Pogo takes its new show to schools

The kids channel launches a school activation campaign to give students a trailer of its new show, FAQ

Pogo, a Turner International channel, has come out with a new show to not just entertain kids, but also answer their endless questions. The channel is leaving no stone unturned in its bid to get kids hooked onto the new show, appropriately called FAQ.

FAQ works to satiate the high curiosity levels of its target audience by providing answers in a simple and entertaining way. Krishna Desai, director, programming, Turner International India, tells afaqs!, "It's a curiosity based show, which seeks to explain things such as 'Why is the sky blue?' or 'Can we walk on liquid?' through fun demonstrations.

"Instead of alienating kids by giving the answers in a boring or downright complex manner, we have worked out this concept to entertain kids while educating them."

The show went on air on July 19 at 10:30 pm. However, the channel has been going to schools and giving a 'life-size' trailer of the show four days in advance. The on-ground campaign will involve about 900 schools in 19 cities till the end of August, giving students of Classes 1-9 a taste of the show. The campaign, apart from the major metros, focuses on major Hindi speaking markets such as Rajkot, Baroda, Surat, Ghaziabad, Bareilly, Aligarh, Moradabad, Gwalior, Ujjain, Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Amritsar and Faridabad.

The concept of the campaign has been worked out in-house. It is being executed by Krayons Entertainment, an event management company, across all cities. Since the execution involves the promoters going to these schools and giving live demonstrations of a few experiments, Krayons had to train all the promoters on the various aspects of the experiments.

Tabassum Modi, director, Krayons Entertainment, shares with afaqs!, "We watched eight-10 episodes of the show and selected those experiments which could be easily replicated on-ground. Other important parameters for the selection were the visual appeal of the experiments and practicality of execution. Also, the execution had to look magical to the students while giving them a scientific logic behind what they thought was magic."

The company then selected narrators to conduct these experiments in the schools based on two criteria - preferably a science background so that they could answer any queries of the students, and some experience in dealing with kids.

CDs displaying the operational details of the experiments were then sent to these narrators, along with the props required to practice the demonstrations.

The channel plans to engage nine lakh kids through this campaign. Desai says, "The campaign will definitely work as we have kept it very interactive. As to the indicators for that, we are also pushing a contest based on the show through the on-ground campaign, where the kids are required to file in entries. The number of entries received will be an excellent indicator of the impact of the campaign, as will be the ratings of the show."