Entertainment industry Archives

Southeast Asia – Global entertainment brand Lionsgate Play has launched its revamped brand identity across several markets in the Asia-Pacific, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India.

Inspired by the concept of a prism, the new logo conveys the narratives of Lionsgate Play and its approach to storytelling. The prismatic concept allows for a fluid transition in and out of the brand’s new colour of choice: teal, highlighting a sense of boldness.

Aligned with its new identity, Lionsgate Play will continue strengthening its connection with the viewers, focusing on employing an advanced user interface, enhancing consumer experiences, faster app loading times, and an overall increase in stability, promising a polished look and feel when streaming content.

Commenting on the rebrand, Rohit Jain, president of Lionsgate Play Asia, said, “As a brand, Lionsgate Play not only provides opportunities for a range of voices to be expressed, but it seeks to present characters with complexity and depth. The new identity represents innovation, energy, and excitement; the perfect embodiment of all that we aim to achieve for the brand. Through this refreshed identity, our goal is to provide premium content that is consistent, original, and bold. We hope our efforts appeal to the viewers and showcase the true essence of what Lionsgate Play is about.”

Meanwhile, Amit Dhanuka, executive vice president of Lionsgate, also mentioned, “Lionsgate Play is a global entertainment brand offering premium content at a fair price – we tell stories that embrace unique perspectives and broaden the horizons of our viewers. As Lionsgate Play continues to strengthen its presence across South Asia, our new brand identity will stand testament to present bold, diverse, and captivating narratives that resonate with audiences.”

Hong Kong – Hong Kong-headquartered life insurance PrudentialAsia has tapped the talents of Korean boy band SuperM in its new marketing campaign to encourage people across Asia to be healthy while maintaining fun.

Formed in 2019 by Korean entertainment group SM Entertainment and records company Capitol Music Group, SuperM is composed of seven members, coming from other groups such as NCT 127 and EXO.

The campaign, called ‘We DO Well Together’, will center around collaboration of Prudential and SuperM in a series of events to motivate people to lead healthier lives and achieve better wellness.

“Prudential and SuperM share a common goal. We want to promote the importance of staying fit and healthy, especially during these times. Together, we want to motivate people to attain wellness in a positive, proactive, and fun way,” said Nic Nicandrou, chief executive of Prudential Asia.

He added, “Prudential goes beyond the provision of protection to offer holistic health and wellness services, helping people prevent and postpone the onset of diseases. We do this through our all-in-one health app Pulse by Prudential, and a comprehensive range of best-in-class solutions and services to help people live well, for longer. This latest campaign focused on health and wellness reflects our continued commitment to putting our customers at the heart of our business.”

Meanwhile, SuperM released a statement, stating that “As the world experiences challenging times due to the pandemic, it is our ambition to spread positive energy and help as many people as possible to achieve not just good physical health, but mental wellbeing as well. We share a common mission with Prudential to help improve people’s wellness and drive optimism in good and bad times. Through ‘We DO Well Together’, we call on everybody to put in the same energy and spirit as ‘We DO’ to achieve our life goals together.”

Singapore – The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has announced two new key partnerships: audiobook platform Audible and global multimedia company KC Global Media (Singapore), in upbringing the local talent of the country by digital transformation strategies.

The recent partnership is in part with IMDA’s larger plans of expanding the country’s media ecosystem that envisions a rise of innovative content and new opportunities for international collaboration.

Audible will be responsible for providing audio development and production training through its program “Audible Accelerator”. Furthermore, they will be responsible for finding and identifying local original stories that will be tested on Audible’s services globally.

“We are thrilled to work with IMDA and to tap into Singapore’s rich talent pool. We want nothing less than to find unique individuals to tell groundbreaking stories that could only be expressed through the power of human voice and create the next great audio series,” said Karen Appathurai Wiggins, vice president for content at Audible Inc. APAC.

She added, “It is a nation ripe with artistic talent but the audio and spoken-word category is still emerging. We hope to develop the capabilities of the artistic talent who have faced challenges as a result of the pandemic, and lay a foundation to new creative pathways and opportunities in the audio content field.”

On the other hand, KC Global Media Singapore will be responsible for collaborating with local media companies to conceptualize original scripts that have a regional appeal to countries such as Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, and Taiwan.

“Technology advancement evolves the way consumers digest content and sets new market trends. Despite the challenging times amidst the recent climate, our brand thrives on pushing the boundaries of creativity and innovation. We are thrilled to partner with IMDA in rolling out initiatives targeting local talents to develop new formats, produce original content and make it available on all platforms,” said George Chien, president & CEO of KC Global Media Asia.

The new partnerships are launched under the umbrella of Capability Partnership Programme (CPP), which is expected to benefit 90 local media companies and over 700 media professionals in 2021 through job creation and opportunities for upskilling.

Mumbai, India – Local-based entertainment super-app ZEE5 has partnered with XroadMedia, a cloud- and server-based content discovery and recommendations back-end solutions for digital media, to ramp up its hyper-personalized video-on-demand (VOD) offerings and social media services.

Through the partnership, ZEE5 will be using XroadMedia’s content discovery platform Ncanto, which will help in creating multiple content discoveries, recommendations, and personalization use-cases for its users.

“ZEE5 has always believed in the power of great content and powerful technology coming together to offer the best experience to a viewer. We believe gone are the days of broadcast; even the current trend of viewing audiences in clusters and cohorts will soon give way to individual personalization,” stated Rajneel Kumar, business head for expansion projects and head of products at ZEE5.

He added, “We have benchmarked their solution for a few months and found adoption and click-through-rates on recommendations were significantly higher along with a substantial increase in average time spent by a user. XroadMedia’s cloud-based services have also provided us with a higher level of flexibility to serve personalization use-cases and I’m confident this partnership will heighten our seamless content viewing experience, a feat we take great pride in and work tirelessly to maintain.”

Furthermore, Ncanto will aid ZEE5 in creating dynamic personalization of VODbased on interests and watching behavior.

“Our partnership with ZEE5 is another major milestone in the history of XroadMedia and proves the progress we have made over the past few years. We are particularly excited to work with ZEE5 as they are using our solution to its full extent – from personalizing entire screens in the user interface via creating and managing editorial services to applying our solution across multiple content types and sources. We are very pleased with this partnership, as the application of our solution shows how important personalization is to ZEE5 and I am sure together we will push the boundaries of content discovery and personalization even further in the future”, said XroadMedia Co-Founder and CEO Adolf Proidl.

California, USA – NBCUniversal International Networks’ kid and family entertainment channel DreamWorks is launching the kids series titled “The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants” on its own TV channel.

Based on the original novel by Dav Pilkey, the new kid series will revolve around the characters George and Harold and their latest creation Captain Underpants. The new show is focused on bringing kid-friendly entertainment including laugh-out jokes, kid antics and supporting characters joining the show’s adventure.

The show is executively produced by Peter Hastings, and is slated for its premiere episode on December 7, 6:55pm (PHT) weekdays on DreamWorks.

Other ongoing shows by DreamWorks include “The Boss Baby: Back in Business”, “Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny and Trolls: The Beat Goes On!” – in addition to new releases Denver the Last Dinosaur which premiered 16 November at 3:30pm (PHT) and “Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed!” launching on the DreamWorks channel on Monday 7th December at 5:15pm (PHT).

Singapore – When COVID-19 struck, its catastrophic blow on businesses spared no industry. There are definitely sectors that are more hard-hit than others, but every business had a fair share of economic decline.

Amid the pandemic, one industry that has not been thoroughly checked on as others is the entertainment industry, and a survey by live events and entertainment company Branded revealed that senior executives are quite bullish on business despite having to deal with pandemic-induced disruptions.

The study captured the views of more than 60 movers and shakers, and C-suite decision makers in the entertainment industry. It found that 58% of bosses feel confident in the performance of the sector over the next six months, while 23% described their business to be in a current state of decline.

Executives also demonstrated continued optimism when asked about how long they expect the effects of COVID-19 to last on business. A large portion, 70%, feel that the perennial effects of Covid-19 will only last between one and two years, with just 17% feeling it will last from two to five years.

The study also revealed that smaller businesses, those with annual turnover of US$1m or less, feel significantly more bullish on their future market performance than larger businesses of US$6m or greater.

Jasper Donat, CEO at Branded said, “In a period that has totally uprooted the entertainment industry, it is now a challenge to judge what will be a temporary knock, and what will have a seismic impact for years to come. The survey does however reveal a forward-looking optimism from business leaders and a renewed commitment to purpose-led business.”