MAM
BankBazaar shows fans it cares
MUMBAI: Financial marketplace, BankBazaar.com has decided to bid goodbye to the year with a special musical tribute to some of its biggest fans, thanking them for all the love and support. The BankBazaar’s Biggest Fans digital campaign celebrates some of the brand’s biggest fans on social media with personalised musical messages. The week-long activity is being executed on Facebook and Instagram.
The whole stunt was planned out to make BankBazaar fans feel special and show them that it is listening. They contacted two of their biggest fans on social media and requested one of them to meet at The Teal Door Cafe, Indira Nagar, and the other at Blossoms Bookstore, Church Street, under the ruse of a gift to thank them for being with the brand all year.
https://www.facebook.com/bankbazaar/videos/10156018071619468/
In the meantime, BankBazaar had a band of singers and beat boxers, including Vineeth Vincent, Hannah Mathews, Joshua Selvaraj, and Sheridan Brass, to write a song for each fan. The songs were to be sung as a surprise for each fan at these two locations in a guerrilla fashion. With cameras, an ensemble of musicians and a film crew hiding in the respective locations, the fun began.
https://www.facebook.com/bankbazaar/videos/10156018047199468/
The campaign was conceptualised and executed in collaboration with Bluebot Digital.
BankBazaar.com head of brand marketing Prince Thomas says, “As an organisation, we believe in keeping our customers at the centre of everything we do, and our social media campaigns are no different. Our fans expect us to be unique and interesting in the way we tell our stories. That’s the reason we experiment with themes and delivery to put our message across. 2017 has been an extremely successful year for BankBazaar, with several well-received campaigns that made a mark on social media as well as in our fans’ hearts. So we wanted to celebrate our successes with some of our biggest social media fans who made our successes possible, and what could be better than musical tributes to such special fans!”
BlueBot Digital CEO and CCO Carl Savio adds, “Social media fans and followers are often taken for granted and treated like a statistic by some brands. For the latest BankBazaar campaign, we decided to show our fans how far we are from treating them the same way. So, we dug through social media data to find individuals who have genuinely given the brand love and support on multiple occasions and decided to surprise them using the gift of song! What followed was a crazy shoot, awestruck fans and much more! Happy to have a client as forward thinking as BankBazaar.”
Brands
TV bills on the rise: JioStar, Sony, and Zee crank up prices by 10 per cent
Broadcasters tune into higher tariffs as JioStar, Sony, and Zee reveal new prices
MUMBAI: If you were hoping for a cheaper night in front of the telly next year, you might want to look away from the remote. India’s broadcasting giants are flipping the script on pricing, with JioStar, Sony, and Zee all tuning into a new frequency of higher tariffs. Ahead of the 2026 financial year, the Big Three have released their updated Reference Interconnect Offers (RIOs), signalling a collective push that will see most monthly bills rise by roughly 10 per cent.
The synchronised move suggests that broadcasters are testing the price elasticity of their audience. In simpler terms, they are betting that your love for daily soaps and live sports is stronger than your annoyance at a slightly lighter wallet.
Sony is making a particularly bold play in the High Definition space. If you enjoy the crispness of Sony Entertainment Television HD or Sony SAB HD, your monthly bill for those channels will jump from 25 rupees to 30 rupees. The same 30-rupee price tag now applies to their sports heavyweights, including Sony Sports Ten 1, Sony Sports Ten 2, Sony Sports Ten 3 Hindi, and Sony Sports Ten 5.
However, Sony is also expanding its horizons. Fans of regional content have new arrivals to look forward to, provided they are patient. Sony Sports Ten 4 Kannada is slated for an April 2026 debut, while Sony Vizha and Sony Vizha HD are expected by June. By August, Sony Telugu and Sony Telugu HD should be live. To keep customers sweet until then, Sony is offering “proportionate discounts.” For instance, the Happy India 2026 Smart Tamil bouquet, normally 42 rupees, will cost just 29.91 rupees until the new Vizha channel officially joins the party.
On the standard definition front, Sony is keeping its “strategic mass price” at 19 rupees for big hitters like Sony Max, Sony Marathi, and Sony Aath. Smaller channels see minor tweaks: Sony Max 2 is nudging up from 2 rupees to 3 rupees, while Sony Yay! sits at 6 rupees and Sony Max 1 remains at 5 rupees.
Zee Entertainment is also getting in on the act with a comprehensive 10 percent hike. Their flagship Standard Definition channels, such as Zee TV, Zee Cinema, Zee Marathi, Zee Bangla, Zee Sarthak, Zee Kannada, and Zee Tamil, are all locked in at 19 rupees. Interestingly, they have matched this 19-rupee price point for many of their HD versions too, including &TV and &Pictures.
For those who prefer the all-you-can-eat bouquet approach, Zee’s All-in-One Hindi SD pack has risen to 58 rupees. Their Marathi and Bangla packs are now 64 rupees, while the Southern trio of Tamil, Kannada, and Telugu SD packs will set you back 85 rupees. If you want those same Southern packs in glorious HD, the price climbs to a steeper 131 rupees. Zee is also shuffling its deck by exiting English entertainment but entering the sports arena, with Zee Cafe and &flix seeing price adjustments to 7 and 8 rupees respectively.
JioStar is perhaps the most aggressive of the bunch when it comes to regional favourites. While they have kept core Hindi staples like Star Plus, Colors, and Star Gold at 19 rupees, they have pushed premium regional channels like Asianet, Colors Kannada, Vijay TV, and Maa TV up to 30 rupees. This move is significant because any channel priced over 19 rupees cannot be included in a discounted bouquet, meaning fans of these channels will have to buy them separately, potentially driving up the total cost of a monthly subscription.
Even the youngsters aren’t spared, with kids’ favourites like Nick SD and Nick HD+ now priced at 19 rupees. As we head towards April 2026, the ball is now in the court of the cable and dish operators. They must decide how much of these increases they can swallow and how much they will pass on to the person holding the remote. For the average viewer, the message is clear: premium content is getting a premium price tag.
