MUMBAI: In the second phase of promotional campaign for Saath Phere, Zee TV will focus on outdoors and on-air promos.

If the pre-launch promotional strategy for Saath Phere has been the hidden identity of the lead heroine Saloni, the newly launched campaign tries to create a buzz by revealing the lead characters with more probing on the social issues it covers. Issues like prejudice against a dark complexion and the overt emphasis laid on marriage form the crux of these hoardings. The hoardings reach out to the people asking them to opine their thoughts on the same.

Hoardings apart, the ground promotions for the serial have also been accelerated. The show was promoted at a recent Saregamapa Challenge 2005 episode, which was held during Durga Pooja at Kolkata. Games were organised among the women at the pandals which were put up during this show. They were encouraged to voice their opinion on the issues that the show deals with.

Says Zee TV marketing head Tarun Mehra, “After the promotion campaign at Kolkata, we also promoted the show at the Half-Marathon held at Delhi. Women are our target audience obviously, but we are looking at men too.”

When asked to elaborate on other steps taken for promotion, Mehra added, “We are using `madaris' to propagate the Saat Phere’s main premise. It is shown that the female monkey, who is dark, has to face a lot of adversities. The monkeys are being used to symbolise our society. We are trying to deliver a message through this humourous medium.”

In a bid to jump onto the bandwagon of interactive programming, Saat Phere will present a situation at the end of each week with three possible tracks being given to the viewers.