BB Ki Vines (Bhuvan Bam Ki Vines) channel began in 2015 and has 19.4 million subscribers. BB Ki Vines’ Facebook page has nine to 10 million unique page views a week.
But Bhuvan has diversified his content, unlike his YouTube competitors. He is also establishing himself as a singer, actor, and an interviewer, in addition to funny videos. Last month, he also collaborated with international YouTube star Lilly Singh. Last year, he acted in a short film called Plus Minus with Divya Dutta, and recently bagged a Filmfare award for the same.
Bhuvan has a journey worth documenting and in order to look at his association with brands, we decided to catch up with his friend, manager, and entrepreneur Rohit Raj. Here is the excerpt from our conversation-
NBB – What are the brands Bhuvan is associated with currently?
Rohit Raj – Currently, We are working with a handful of brands as we have to maintain a balance between organic content and branded content. Few brands which we are promoting is Myntra as the festive season is coming and Faboom as IPL is going on. We expect a few more announcements following up on these brands. Bhuvan is the only digital celebrity endorsing a fantasy app apart from cricketers.
NBB – We have mostly seen Movie stars doing such brand endorsements. Why do think brands are on boarding Bhuvan?
Rohit Raj – Bhuvan and I were very particular about the fact that we don’t want an influencer tag. 3 years back, We started promoting MIVI and we are associated with them till now. Movie stars shoot for brands and their job is done. We on the contrary provide a total creative solution to the brand. Along with the celebrity face of Bhuvan, We provide the media reach of our YouTube, Instagram and we produce the endorsement videos also where I produce the films, and Bhuvan scripts all of it. Brands love to work with us as they get a lot of different outcomes in less investment as compared to Bollywood stars.
NBB – As one of the first digital celebrity of India, How do you make sure you are sending a right message to your audience out there?
Rohit Raj – We brainstorm a lot. We go through every pitch and make sure we don’t endorse any negative emotion. We exist because of the audience and we can’t play with their sentiments. We say no if we see anything negative coming out of any pitch.
We asked Faboom, one of the brands endorsed by Bhuvan Bam.
NBB – How did you decide to onboard Bhuvan for Faboom as he is the first Non-Gaming celeb to be associated with a Fantasy app?
Pratik Kumar, Co-Founder, Faboom – Bhuvan Bam is hugely popular amongst youth across India and the majority of fantasy users are young people who like to spend most of their time on YouTube, Instagram, and other social media platforms. These youngsters are fantasy sports audiences and as a sports fantasy platform, we constantly want to reach the right target audience. We have always admired BB for doing things differently and disrupting the content space in a huge way and associating with him during this IPL season makes him the right choice for Faboom.
Midhula Devabhaktuni, Co-Founder & CMO, Mivi said, “Bhuvan Bam is a singer, comedian, YouTube megastar, and a youth icon, in Bhuvan we have found a partner who exemplifies our commitment to solving the problems of durability and performance without sacrificing on product design and aesthetics.
If we look closely at the rise of Bhuvan Bam, this story tells us that Bhuvan is not just a YouTuber or a Digital celebrity. He is an inspiration, an icon for the youth of India who wants to be part of the Digital takeover.
