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How Bollywood 'socializes' with the audience

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

MUMBAI, INDIA: The Mumbai film industry, or Bollywood as the world knows it, is known for producing large number of movies annually. While some are super hits, many of them are mega flops, too.

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It is the uncertainty factor pertaining to the fate of a movie, which is decided in just one week after release, that made many production houses think of new platforms for campaign to reach out to the audience using innovative methods of marketing and promotion.

And, it is this thought process which made them use the potential of Internet and mobile phones as tools of campaign, apart from hoardings or posters. From websites to pages on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, the publicity methods have changed altogether in this digital age. Interestingly some even use the online gaming platform campaign for the movies.

According to Kim Saldanaha, Customer Centria's vice president — marketing, generally Bollywood makes two types of movies — big budget commercials and small budget or art movies. “However, the fate of movies is just decided in a week's time. So it's very important to have a pre-build-up of movies as it gives more chance of making the movie successful,” Saldanaha said.

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“Pre-build-up of movies and creating positive experience for viewers before they actually watch the movies does help in connecting the audience. And we at Customer Centria work in creating positive customer experiences for films and try to engage with them,” she added.

Mumbai-based Customer Centria is a global customer experience and engagement company that offers customer engagement strategies to enterprises. In recent times, the company has worked with Bollywood movies such Anjaana Anjaani, Tees Maar Khan and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.

Customer Centria works extensively on Godrej's Gojiyo platform — a 3D virtual world. It has created online promotional and marketing campaigns for many Bollywood flicks. For Anjaana Anjaani, Saldanaha pointed out that the virtual avatars of the character played by Priyanka Chopra and Ranbir Kapoor were created in different worlds of Gojiyo platform.

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“For engaging viewers on Gojiyo platform, the avatars were shown doing weird and crazy things such as dancing to the tune of the movie's title song. But it’s a challenge to keep the viewers engaged,” she added.

Interestingly, Customer Centria has tried to overcome the customer engagement challenge by being innovative. For Tees Maar Khan, it created a website — Snowflash, which is a plot of Christmas with snowfalls and where the user was asked to rescue Santa from Tees Maar Khan character and the winner got chance to meet the film's actor Akshay Kumar.

While promoting Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Customer Centria used the famous plot of Spain's La Tomatina festival by creating a game in Gojiyo's urban super city Solaria, where the user was asked to throw tomatoes at their friends. The user with more number of successful hits got the chance to meet the film's cast.

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Big-budget movies and large film production houses can afford and allocate more funds for promotion and marketing which includes social media as well as traditional mediums. But small-budget films heavily depend on Internet and social media to reach their potential audience as they have limited marketing budget.

For instance, Love Sex Aur Dhokha, a small-budget movie, created a community on Facebook to garner audiences' support. Mumbai-based Digizen Communications Pvt. Ltd has worked for small-budget movies such as Alah Ke Bande, Game, Mod and Office Office and helped these films by promoting on Facebook and YouTube.

“Movie makers are smart and want to use social media — they are opting for Facebook rather than other website such as Yahoo, Rediff and MSN. The movie website trend is fading out and film makers want to promote movies on Facebook but they are not concerned about users' comments on the Facebook page,” said Pinakin Thakkar, Digizen's managing director.

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According to Thakkar, Hindi movies spend around 6-7 per cent of the total budget on promotions, but there are budget constraints for low-budget movies as they can't afford to use print, television or outdoor medium for promotions.

“So they don't have a choice but to use online medium like Facebook, Twitter etc, and mobile platform. These promotional activities are done a month before the movie is launched and continue for 2-3 weeks after the movie is released,” Thakkar pointed out.

“Moreover, the broadband and Internet penetration along with mobile phones in India is growing tremendously and so it remains a key platform for movie makers to reach out to audience,” Thakkar said.

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