Social Media Case Study: How AndPictures Promoted the TV Premiere of Chennai Express Using Blogger Outreach

Brand Name

Chennai Express - AndPictures

Agency Name

Brandlogist

This is a picture of 4 bloggers who were about to begin their journey on Chennai Express. I believe that in some ways it was a journey for us as well. The kind of marketing they believe in and talk about- the kind that is real, fun, creating value for the various stakeholders involved in it and involving them- is finally being implemented and it really feels good! AndPictures, a Hindi movie channel, wanted to promote the TV Premiere of Chennai Express on 23rd November, 2013.

Objective

It was a movie for which there have been enough marketing campaigns, a lot of people had already seen it and to top it all, they didn't have much time to achieve their goal of generating as much buzz as possible for the telecast.

Execution

Their crack team (pun intended)-  Roma, Shubham and Abhik- went about the job, very ably supported by Kratika, Ajay and myself. And the idea was conceived: #ChennaiExpressAndYou: The Train Journey. Four prominent online influencers: Ramit Narang, Arvind Passey, Nandini Deka and Karishma Rawat were to relive the journey as in the movie Chennai Express, complete with the adventures and experiences which SRK & Deepika faces along the way. And while undertaking this journey they would talk about it and share it across their social platforms. They conceptualized an idea which connected with all 3- the movie (Chennai Express), the channel and the end user.

The Chennai Express Challenge

As a concept, it was similar to that of the Amazing Race. Their bloggers encountered and shared the various elements of the journey. Suggestions to help them accomplish these challenges were crowd sourced via Indiblogger (the bloggers community with whom they partnered) and the AndPictures social community, so as to maximize outreach and impact.

Modus Operandi:

Find it, record it - picture/video/vine and:

•  Tweet with #chennaiexpressandyou and tag @AndPicturesIN
•  Post on their facebook page with #chennaiexpressandyou.

The deadline to complete these tasks was set at the evening of 22nd November (however, the sooner the better).

The challenge, from a marketing perspective :

It was a real time, dynamic campaign with the contribution and involvement of 4 bloggers, the Indiblogger community and the AndPictures community. Their role at Brandlogist was to ensure that this journey was fun and interesting both in the real and in the virtual world while creating maximum traction for the movie: Chennai Express and the channel AndPictures. The following week witnessed one of the better renditions of the word “Epic”.

And this is how the journey began: Their special friends were en route to Rameshwaram in the actual Chennai Express!

They shared an initial list of 15 challenges from the movie with our 4 bloggers. The idea was to make their audience come closer to the fun aspects of the movie via their own stories viz. blogs, Twitter and Instagram. The more everybody talked about it, the larger would be the interest generated in actual tuning in on the day of the premiere.

Crowd-sourcing the challenges:

• The next stage was to crowd-source the challenges themselves.

• This created an experience with remembering

• With two of the bloggers on the journey making it to the most popular list for the campaign.

• This made the journey interactive and more exciting; for the bloggers, their client, the end user (because suddenly he/she had a role to play in it) and us!

Results:

• With #ChennaiExpressAndYou, they reached 8,96,535 Twitter handles.

• The Facebook reach was the highest ever for AndPictures- 2,82,000.
• People loved the contest, they went bonkers on Twitter with praises for us (the AndPictures Handle)

• And, they got some real neat User Generated Content during the course of the campaign.

• The bloggers had fun accomplishing the challenges!
• The Indiblogger community remained engaged and unlike a lot of other blogger-oriented exercises it was not a forced review but something they could actually enjoy and experience.
• People were not only aware of the movie but were engaged as well.

Videos Entries:

• It is quite rare to get so many video entries without categorically asking for them on a Twitter contest.

• A Hungarian woman sings for SRK in Hindi

• " target="_blank">Zaraa Dil Ko Thaam Lo cover by Rakesh and Ivett from Yvett Petrik on Vimeo.

• The hashtag trended on Twitter twice on 23rd Nov- the day of the film’s premiere!

• They were also able to witness the 2nd screen effect, that is, basically when a person simultaneously uses two separate screens to interact with a brand/service. In this case, they kept conversing with people on Twitter just before and during the broadcast.

Find below the video case study