‘Content strategy remains healthy mix of Indian and international content’

Fox Traveller, from the Fox International Channels network, has launched a ‘channel refresh’ campaign.  The campaign is based on the premise that the most enjoyable travel experiences are the ones that are 'unplanned' and they help people 'unwind'. Going forward with that thought, the campaign has been launched with a theme of ‘UN’.

Campaign India caught up with Debarpita Banerjee, vice president - marketing, Fox International Channels. Edited excerpts:

Tell us more about the ‘UN’ campaign. What is the thought process behind it?

Our channel’s philosophy is ‘This journey is fun’. We called this philosophy a bit of the blue sky philosophy because this is a very large thought. It has many shades and dimensions to it. To try and define this thought a little better it is very important to start picking on different dimensions, as to what the elements that can make a journey fun are. One such word was ‘Impulse’. When you are impulsive, when you are on the go, it truly becomes very interesting. So that was the thought behind the ‘UN’ campaign. A little UN-planned, a little UN-mappable, and a little UN-expected, so that you allow the journey to surprise you. We are communicating this impulsive way of travel through our channel networks and digital mostly. We are exploring opportunities in print and radio as well but we are still in the process of finalising them.

Fox Traveller will also be launching an innovative viewer engagement initiative ‘Where will your signature take you?’ on Facebook with Yatra.com. The initiative celebrates the UN-planned experience and the joys of unconventional travelling. Consumers need to do is submit their signature on the Facebook pages of Fox Traveller and Yatra.com. The signature will then be superimposed on the world map and the consumers will be asked to invite co-travellers for their trip. The top 100 winners will be sharing their ‘Happy traveller story’, which will be put up for voting. The three most voted stories will be the winners. The selected winners will get the opportunity to go where their signature takes them.

You joined Fox in 2010. What changes has the channel seen since then? How has been the growth so far?

Since the time I have joined until now the channel has gone through huge amount of change. Firstly, when I joined it was called Fox History and Entertainment. We introduced a travel band and people really appreciated that. Post that, because we got a really good response, we changed the name to Fox Traveller and it became a 100 percent lifestyle and food channel.

Could you throw some light on the channel’s content strategy?

When we launched Fox Traveller, our philosophy said ‘This journey is fun’. So we concentrate not just on great destinations but on very interesting journeys which are enriching and full of fun. We acquired the best of international travel content and had a great mix of fresh formats when it came to Indian production. We were the first channel to have a very healthy mix of Indian and International content and that still remains as our content strategy.

If you look at our local production, we have travel shows with a bit of a difference. So when you see ‘What’s with Indian men’ or ‘What’s with Indian women’, it’s about knowing a city through the gender. For example, why are Kolkata men so argumentative or why are Punjabi women so aggressive? So every show that we have has a bit of interesting twist to it.

How will you differentiate between the trend of lifestyle channels five years back and now? The market seems cluttered, with lack of differentiation between food channels and lifestyle channels.

If we look at the entire television industry five years back, lifestyle channels were exploring lifestyle then and they are experimenting with lifestyle now - because it has now become a lot more specialised.  Experimentation has started happening a lot now. Now it’s either showing the same place with a completely new perspective or showing the viewer a completely new part of the world. So, opening up fresh places, fresh perspectives and fresh ideas has become extremely important.

Food is a very integral part of lifestyle, so it’s very difficult to differentiate. In my opinion it is not even required to try and differentiate between the two.

What can we expect from Fox Traveller this year?

We are launching one of our biggest local productions called ‘Life mein ek baar’. When we had introduced the first season of this show we had featured four friends who had left their jobs and gone off on a ‘bucket list’ trip. For this season, we have taken five very good looking women like Barbara Moori and Yana Gupta on a wild and adventurous trip to South Africa. There are other local productions in the pipeline as well.