Mumbai: Several initiatives in terms of technology were introduced by News 18 to give their viewers an extraordinary experience. News18 Punjab/Haryana explored diverse aspects of leveraging artificial intelligence to transform the education system through ‘AI Kaur’ at its ‘Education Summit: Season 04’ event. AI Kaur facilitated conversation with the panelists and welcomed the audience in their local dialect.
For instance, the channel on the occasion of Mother’s Day this year introduced an extraordinary Metaverse experience that received an overwhelming response, attracting a reach of over one crore in just one day. The purpose of this initiative was to create an interactive environment that encouraged participants to explore and commit to being respectful towards mothers in general.
These technological integrations are just a part of News18’s larger motive to bring engaging and diverse experiences to their viewers who can expect many more to come.
Aditya has close to 25 years of experience in market strategy, brand management and communication in the media and technology domains across India, Nepal and Mauritius. He currently leads marketing and product for a portfolio of seven brands at News 18 Network including News 18 India - India's No. 1 Hindi News channel.
Indiantelevision.com in an email interaction with News18 Network (HC) vice president (head) – brand marketing & product Aditya Tandonon the technological innovations and much more…..
Edited Excerpts:
On technology being the game-changer in the Newsroom today, how do you work around it to give your viewers a better experience and does it garner greater interest from viewers who are coming in for the first time
We truly live in very exciting times - technology is advancing at a very rapid pace and is impacting every area of the organisation. From a product and a marketing standpoint, the tech-enabled toolkit available to us today allows us to curate differentiated experiences. For instance, the launch of an AI anchor by our Network not only generated tremendous excitement among our audiences but also helped us form a deeper connection with them.
Audiences are also constantly seeking avenues to express themselves, share their views and play a part. With the advent of new platforms and technologies, this process has been accelerating and is only likely to accelerate further going forward. Brands are looking at going beyond just being interactive and providing deeply immersive experiences. We, for example, did a hugely successful Mother’s Day activity recently on Metaverse. It allowed viewers to don a virtual avatar and create memorable and shareable moments. Such activities are likely to take engagement to a whole new level.
On the AI news anchor ‘AI Kaur’, the strategy to launch her in News18 Punjab/Haryana, and the audiences’ reaction to this
Well, there was an event that was being planned – an Education Summit in Chandigarh, and it was felt that this would be a great platform to experiment and launch an AI anchor. This was a first for any regional market and it generated a huge amount of excitement; a huge amount of chatter among our audiences and our clients who lauded us for the innovation. We, in fact, followed this experiment with a similar one at another of our events in Jaipur where again, the audience was quite excited to experience the power of AI first-hand. I think we are all on a journey of discovery to understand and truly leverage the enormous power that the latest technologies put at our disposal, and I am sure that we will continue to see several innovations and disruptions in the near future as we understand them better.
On the upcoming general elections in 2024, but this year we will also see elections in a few significant states. Election coverage has evolved over the years with the use of technology. What will be the network’s innovations, and strategy for election coverage
News18 has always been known for its election coverage. From our strength on the ground to our expertise in the studios, from our production innovations to the speed & accuracy of our updates, News18 is the network that audiences rely on for elections. The General Elections as well as the 5 State elections are slated for later in 2023, hence the next 10-12 months will be huge for us as India’s No. 1 News Network. We have big plans for coverage – with thousands of hours of programming across multiple languages across all of our channels– this will be the biggest, most historic coverage of elections ever.
Technology has always played a key part in our election coverage – the Magic Wall that was developed by our teams allows our anchors and experts to drill down into data as required and share insights with viewers. The immersive 'Air ElexA' experience that we created took the industry by storm at the time. We are known for being the only news network that runs a Live Election Hub on results day. We will continue to build on this legacy and wow the audiences as we go into our coverage of the upcoming elections.
On the new buzzword AI; the network ensuring brand loyalty and keeping the audiences engaged
The honest answer to that is how loyalty and identity have always been maintained. Marketers have always had an assortment of tools at their disposal. The differentiation has come from how these tools have been used. The latest technologies including AI will allow marketers and business leaders to sharpen processes, drive insights, focus even more sharply on delivering ROI, and drive engagement but ultimately it will come down to experiences; product experiences, and communication experiences that marketers can curate – differentiated and unique experiences that evoke passion and emotion in consumers and make them love your brand.
On Network 18’s technology upgradation helping the network to bring in new viewers and the vision for the next three years
At News18 we have been quite excited about bringing truly unique, diverse experiences for our viewers – from a product, content, production as well as a marketing standpoint. I mentioned above our unique Mother’s Day campaign on Metaverse. This campaign allowed viewers to celebrate the special day in a manner that was both - interactive and immersive. The campaign was well-received and generated a massive reach in just 24 hours. Initiatives such as these create a huge amount of buzz for the brand – driving sampling and engagement both.
We will continue experimenting with the latest stack of tech-enabled tools available to marketers to bring highly creative, engaging and differentiated campaigns and offerings. The AI anchors, for instance, at the events in Chandigarh and Jaipur that I spoke about are some examples of this or for that matter the Magic Wall or ElexA platforms that I alluded to above. We are also working on a really exciting project even now, where we will use technology to create an environment and allow viewers to experience content in a whole different way. As the leaders in the category, you will continue to see us push the boundary as far as our marketing and product thinking is concerned. We will apply the latest tools available to us to sharpen our creative processes, our media strategy and most importantly our product thinking based on deep insights that we can extract with the help of technology.
