HCL Concerts
1400% Watch Time Growth. 10x Traffic.
01 · Company Overview
HCL Concerts is HCL Technologies' cultural initiative to platform and promote classical Indian music, with a focus on lesser-known artists and traditional art forms. Monthly live concerts are streamed online. The core mission: unearth India's hidden gems in classical music. The digital growth challenge: building a real, engaged audience for a niche cultural category from zero.
| Dimension | Detail |
|---|---|
| Format | Monthly live-streamed classical music concerts on the HCL Concerts website |
| Target audience | Classical music enthusiasts, culturally aware urban Indians, music students and practitioners |
| Business goal | Build digital following, drive live viewers and watch time, grow ongoing audience across India |
| Starting point | Near-zero digital audience. No existing community. Unknown to potential viewers outside niche circles. |
The Category Insight: Classical music does not have mass appeal; but it has intense niche appeal. The challenge was not creating demand where none exists; it was finding the right audience efficiently and getting them to show up live. Unlike entertainment categories where reach drives results, here the metric was watch time; meaning I needed people who would actually stay and watch, not just click.
02 · Market Context
03 · Audience Segments
| Audience Segment | Where They Were | What Motivated Them | How I Reached Them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core classical music enthusiasts | Facebook groups, YouTube channels, music school communities | Preservation of classical art forms, discovering new artists | Interest targeting on Hindustani/Carnatic music, sitar, tabla, classical dance |
| Culturally curious urban Indians | Arts and culture pages, documentary viewers | Connection to Indian heritage, aspirational cultural identity | Lookalike audiences from engaged viewers + interest in Indian classical arts |
| Previous concert viewers | Already on the website; tracked via Facebook Pixel | Enjoyed the last concert, want to see the next one | Website Custom Audience retargeting + video view remarketing |
| Location-specific audiences | Metro cities with classical music scenes (Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru) | Live local music events, cultural institutions | Location-based targeting + interests overlap |
The Watch Time Insight: Watch time campaigns fail when audience and content are misaligned. I learned early that broad interest targeting (Indian classical music) produced better watch time than demographic targeting alone. Lookalikes built from high-watch-time users significantly outperformed lookalikes built from all website visitors.
04 · Strategy
| My Thinking | What I Did and Why |
|---|---|
| A funnel designed for watch time is different from one designed for clicks. | Built a full-funnel audience architecture: Cold (interest-based) to Warm (video viewers, page engagers) to Hot (website visitors, past concert viewers). Each stage had tailored messaging and a different objective. Funnel structure reduced cost per minute watched by 3x vs single-stage campaigns. |
| Pre-event buildup creates anticipation. Post-event content keeps the buzz alive. | Ran three campaign phases per concert: (1) Pre-event teaser; artist spotlight content to build curiosity, (2) Live-day push; "Concert starts in X hours" urgency messaging, (3) Post-event; highlights reel to re-engage viewers and seed the next concert. Post-event campaigns extended average engagement window by 11 days per concert. |
| One video ad format cannot serve all audience stages equally well. | Designed multiple video creative variations: 15-second awareness clips (artist introduction), 30-second consideration clips (artist performing), 60-second retargeting clips (full performance excerpt + live event CTA). Each matched to its funnel stage. Matched creative-to-stage format outperformed generic video by 2.4x on watch time. |
| Facebook Pixel data allows me to build audiences from behaviour, not just demographics. | Used Pixel data to create custom audiences from: website visitors in last 30 days, video viewers (25%, 50%, 75%, 95% watch thresholds), and page engagers. 95% video view lookalikes produced highest watch time at lowest cost per viewer. |
| Campaign scale should match audience quality, not just budget size. | Structured budget allocation: 40% to cold acquisition, 35% to warm retargeting, 25% to lookalike expansion. Adjusted allocation based on watch time per rupee by segment each week. Dynamic allocation improved overall watch time per Rs 1,000 spent by 40% over campaign run. |
05 · Results
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Average watch time growth | 1400% growth in 3 months |
| Website traffic during live events | 10x increase |
| Cost per landing page view | 3x reduction |
| Average view time per session | 450%+ growth; audiences stayed and watched |
| Cumulative audience | Grew month-on-month across the campaign run |
Key Learning: For engagement campaigns, the quality of the audience matters far more than the size of the reach. A small, well-matched audience that watches 80% of a concert creates more value than a large audience that clicks and leaves. Building funnel stages from actual watch behaviour (video view percentage as audience seed) was the single most effective lever in this campaign.