STAR World's gender battle stunt for MasterChef

The channel has roped in Tourism Australia, byt (bookyourtable.com), Society Tea, Tata Salt, Pigeon and McCain Foods for the fifth season of MasterChef Australia India telecast. The show has just ended in Australia.

Bringing the fifth season of MasterChef Australia, STAR World is geared up to promote the show in a big way, especially on digital. Starting September 10, it will be a three-month long weekday property which will sport the boys versus girls theme.

The channel has roped in Tourism Australia byt (bookyourtable.com), Society Tea, Tata Salt, Pigeon and McCain Foods for the fifth season of MasterChef Australia India telecast. The show has just ended in Australia. It must be noted that the Hindi GEC from the network has recently launched an Indian adaptation of the show, MasterChef Junior.

Kevin Vaz, business head, STAR India, says that the show has a strong fan following. Vaz adds, "MasterChef is not just a show about cooking. It is a competitive reality show. It has a certain fan base for each version, be it MasterChef US, MasterChef UK or MasterChef Australia. Plus, the kind of sponsors that have come aboard have a strong association."

The theme of the show is girls versus boys in Season 5. Traditional stereotypes assume girls to be the people cooking in the kitchens, while all the top professional chefs are boys. This never-ending argument of who is the best makes for the global positioning of MasterChef Australia Season 5.

The channel is banking on its English channel network of nine channels, comprising STAR Movies, STAR Movies Action, FX, Fox Crime, STAR World, STAR Movies HD and STAR World HD. Apart from these, the network also boasts of two infotainment channels, Fox Traveller and National Geographic Channel.

Television will undoubtedly be at the core of the marketing campaign for the upcoming season of the reality show. A couple of thousand spots were a part of the promotional strategy. Vaz says, "Our English network reaches out to about 15 million viewers, which is almost equal to all the English audiences of India. We expect the largest number of conversions from there."

On air, the channel will also have a 'Watch and Win contest', wherein the viewers can answer questions to win prizes. Apart from television, digital will see the biggest efforts. The microsite for the show (mca.starworld.in) will keep informing the audience about the participants and videos of the show.

Tweets with hashtags #MChefGirls and #MChefBoys will feature on the microsite in keeping with the theme of the show. The channel recently organised a cook off for the influencer tweeters at Smaash, which featured boys competing with girls.

On Facebook, an application has been developed where, on uploading an image, the user's picture is displayed with the MasterChef apron - the 'Apron of honour' - thus making the person a part of the show.

As a part of its on ground activation, the channel has partnered with three restaurant chains to offer MasterChef menus (select dishes) to customers. Under this, Shiros outlets will offer MasterChef dishes for brunch; Hard Rock Café outlets will serve MasterChef desserts; and California Pizza Kitchen will dish out Italian-based preparations of MasterChef. These will be available during September to December, for the entire duration of the show telecast in India.

Apart from this, the channel has organised on ground cookery competitions in partnership with the newspaper, DNA. These will be held at Renaissance Mumbai Convention Hotel (Mumbai), Hard Rock Café (Pune) and California Pizza Kitchen (Bengaluru).

In addition, through the season, the channel will host thematic Masterclasses in sync with the shows across the city.

Grey Worldwide is the digital agency for the channel.