The Zoya Factor Marketing Strategy casts a charm

As the movie tests its luck on the silver screen today, let's look at the factors forging The Zoya Factor Marketing Strategy.

The Zoya Factor's marketing mix involves diverse aspects, use of various methods, mediums and more. An interesting key takeaway from the movie's marketing strategy is how they tap on the consumers' behaviour, instead of focussing on consumer behaviour.

The storyline of the movie revolves around the life of Zoya, an advertising executive played by Sonam Kapoor Ahuja, who finds herself being considered a good luck charm for the Indian cricket team during the World Cup. The movie is an adaptation of Anuja Chauhan's book published in 2008 of the same name.

It is fair to assume that a lot of people across demographics believe in the concept of luck, which is also a dominant constituent of the movie's storyline. This is where the consumer's behaviour and the movie's marketing mix coincide. 'Luck' as a theme was creatively infused in the campaign, coupled with conventional fragments.

Let's look at the factors that forged The Zoya Factor's Marketing Strategy.

The Pre-Buzz Factor

Pre-buzz around the movie was created by introducing Zoya as "India's lucky charm", indicating that the charm would be revealed on August 22. This helped pique viewers' interest by leaving them with a cliffhanger.

The Motion Poster Factor

The Teaser Factor

The Zoya Factor's teasers were more or less a series of teleshopping ads that sells the 'Zoya Kavach', with no mention of the movie apart from a ticker on the bottom stating the release date of the trailer.

The Trailer Factor

Along with millions of views, the trailer was also able to garner praises in the form of tweets from various notable personalities. Though these reactions can be considered a friendly gesture, they were fairly promotional too for each reacting individual has a strong social media presence and influence of their own.

Sachin Tendulkar

Farah Khan

Karan Johar

Neha Dhupia

Also Read: A look at Dream Girl marketing strategy on release day

The Association Factor

The Zoya Factor's association game was fairly strong. This segment of their marketing set had elements of 'call to action' advertising. Associations with brands were scattered across diverse industries such as gaming, decorative paints, cinema and more. These were aimed at inducing app downloads and appealing people to create user-generated content in the probable hope of increasing awareness about the movie along with its brand recall. Rewards were also offered as an incentive.

Bumble India

Bumble India offered a date with Zoya Solanki Aka Sonam Kapoor along with Dulquer Salmaan to new and existing users upon matching with The Zoya Factor profile card in the Bumble app on Date, BFF or Bizz mode.

Paytm First Games

The association with Paytm First Games consisted of the platform offering cashback and a chance to meet the lead actors in the movie, upon downloading the app.

Paytm First Games, a gaming platform, further amplified the campaign and also offered free tickets to the movie.

Nerolac Paints India

Nerolac Paints India came together with The Zoya Factor while blending each others' colors to paint a colourful campaign.

PVR Cinemas

PVR Cinemas held a contest by theming it around weird cricket superstitions and offered the winner a chance to meet the star-cast of #TheZoyaFactor.

The campaign was further amplified.

Clove Dental

Clove Dental held a contest by appealing the audience to send a smiling selfie with a nimbu-mirchi in the frame, incentivising the activity with a chance to win movie tickets.

Pepsi

In association with the movie, 'Pepsi Ki Kasam' was launched, with a few 'subtle' product placements in the video and lyrics, with the lead actors grooving on the track.

The Vlog Factor

Sonam also created a series of vlogs, to reveal what goes on behind-the-scenes during the film's promotions. In the first vlog, Sonam takes us through the day of her trailer launch. Similarly, each day is a candid depiction of her offline promotions, Press Meets, and her daily life. She posted one vlog every day until the movie's release.

The audience interest in an actor's off-screen life could be seen if one were to look at the number of views these vlogs garners on IGTV: each had somewhere close to eight to ten lakh views.

The vlog factor has proved to be new age and an adequately constructive method of movie marketing. The vlogs are available on IGTV and YouTube.

The Celebrity Factor

The movie ran a campaign wherein an impressive line-up of celebrities such as Ranbir Kapoor, Twinkle Khanna, Katrina Kaif, Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt share their lucky charm.

The viewers were also encouraged to share their lucky charm using the hashtag #WhatsYourLuckyCharm.

All of these celebrities have a fan base of their own, and them coming together resulted in a strong influencer outreach campaign.

The Other Factors

The movie was also promoted through various offline activities, press meets, appearances on popular shows and more on TV & Radio too.

Zoom TV

Sony TV

Radio Mirchi

The Sonam Factor

The whole promotional campaign, the launch of the teasers, trailer, music launch, and more, were primarily rolled out on Sonam's social media handles.

With Sonam's community being 14 Million strong on Facebook, 21 Million on Instagram and 12 Million on Twitter, it's pretty clear that Sonam's online presence was the strongest aspect of the movie's marketing strategy.

From a post sharing her look for the movie's promotions till her vlogs, each post she shared received tons of engagement.