Entertainment today is not restricted to television; at least this is what the young generation thinks. MTV Insight Studio (the research arm of MTV India) conducted a study named ‘Recreation Redefined’, where it surveyed 3000 youngsters (15-24 yr olds, SEC A & B) in 16 Indian cities. The study revealed facts regarding the redefined entertainment by the youth.

Aditya Swamy, senior vice president, sales and marketing, MTV India says, “The speed and comfort with which young people are adopting and adapting, makes this a very exciting time for youth marketers. We at MTV enjoy the sheer challenge of trying to stay ahead of this formula 1 generation. Our approach with this study has been to understand what entertainment means to young people by immersing ourselves in their world, talking their language and understanding their symbols and I hope this serves a useful tool to all of us who are looking to get a greater return on our marketing investments.”

He further added, “One is that recreation has transformed from being a single activity, to that involving many activities. People want to play and play equally, whether it comes to experimentation, enjoyment, work, relationships,” he says. “Secondly, the adoption is trends is much faster in small towns. Youngsters in such towns are more experimentative with the choices for recreation as well. Thirdly, categories such as telecom are seen as more fun because there is so much you can do with the cell phone – chat, download, call, play games and more.”

The study also revealed that youngsters prefer role models like Dhoni over Rahul Dravid. The reason being the attitudes they exhibit under pressure. For Instance, Dravid looks soaked up but Dhoni appears to be having fun and under control.

Facts revealed from the study:

25,800 minutes are spent by young India on entertainment every month, that’s 60% of their time.

Chatting, and not social networking is the most popular entertainment activity on the internet with 82% people on chat versus 40% who are into social networking.

Youth in small and emerging towns are more avid gamers as compared to those in bigger cities.

Dhoni is one captain whose leading his team in all the right directions. Recently, the Indian cricket team captain along with Harbhajan Singh, Virender Sehwag and Ishant Sharma, launched personalized websites. The websites of all these four cricketers went online from Monday, December 28, 2009.

TechShot Digital will exclusively promote the four cricketers in mobile, digital, new media and technology spheres. The websites will also be handled by the company. The websites of the cricketers are as follows;

Dhoni (www.dhoniworld.com )
Bhajji (www.bhajjiworld.com )
Sehwag (www.sehwagworld.com )
Ishant (www.ishantworld.com)

Confirming the news, Jay Motwani, Managing Director, TechShot Digital Pvt Ltd, said, “Apart from being informative, these websites will redefine the player-fan relationship in India by providing an opportunity for the fans to connect and interact with their favorite cricketers. Our main aim is to create digital management identity platform to extend support to celebrities and organizations to create, develop and manage digital content for them.”

The websites will provide insights from the cricketer’s life and will also feature exclusive videos, pictures from player’s personal lives, etc…The sites will also feature answers from the stars to all the queries from budding cricketers as well as the charity work done by the cricketers.

On launching these websites, Dhoni said, “There are many things that go uncovered even in media; these websites will cover all that. Through my website, people will get to know my lifestyle and it will also help fans know and understand me better, not only as a cricketer, but as an individual as well.”

Yes, the captain of the Indian cricket team seems to be leading the power list as well. According to the second wave results of CelebTrack, Dhoni leads the power list followed by Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Amitabh Bachchan. CelebTrack is a research conducted by Percept Talent Management and Hansa Research to determine the popularity of celebs and their influence on consumers.

India’s most powerful celebs are as follows:

1. MS Dhoni
2. Shah Rukh Khan
3. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
4. Amitabh Bachchan
5. Sachin Tendulkar
6. Hrithik Roshan
7. Yuvraj Singh
8. Katrina Kaif
9. Akshay Kumar
10. Salman Khan

Sachin Tendulkar slipped to fifth position (from last year’s top slot) wheras Aishwarya Rai ranked higher on CPS than her father-in-law. Salman Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Sania Mirza top their respective genres as the most recognised stars. Amitabh Bachchan replaced Salman Khan in terms of likeability.

The study is based on data from 12,000 respondents (urban, adults, SEC ABCD, aged 15-50 years) across India. The research reveals the position of celebrities on five parameters – media presence, popularity, image attributes, power of persuasion and over exposure – on which the celebrity power scores. This time, more celebrities from different genres (anchors, musicians) and better probing techniques have been employed.

Research was conducted on 400 celebrities across the country and were ranked on the basis of above mentioned criteria. A Celebrity Power Score (CPS) was generated and higher the rankings, the more favorable the celeb would be for an advertiser.

Manish Porwal, chief executive officer, Percept Talent Management, says, “Our clients can now make informed and learned decisions, rather than relying on gut and anecdotal learning. Also, celebrities can benchmark themselves vis-à-vis their audience and accordingly price their involvement with brands.”