Bollywood and Social Media: The Ra.One way

From YouTube to Facebook to soon to-be launched Digital comic, Shah Rukh Khan and his team Ra.One left no stone unturned in creating a promotional campaign that surely grabbed the eyeballs. 

Off-late, Social Media has become an integral part of Hindi film promotions. From film stars to producers and PRs, everyone has been using interactive mediums like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to engage and interact with their fan base.  Due to inherent features such as no geographical constraints and easy connectivity, Social Media has created unique opportunities for Bollywood to sell itself, moving away from traditional tools of promotions.

Recently, Shah Rukh Khan has been in a lot of news with regards to his pet project Ra.One and the way he has put his HART and soul in the wide scale promotional campaign for the film. A promotional campaign that spanned over 10 months, Ra.One was not just treated as a film, but as an international brand or a product that everyone was talking about, be it online and offline.

The first and foremost strategy for any Bollywood movie today is to build up an online presence, and social networking sites are the quickest way to do that.

Official Facebook Page and Social Game

Ra.One’s official Facebook page has more than 3 lakh likes and the beauty of this movie page is that it is unconventionally fresh. From posting latest updates (in the form of trivia and pictures) to running polls and contests, the Ra.One official page has been stylized as per the standards set by SRK himself.  With Facebook tabs like Ra.One Genesis, Deconstruct G.One and Director’s Diary, the page manages to attract enough attention of the audience.

The biggest marketing ploy created by SRK was the launch of cross-platform social game ‘Ra.One Genesis’, a treat for social networking fans. The game was launched across multiple media platforms such as Facebook , Twitter, iPads and iPhones, Nokia’s Ovi store, Android and DTH, in collaboration with India Games, the company that created this Internet game. In an Interview to weekly newspaper India-West, the actor had admitted, “People talk about marketing a movie by putting posters or banners everywhere and giving interviews. I feel the social gaming platform is an interesting marketing concept and besides that, it will engage audiences and give them information about the movie in an entertaining way.” As mentioned earlier, the highlight here is the cross-platform compatibility that the game allows, which means one can play the game on internet or via mobile or TV.

Official Youtube Channel

His next social media promotional strategy was the launch of a custom built movie channel on Youtube. This one stop destination platform allows viewers to see all the promotional videos related to Ra.One. Along with uncut videos and behind the scenes shots, there are also videos of Shah Rukh sharing his thoughts and views on Ra.One, all this and more on the exclusive Youtube channel.

What next? You might wonder. After leaving his footprints on every social media platform, the actor’s next move is to create his presence of Google+, Google’s social networking platform. Talks are in to launch a 40-page digital comic book based on the film, which will soon be available on Google+. These were some of the key social media strategies implemented by SRK to make full use of the power of Internet . Apart from this, the actor was regularly promoting the film through his official Twitter account himself.

Is there anything else that they can do/could have done? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.