episodes, Pitchers leads the way by thinking through every minute content detail.

The visual content is as much appealing, including the quick shot in episode 3 with the recreation of the Abbey Road poster. With the risky direction sequences by Amit Golani and stylish editing by Prashant Machhar, we realize the essence of doing justice to our content while giving it its final shape.

4. Repurposing Content

Thanks to Dhiraj, the biggest TVF fan at Niswey, we discovered the original “One Step At A Time” video which was recreated as the TVF Pitchers OST. The original music video, also by Vaibhav Bundhoo, is set in a different universe with a rock theme.

On listening to both the versions, we are reminded of the limitless opportunity of repurposing content for digital marketing. It’s all about your target persona and the type of medium in which your content is being shared.

Well, they repurposed the quote too. Classy, isn’t it?

5. New Age Video Advertising

With video marketing on the rise, TVF Pitchers pulled off product placement and branded content with style. After CommonFloor struck a deal with TVF for the Permanent Roommates series, we saw the likes of Uber, POND’S and Kingfisher “pitching” their brands in Pitchers’ Season 1. The cherry on the cake was the UberPitch campaign for entrepreneurs, who got a chance to pitch their ideas and seek mentorship from a VC for 15 mins inside an Uber cab.

All scenes involving branded content looked as normal as a brand name being subtly talked about in a blog post. The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing, right?

Present day video advertising redefines how brands want to be perceived by their audience online. This is in line with Anurabh Kumar’s belief in web videos becoming a widespread advertising tool.

Did you notice the POND’S cream in the first look?

6. The Essence of Viral Marketing

A lot has been discussed on how to make content “go viral”. For Pitchers, it was all about resonating with the audience in the simplest way possible. Moments like the inspiring “Tu Beer Hai” (You Are Beer) dialogue and the daunting “MBA, IAS or Start-up” monologue went viral as they deeply connected with every entrepreneur and aspiring entrepreneur in India.

Not to mention the never-give-up speech at the end of the fourth episode, which inspired various fans to quit their jobs and pursue their true calling.

7. Linking Content Internally

As hinted in the TVF Hangout before Pitchers Finale, we were expecting a “shooting star” from the next season of Permanent Roommates. Though these web series are set in different universes, the creators made sure there’s a connecting link at the end and the audience is left feeling even hungrier.

One may feel that it’s easier to link content in movie making as compared to digital marketing. However, both of them point to the same paradigm: storytelling.

TVF Pitchers teaches every marketer that if you’re obsessed with writing authentic and relatable content, repurpose it well, connect all the relevant dots and strongly believe in the ideas you’re marketing, there’s no stopping you from creating the next big thing in the country.

PS: There’s a bit of marketing in everything we watch. Here are some marketing lessons from the Kung Fu Panda movies.

All images are screen grabs from TheViralFever’s YouTube channel and TVFPlay.com.

Arunabh Kumar – The man behind Qtiyapa

 Approximately 200,000 subscribers, 18     million views and less than 40 uploaded videos, all of this in just over 18 months of starting up. These numbers are something every YouTube user would crave for and media moguls will pay universe to get, but it was never easy to reach these figures. Even Arunabh Kumar, Founder and Creative Experiment Officer of The Viral Fever Media Labs would have never imagined before starting up. Arunabh’s story is nothing less than inspiration and passion personified.

Early life

When his parents didn’t like the school they changed his school, and when he didn’t like the school he ran away from it. With a strict disciplinarian father, Arunabh’s destiny was nearly decided. Post his schooling Arunabh appeared for JEE but didn’t clear it in the first attempt, he went to Kota to prepare for IIT and made it in the next attempt. Arunabh says life at IIT Kharagpur wasn’t exciting, as Kharagpur is a very calm and silent place.

“Every sem I used to pick a career choice, in first semester I wanted to be an economist, in second sem I wanted to do an MBA, in third I thought I will be a coder and in fourth sem I thought I will join UPSC. Evey sem I used to change careers“, Says Arunabh.

Life post IIT and the audio visual journey

Post IIT Arunabh came to Bombay to work in a US Air Force project. And as the level of discomfort increased and the mental turmoil also began, Arunabh quit his job. It was during the same time Arunabh also started meeting  a lot of creative minds in IIT Mumbai. And did a few short films, as a result people also started encouraging him to become an assistant director, which was an easy job to do but not an easy job to get. Finally Arunabh got an opportunity to assist Farah Khan in Om Shanti Om.

Arunabh believes he was lucky to get the first job in Red Chillies Entertainment. “I consider Red Chillies Entertainment to be my film school and all these guys…Sharukh Khan, Farah Khan and all the technicians were my teachers…most of my media and film-making education happened with these guys and (I am) fortunate to work with these people”.

Nine days after Om Shanti Om was finished, Arunabh got an offer from Amir Khan Productions to work on “Delhi Belly“, The same evening he won an award for a short film “The wish divers”, in a contest organized by Network18 and PnC Communications.

And the Qtiyapa begins

In 2009 Arunabh came up with a pilot for a show called Engineer’s diary, he approached MTV and other youth channels for it. Everyone liked the idea but the show was rejected. Arunabh says,

“Luckily Canon camera, YouTube and my rejection came at the right time, all three of them coincided. This college Qtiyapa(The TVF) is a show I had conceived for MTV. That show also got rejected after a lot of resources went into it. That was one of the best rejections in my life, else we wouldn’t have Qtiyapa with us…”

Whenever they went with a show concept to the decision makers, they used to say Indian audience is dumb, they won’t like it and they used to be really passionate in proving it and Arunabh was equally passionate in proving them wrong. In second half of 2010 Arunabh started The Viral Fever, his friend, first employee and current partner Amit Golani reedited the first video and they uploaded it on YouTube. Within a couple of days it got around 17K-18K likes and it become the second most viewed video in entertainment category that week.

That time Arunabh did not have any money to even pay the rent, so there was no question to promote the video. Somehow the term Qtiyapa became famous in IITs and NITs, and thus they knew they were doing something right. The second video Rowdies was put up in mid of February 2012, it got a million views in less than 5 days.

Arunabh Says, “There are 1.2 billion people in the country and 20 people cannot just know what should be made. The guy who plays Raghu in rowdies was not even allowed to audition for some of the channels, I was very angry with the approach they had. I had made smaller videos at smaller scale which are loved by 3000 people in my college and I believe that 3000 people in 1000 colleges will also like it which makes it 30 lakh people. so I truly believe that there are 3 million people waiting to watch this stuff. ”

Today The Viral Fever has a 15 member team, 2 Offices in Mumbai and Delhi and statistically is the 2nd biggest New media Network in the country in the category of Youth Entertainment.

While you say hi to Anurabh on Twitter and watch some great videos, we wish him an amazing journey in his future endeavours.