Social Media Campaign Review: Lootera

The latest Bollywood film to be promoted on social media is Lootera – a romance drama inspired by  “The Last Leaf” from O Henry  The movie directed by Vikramaditya Motwane  starring Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi  Sinha in lead roles released on Friday, 5^th July, 2013.  Here is a look at Lootera’s social media campaign.

Objective:

The challenge for the Lootera social media campaign was to build the right image for this film by blending in its period look with slick digital moves. The campaign also worked towards capitalizing on the huge following that its stars Ranveer and Sonakshi enjoyed on various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Balancing the soft, sweet aspects of romance without being cheesy and over the top with Vikramaditya Motwane’s intelligent image on Twitter was a big part of the campaign and its execution.

Execution:

The campaign was kicked off by releasing a digital poster of the movie. With this the trailer was launched and that got the people on Facebook talking about the movie. Initially they did stuff like tagging friends in a bid to build the buzz but the design of the visuals was quite classy and eventually that was what got people interested. The need was to create buzz among the fans of Ranveer and Sonakshi.

On Twitter, the ride was not exactly smooth as the movie faced tough challenges in keeping conversations going and running contests. The audience that likes Vikramaditya and one of the producers Anurag Kashyap on Twitter was looking for smarter tweets not sweet, over the top cheesy stuff. Hence the move was to keep the tone smart and use fewer hashtags. The contests that ran were also designed around the movie and they worked well. Despite the fact that brands that were running contests simultaneously had big giveaways like iPads, the Lootere contest was only giving autographed posters and the music album, it did well.  This was due to smart integration of contests. The music of Lootera worked to its advantage as all the songs of the movie that were promoted on Twitter trended.

At this time the India Twitter trends are dominated by hashtags being run by the agency for the movie. Getting trended increases visibility about the movie.

The Lootera Facebook page, which has more than 200K fans, has explored various Facebook apps at different intervals of promotions. When the trailer was launched, the Facebook app “Lootera Talkies” allowing fans to book seats to watch the theatrical trailer was also launched. Fans could reserve their seat in the theater once they had invited more than 5 friends to watch the trailer.

Thereafter, the Facebook page was abuzz with content of the music launch. As the film has a period look and feel the use of radio was quite frequent in the songs hence the need for the “Lootera Radio.” The app would ask fans to shift the tuner and with a new frequency you could hear the amazing music composed by Amit Trivedi for Lootera.

In a bid to bring some of the magic of the stunning visuals of the film to social media while engaging fans,  an app called “Vintage Camera” which would ask fans to upload images was developed.  The app applied different filters that gave an “Instagram” like feel  to the image that one could download. These images also became a part of the “Wall of Love”- app for crowd sourcing images from fans.

Apart from this some more apps were created for the social media platform.

Positives:

In times when movies are fast paced and sport the contemporary look gaining acceptance for a film like Lootera with its period look was a challenge that the campaign has overcome very successfully. Well thought out conversations, well designed apps and hard work have all worked to create a big impact.

Using various dedicated apps from time to time kept people interested and built the required buzz at the relevant stage. The design and the interface of the apps was quite good.

The agency also created a presence on Instagram and the movie recently partnered with WeChat for promotions. Lootera also had its offline strategies in place.

Scope for Improvement:

Well planned and implemented across various social media platforms I don’t think I have anything to add to what could have been better in this case.

Conclusion:

Most campaigns rely on one app to carry things forward, the biggest plus of the Lootera social media campaign in my book is the clever use of different apps as the launch unfolded.  Add to that interesting conversations on Twitter and a concerted effort to keep things simple and romantic vis a vis mushy and over the top must be appreciated.