Has Bollywood perfected the Art of Digital Marketing

Bollywood has always put a high emphasis on the marketing of films from the days of transistor and radio. Bollywood has made sure that it leverages media to the maximum in order to ensure high footfalls at cinema theatres. Be it be celebrity interviews, appearance on reality TV or promoting it on shows like Kapil Sharma Show, Bollywood spends a good portion of its production budget on marketing. But lately, we have seen quite a shift in the way marketing of films is done with people adopting digital medium in order to attract maximum eyeballs rather than spending heavily on TV or promotional tours.  Never shying away from adopting new technologies, Bollywood has been a pioneer in starting innovative campaigns in order to market its films. In this blog, we will see some newer forms of marketing techniques that have helped Bollywood up its marketing game.

Image Source: gamehindi.com

Creating Games or Mobile applications: Recently we have seen a trend wherein producers, especially for action movies, release a mobile game before the actual release of the movie. This helps in attracting a huge amount of target audience to the movie. Some famous examples of movies that did this were Sultan, Krrish, Dhoom3, Ra.One, Saaho, etc. This has proved to be an impressive technique in order to generate buzz around the movie.

Image Source: youtube.com

Content Marketing: Remember when Blazing Bajirao was launched on Youtube before the actual release of the film Bajirao Mastani. It created an instant buzz and attracted more than a million viewers. Now that’s one interesting to promote a film. This technique is known as content marketing wherein online material is created and shared in order to stimulate interest in a particular product. Creating websites, social media pages, Youtube accounts all come under this category.

Social Media Interaction: How often do we see the film stars interacting with their fans on social media before the release of a film. This is another effective technique in getting the film talked about and is way better than film just doing cast interviews. Through their social media handles, film stars have the power to grab the attention of a much larger fan base at a much lower cost. This is practiced by almost all of the film stars just before the release of the film.

Some innovative/ viral promotional campaigns employed by Bollywood:

The Bala Challenge: This is the latest in the long line social media dares that celebrities perform on social media. In this challenge, actors can be seen performing the hook step of the ‘Shaitaan ka Saala’ song from the movie Housefull 4. This trend got viral almost instantly with the general public joining in soon enough which resulted in a lot of free publicity for the movie.

Image Source: youtube.com

3 Idiots: In order to promote his film 3 Idiots, Aamir Khan went missing and made disguised appearances at different places. The makers of the film started ‘Find Aamir’ campaign on social media dropping hints about his whereabouts on Facebook and Twitter. Again, a very innovative method rather than boring mall tours.

Mission Mangal and Rs 2000 Note: This may be the most innovative promotional campaign to come out of Bollywood. This was done by the makers of movie Mission Mangal wherein they used 2000 rupees note in order to promote their movie. On the back of the note, we can see a picture of Mangal Yaan, the main subject of the movie Mission Mangal. On scanning the note with a smartphone, the trailer of the movie started playing which proved to be very effective in increasing the views of the trailer and generating a buzz around the movie.

We can even find a direct correlation between the success of marketing campaigns and box office performance with movies like 3 Idiots and Mission Mangal going on to become record grosses for their actors at the time of release.