The last few years have witnessed a big change in the way Bollywood films are promoted. The marriage of Digital Marketing and Bollywood has been amazing!! From the days of ‘Kabhi Haan,Kabhi Naa’ where Shah Rukh Khan, himself, sold the tickets ,to the addressing thousands of fans through Theatrical trailer launches for Raess. Such has been the transformation where the entire focused has shifted to digital platforms. Being the world’s largest film industry, the amount of money that has gone into digital marketing has jumped multifold which now accounts for 20% of the cost of the movie budgets. The bigwigs of Dharma, Yashraj and Hungama have pumped in a huge quantum of money to handle the digital presence and campaigns . Let us have a look at a few trends at which showcase the innovative campaigns and engagement strategies.

STRATEGY ADOPTED
•Data Analytics
EXAMPLE-#WhyKattapaKilledBaahubali?
The end of the 2015 film was Baahubali was a cliffhanger which left all the viewers asking the same question. Within 2 days of the release the hashtag started trending on twitter with ‘’#WhyKattapaKilledBaahubali’’ with more than 1 lakh people participating. It was utilized by the makers and shared on the official handles of Baahubali which generated tremendous word of mouth for the film.

•Social Networks Merged:
Many of the Social Media campaigns of Dhoom 3 were designed in such a way that users of one social network had to often go to another one to move to the next step. For eg, the video  game used movie clips hosted on YouTube, was deployed on Facebook, and took user inputs from Twitter.

•Mobile Strategy:
GAMES
Gaming is the interest of the youth. Digital team of Ra.One launched a game which was targeting using the super hero persona of the film. The game was one of the highest rated style of games then and it suited the film’s theme too and was highly appreciated by the audience.Many other films like Ghajini,Krrish 3 too have  launched similar games.

VIDEO CONTENT
Movies like Baahubali have come with exclusive content for platforms like Hotstar and Amazon Prime where Baahubali-the warrior ,wherein news users can come to know more about the character.

DUBSMASH
In 2015,there were a string of dubmash challenges where Shah Rukh Khan danced to one of the songs of Salman’s upcoming film which was equally reciprocated with Salman and the fans sooned join in with a string of audiences coming with their versions of these songs

Website: The Digital Marketing team of Yashraj and its head was very clear to have a distinct identity of this film. The Sultaan website was designed in such a way that most of the social media channels were integrated within it and was highly appreciated. It proved invaluable in creating high recall value for the movie campaign as an Overall trending strategy. It also included around 5-6 Browser-based Games, which were also adapted for use on mobiles and social media sites. This cross pollination helped the audience to engage more.

Epic Trailer Launch Strategy: For Chennai Express, first time ever a film used Twitter to engage users and give them live redemption. Audience was required to Tweet their comments to make a train run over a virtual rail line from Mumbai to Rameswaram. The more the tweets, the faster the train moved ahead and as soon as the train reached Rameshwaram, the trailer was released to awaiting fans. This gave fans a real sense of involvement alongside creating an amazing buzz around the trailer launch.Krrish 3 came up with a India’s first Motion poster concept for launching the first look of the film.

Similarly all the Salman Khan fan clubs have influenced the Tubelight teaser go viral :

TWITTER STRATEGY
Various Bollywood campaigns have been started on Twitter where Influencers help to increase the reach of the content.Fox Star came up with Hit it like Mahi contest on twitter where followers had to play any of the MS Dhoni shots and share the content across platform. Fan too had various contests like Letters to Srk and First day fan the audience.

WHATSAPP

Phillauri,the latest movie of Anushka Sharma,saw the usage of whatsapp where the fans could engage with Shashi and ask her exciting questions about her character and about the film

LEARNINGS:
In addition to exploring social media, the Digital Marketing team of  used a variety of tools, business strategies, marketing tactics, and influencers to reach out to the mass.Generating a huge buzz before and during the movie release is critical.Content Marketing and Data Analysis are vital in coordinating a digital media strategy.
A strategy’s success on social media lies in grabbing the opportunities, being able to predict circumstances and planning for different eventualities. Success of brands like BAAHUBALI have proved that social media and digital marketing is the channel to leverage going ahead.
To conclude, I would like to quote Shah Rukh Khan,The unabashed Digital Marketing Whiz of Bollywood: “Effective marketing is really about connecting with your audience using all available media and talking to them on platforms that they are comfortable with”

The post THE MARRIAGE OF DIGITAL MARKETING AND BOLLYWOOD appeared first on IntelliAssist.