Brand recall should be a natural outcome, not forced: Suresh Chand, ITC

Today’s generation isn’t just consuming content, they are skipping it, shaping it, and sharing it on their own terms. With Gen Z increasingly gravitating towards short-form, snackable formats and actively avoiding interruptive advertising, brands are being pushed to rethink how they capture attention. Recognising this shift, Bingo! from ITC has moved beyond its legacy of quirky campaigns to launch Let’s Boing!—a Gen Z-focussed entertainment platform. 

From meme-style takes on news and playful astrology to love calculators and blogs, the platform marks Bingo!’s shift towards building an always-on content ecosystem, aligning itself with how young consumers discover, engage with, and co-create content today.

Suresh Chand, VP and Head of Marketing, Snacks, Noodles and Pasta, Foods Division, ITC Ltd., in an exclusive interaction with exchange4media said that while the platform is relatively new, having been launched last year, the early response has been encouraging.

 “For us, success goes beyond traditional campaign metrics and is rooted in quality of attention and depth of engagement. We are tracking attention quality through time spent, repeat behaviour, and brand impact. From a brand lens, we are measuring lift in key imagery attributes like fun, humorous, and youthful, as well as ‘favourite brand’ scores,” he said.

He added that over 90,000 couples have already interacted with the platform’s ‘Pyaar-o-scope’ feature, with more than two-thirds returning to use it again.

Positioned as more than just a content hub, Let’s Boing! reflects a broader strategic shift for Bingo!, from one-way storytelling to building a participative ecosystem. The brand’s focus, Chand noted, is on making content so inherently ‘Bingo!’ in tone and personality that brand recall becomes a natural outcome of engagement, rather than a forced insertion.

From campaigns to conversations

Explaining the thinking behind the shift, Chand said the move stems from evolving media consumption habits among young audiences.

“Bingo is a youth-centric brand and our primary consumer cohort are in the age bracket of 18-24 years old. The media consumption of this TG has changed from long format appointment watching to snackable content over digital platforms. To be in tandem with the evolving consumer behaviour Bingo! has moved to short form content instead of advertising while still keeping the brand ethos constant,” he said.

He pointed to three key behavioural trends shaping the strategy: declining tolerance for interruptive ads, a preference for quick-burst content formats, and a growing ‘seek-out’ behaviour where users actively choose what they want to engage with.

“Platforms like Let’s Boing! are designed to be chosen, not imposed,” Chand added, underscoring the brand’s shift towards creating content that invites interaction rather than interruption.

Competing in a cluttered ecosystem

Chand mentioned that with attention increasingly fragmented across platforms, the obvious question is whether a brand-led platform can stand out in a space dominated by players like Instagram and a proliferation of meme pages. He, however, sees Let’s Boing! as a complement rather than a competitor.

“Our advantage lies in offering structured entertainment through curated humour formats with a clear voice and identity, along with interactive value content such as games, predictors, and quizzes.”

The platform’s content buckets reflect this approach. Formats like ‘Tedhe Medhe Samachar’ present satirical takes on current affairs through properties such as ‘Tedhe Medhe Highlights’ and ‘Boing Weekly’, while ‘Sa-Meme-Chaar’ blends news with meme culture. On the other hand, ‘Bolte Sitare’ reimagines astrology for a younger audience through formats like ‘Bhavishya On The Go’, ‘Pyaar-o-Scope’, and ‘Numbers Ka Khel’, alongside blog-led content.

Currently, Let’s Boing! is playing in a space where content discovery and engagement are largely dominated by a mix of social platforms, digital publishers, and always-on brand creators. Some of the key dominating players are platforms like Instagram and YouTube which drive scale through algorithm-led distribution and short-form video formats.

 Earning attention

While the shift to an owned platform opens up new engagement opportunities, it also comes with its own set of challenges. Unlike campaigns that are time-bound, platforms demand sustained investment in both creativity and consistency.

“Being consistent is crucial, both in terms of content quality and cadence,” Chand noted. “A platform like this requires continuous investment in creativity and cultural relevance.”

He added that earning and retaining attention remains the biggest hurdle. “We are operating in an environment that is saturated with content. To engage users, we have to constantly raise the bar in terms of originality and relatability,” he said.

The road ahead

Going forward, the focus is on scaling the platform by experimenting with and expanding content formats, while deepening interactivity. The brand is already working on adding newer features, including doodle art, gaming, and comedy-led formats, along with ‘Boing Chat’ to enable more direct interaction with users.

At its core, the ambition is to evolve from a content destination to a participative ecosystem.

 “The long-term vision is to move from consumption to participation, where users are not just viewers but active contributors,” Chand said.

As Bingo! doubles down on this approach, the success of Let’s Boing! could well serve as a marker for how FMCG brands reimagine engagement in a world where attention is no longer bought—but earned.