English Entertainment
AXN campaign for ‘Sherlock’ with Social & Uber succeeds
MUMBAI: He came, we saw and he conquered. That is how Sherlock S4 in India can be summed up. AXN premiered the BBC drama in India with an integrated 360-degree marketing campaign. Taking cues from the global campaign, AXN India adapted the international thought ‘It’s not a game anymore’ and created an India-specific, clutter-breaking campaign.
The fans loved the concept which in turn garnered quality social media conversations around the campaign tagline and the show.
Sony Pictures Networks India EVP and business head – English cluster Saurabh Yagnik said, “AXN is an aspirational brand for the youth so we strategically partnered with other aspirational youth brands – Social and Uber. We were able to engage with our target audience more efficiently and effectively creating a win-win proposition for all. The response from viewers has been phenomenal. We trended on Twitter for over 110 hours during the campaign period. AXN is home to Sherlock and we reinforced our position as the best destination for iconic shows and characters.”
With an aim to further the Sherlock craze, all marketing elements like on-air promotions, social media buzz, on-ground association, outdoor campaigns, radio spots and PR tools were strategically used to make the premiere a huge success.
The integrated activities began with a month long on-air campaign that included one-of-a-kind association with India’s leading app Uber and buzziest youth hangout joint Social. The first step was for Uber travelers to unlock the Sherlock code on the Uber app. This resulted in top 100 winners of the activity to watch exclusive screening of Sherlock season 4 episode before the India premiere.
Uber GM Mumbai and West Shailesh Sawlani added, “We tied up with AXN to give our riders across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore a first-hand flavour of Sherlock, this season. The campaign saw a great response across the three cities and it was a phenomenal experience for the ardent fans to simply enter a promo code to attend the exclusive screening.”
The three-week long collaboration with Social enabled fans to experience Sherlock’s eccentric lifestyle by being part of an exciting treasure hunt across key Social outlets in India. The fans also got photographs clicked at the Sherlock zone created at the venue, which was equipped with Sherlock props, and win exclusive AXN hampers.
AXN got on board stand-up comedian of EIC fame, Azeem Banatwalla to take viewers through the Sherlock voyage. A 5-minute crash course to all the previous episodes coupled with his wacky humour, got the more than one million views creating tremendous buzz online.
Impresario (parent company of Social) director – marketing and strategy Shobita Kadan added, “We were delighted to partner with AXN and provide a platform for the first ever screening of Sherlock for which we share a common audience. Our patrons; true Sherlockians got the opportunity to enjoy the screening well before anyone else in the country. A 360-degree brand experience was curated through various touch points such as a fun treasure hunt, an interactive photo booth and fun giveaways to reinstating the culture-defining Social experience.”
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
