A look at how Dice Media created a buzz campaign around the new season of 'Operation MBBS', to create awareness amidst their core target audience - students and medical students.
This case study decodes the awareness and engagement campaign for Operation MBBS Season 2 by Dice Media, understand how the brand created buzz while balancing through content between the seriousness of studying medicine and the fun students have in their college years.
Brand Introduction
Dice Media is the long-form premium storytelling channel of Pocket Aces that creates a multi-episodic, seasonal web series. Some of Dice Media’s most notable work includes “Little Things”, “What The Folks” & “Operation MBBS”. Known as an expert in the Young Adult genre, Dice Media was the first new-age creator to have a multi-show deal with the streaming giant, Netflix.
Summary
Operation MBBS is one of the most popular shows produced by Dice Media and Season 2 covers the journey of medical students as they gear up for the crucial 2nd year of the MBBS degree. It is also India’s first web series covering the pandemic and its impact from the perspective of the medical fraternity.
Problem Statement/Objective
The objective of the campaign was to position Operation MBBS 2 as a drama series based on a central theme of sacrifice while portraying doctors as real-life warriors to spread awareness around the subject, especially in these COVID-times as without doctors, there’s no hope for survival.
Brief
To build a campaign that is targeted towards students, especially medical students and to ensure the content and conversations around the series are relevant and relatable. Along with this, to portray doctors as strong societal figures and garner positive sentiments around their role during these times.
Creative Idea
To reach out to the relevant communities (medical aspirants, students, and medical professionals) by leveraging the power of content and creators to market the web series from the perspective of doctors and frontline workers.
Challenges
One of the key challenges was to find the right balance between showcasing the fun times students have in college and how their character arcs develop while at the same time being sensitive to the ongoing pandemic and communicating the gravity of the situation. The series marketing had to do justice to both the timelines and not just throw light on the happy college life.
Another key challenge was that the series portrayed college life prior to the pandemic and since it had been a year of lockdown, students' habits and behavioral patterns had completely changed in that year. As the story progresses, the communication had to adapt to the culture of the current student life that addressed their real-life issues including online classes, virtual exams, excuses for bunking lectures, and so on.
Execution
As a part of the pre-buzz campaign, audition videos were created from the Operation MBBS Season 1 to urge the audience to watch the next season, act as a reminder to Season 1 while making the viewers accustomed to the series character. This initiative helped to generate curiosity for the audience.
This was followed by character introduction posts where the marketers shared glimpses of the throwback and took the audiences through the individual characters in S1, again serving as the recap for the fans.
Post this, the announcement posters were shared to showcase the struggles of medical students and professionals, in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The poster involved elements in line with the Operation MBBS marketing them such as charts of COVID cases, friendship, drama, etc. This was followed by the Trailer launch.
As part of the Operation MBBS marketing strategy, the makers did content extensions and initiated marketing tactics with relatable situations around students during the COVID-19 days, in line with the theme of the show.
With an aim to drive micro-community discussions, the marketers leveraged meme marketing to reach Gen-Z across the board, as part of the content marketing strategy.
To reach out to millennial and Gen Z audiences, Operation MBBS Season 2 collaborated with popular Instagram creators such as Crossover Edits, WeAreYuvaa, and more. Further, to reach out to the target audience (medical professionals and students), the makers collaborated with popular medical and NEET examination pages and groups on social media to spread the word around the series.
As the series was released, the platform also shared a collated video of reviews and reactions from India and abroad.
As a part of the post-release initiatives, Dice Media also hosted Operation MBBS Season 2 superfan contest during the premiere of episodes 2 and 3 to encourage its audience to join the episode premiere and redirect them to watch the show. The winners of the contest got a chance to interact with the show stars such as Ayush Mehra, Anshul Chauhan, and Sarah Hashmi.
Results
Quantitative:
Impressions: 802 million
On social media, of the 80+ memes and shoulder content that were uploaded, over 55 of them were video and they garnered an overall viewership of around 9.8 million video views!
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