Zee Telefilms had established itself as a provider of top quality entertainment with its Hindi language channel for Asians, but it wanted to reach out to the potentially huge audience of Arabs in the Middle east area.
Research showed that Bollywood movies were popular amongst Arabs in the region and that a new Bollywood channel would go down well with locals in Saudi. The main target for Zee Telecoms was Arab females with males, and the rest of the family, secondary.
Using a teaser campaign across newspapers, TV and radio Zee Telecoms ran the slogan – ‘Bollywood in your blood’. A reveal phase then introduced the actual channel – Zee Aflam – to the Saudi public with the strapline ‘Bollywood in Arabic’.
Malls and female salons in particular were the focus of the out-of-home campaign. In malls, promos of Zee Aflam played on a TV whilst a painter created florid murals on a wall behind. Banners were used in female salons to reach the channel’s target demographic.
One month after its launch, Zee Aflam sat 6th on a chart of the most watched movie channels in the Middle East. Three months after its launch the channel was No. 1 in the chart. After 5 months it was 3rd, but Zee Aflam had still managed to usurp well-established channels such as Fox Movies in a short space of time.