How Digital and Social Media Have Changed the Way Movies Are Marketed Today

Bollywood has been a firm believer of 'Jo Dikhta Hai Woh Bikta hai' for as long as it has been marketing films. Earlier the visibility was on OOH or TV, followed by print, flyers, events before the radio came into the picture, along with in-theatre Branding.

The 360 approach worked well when all you wanted to do was ‘mass’ cover anyone and everyone, as anyone could be the ‘movie goer’. The targeting of consumer was not really there and the FMCG metrics of spends driven by reach plus metric was, and still is, missing.

• TV gets us the reach but not necessarily the frequency across all assets.
• Print is about visibility
• OOH is week of release Splash
• Radio drives songs/music

It is only in the last 5 years that digital has entered the fray as the 'visibility vehicle'. What digital successfully did is to create Zero Degrees Of Separation between its content, stars and the fans.

ZDOS, as a concept, was not even in the consciousness of the rarefied universe of the celebrities from our movies and the two way communication medium opened the flood gate for dialogues that, perhaps, the stars and their publicists were not equipped to handle to begin with.

Suddenly, film stars and their fans could interact and the communication became one on one .You started 'influencing' one fan at a time and that brought in a change in the 'consumer behavior' of the Indian movie goer and their heroes.

Now, if you copied something, you'd be reprimanded for lack of originality-

• If you didn’t act well - told you so
• If I found you hot - I expressed my emotions
• If I thought you went overboard - I was disappointed

You could choose to ignore the 'feedback' coming to you constantly from the consumer, and not just the media, but it didn't last long. Now there was a ‘You’ and a ‘I’ and ‘Hum’- digital is now sitting in the middle of the campaign strategy. It’s the heart and the dialogue and it’s the punch which drives your marketing point home. The multiplex audience looks at YouTube trailers and BookMyShow to experience content and watch films and it’s via twitter that they gauge the desirability of the movie you launched this week.

Stellar marketing will save a BIG BAD product like, Ra One and Jai Ho, but will not stand up in the light of ‘transparency’ of the digital modes of conversation and emotive and comparative feedback for smaller, niche and repetitive bad content.

Digital closed the distance and the 'Walk of Fame' was just an online contest away. I met the biggest superstar in a Tweetup Meet and 'Success' and 'Access' now have new definitions in the digital First World of Movie Marketing!!