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Digital Media - A Key Medium For Movie Marketing?

Yesterday BC Webwise a digital agency announced that it had launched an exclusive arm for movie marketing on the digital media space. Now this made me wonder as to whether soon digital would be the key medium for buzz creation for movies going forward? There are many signs indication that it could be so..

Rise of the movie portals

For the last decade or so the bollywood space has been covered by the likes of Indiafm now renamed and rebranded Bollywoodhungama.com (owned by the hungama group) and Bollywoodsargam.com. But offlate there have been a bunch of bollywood centric portals that have sprung up. That also from big corporate houses like the Reliance group and Percept. These are cinecurry.com and bigoye.com which we covered here and here. Not to forget Network18 as well which has buzz18 covering the bollywood razzmatazz.

This trend indicates that more of more movie goers (especially the multiplex kinds) is flocking to the online space for reading reviews and views and dicusssions before going and watching a movie.

Rise of Microsites/Movie Sites

Of recently In.com has started the trend of hosting movie websites and promoting it via their portal. They did so for Singhiskingg and also for a few others. There has also been considerable free PR and publicity via official movie websites and a case in point is Dev D a small budget multiplex audience targetted movie which caused a stir with its adult website and lust line feature.

Rise of the Social Media & Gaming Phenomenon

Practically every decent movie last year has had an official facebook and orkut group and marketing and engagement through social media be it blogs and communities. This has been a big trend in the US and our last post on dark knight has discussed this with a video. But the trend is catching up in India as well with movie makers hiring professional agencies to handle their social media and buzz marketing for their films.

Facebook Fan Pages of Recent Movies

Billu Barber

Dev D

Dilli 6

All in all I expect Bollywood to contribute to the online medium in a big way in the future. Infact I feel three key verticals Bollywood, Politics and Cricket i.e.(IPL) would drive the online marketing for the next 3 years or so.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpuC7HhCPWA

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Dark Knight - Viral Marketing Campaign

In May 2007, 42 Entertainment began a viral marketing campaign utilizing the film’s “Why So Serious?” tagline.

This video is a must watch:

A transmedia experiment with over 10 million particpants in over 75 countries that played across hundreds of web pages, interactive games, mobile phones, print, email, real world events, video and unique collectibles! The internet was the thread which held together all the other spools (mediums).

Part of the campaign was a request by the Joker to hit local landmarks in full Joker make-up! From London to the Middle East. From Pennsylvania to India. Every participant became an evangelist of the movie!

Youtube throws up more than 199,000 results for the term Dark Knight!

The results?
The most advance pre-sale tickets ever sold! Opening night, morning, midnight, 3AM and 6AM shows were sold out across the US. It recorded the biggest opening day of all time! Dark Knight was also the top grossing film of the year.

Closer to home, Ghajini did a good job of using the internet, but it was a little ahead of its times. What really worked well was the Aamir Khan hair-do and the stunt within cinema halls. This got hours and hours of free PR via TV channels and could have been better leveraged using the internet. Ghajini went on to become the highest grossing Bollywood movie till date.

What new age marketers need to realise is that the web shouldn’t be treated as a separate property. One should use the web to bind the other mediums together.

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DOT Selects Telcordia & Syniverse for MNP implementation

Looks like DOT is now firm on its decision to start mobile number portability by August, though I am not quite sure of the impetus that is driving these actions, where the 3G auction has not seen the day of light yet. MNP for sure will turn out to be in the favor of mobile consumers in India, with consumers being able to retain the same number while choosing to change mobile operator.

It is reported that the Department of Telecom has selected two companies, Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bell Communications) and Syniverse Technologies to provide solutions for implementation of mobile number portability in the country.

Apparently Telcordia Technologies and Syniverse Technologies were selected from a list of many global and Indian companies shortlisted earlier. Both the companies will provide solutions for 11 circles each of the total 22 circles in the country. Both the companies are big players in telecom solutions and have already implemented their MNP services in different countries.

The government had issued guidelines for awarding of MNP service licences in August 2008 and is hoping to implement MNP in all the four metros and category ‘A’ circles within six months of awarding the licenses.

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Get a bride who looks like Aishwarya Rai!

Matrimony search couldn’t probably get shallower than the Facial Search utility launched by BharatMatrimony.com. They now enable you to find a bride who looks like Aishwarya Rai or Priyanka Chopra!

If this was launched as a fun Social Media application, BharatMatrimony could have really benefited from it. Users could have been made to add the pictures and send results to their friends. This could have been viral and fun and BharatMatrimony could have really benefited by saying - Matrimony search can be fun too.

I’d blogged (Who’s your celebrity look alike?) about something similar nearly 2 years back. It was a face recognition tool by MyHeritage and their service was highly blogged about. Mainly because it was fun and cool to share.

But at the end of the day, this product might actually work in the smaller cities. Especially for families which still want a pretty face as a bahu and don’t care about qualites like intelligence, hard-working, caring, honest etc. I guess its the Indian mentality which is at fault here for BM to actually launch such a utility. If they can actually make money of this…hats off to them!

As far as the results of the Facial Search are concerned…

Searched for: Bengali - Aishwarya Rai look alike

You can see the results!

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