How Social Media Enabled a ‘Tevar’ific Trailer Launch for Arjun Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha

Much after Mark Zuckerberg gifted Facebook to the world, the 'gen-next' of the novel concept of digital books still surfaces in the digital world. Wondering what we’re talking about? Enter Tevarbook – a digital take on Bollywood’s new movie Tevar, starring Sonakshi Sinha and Arjun Kapoor.

The campaign which started just a few days back on November 7^th kicked off with a microsite, an arguably unique Twitter Campaign and wait for it. A digital flashmob!

Objectives of the campaign

As obvious as it can be, the core objective was to let everyone in this Bollywood crazy country that goes by the name ‘India’ know that Arjun Kapoor’s new movie was on the verge of release.

Moreover the creation of this unique campaign was directed towards the objective of large scale brand visibility and subsequent recall.

Execution

With the release of the movie slated for 9^th January 2015, the pre-buzz started well in advance.

It kicked off on 7^th November with a microsite that accessed the profile of your Facebook Account. This would then log you into your Facebook page and then out of nowhere Arjun Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha would appear on your timeline and appreciate what they see on your wall in their own Tevar.

Here’s how it looked

At the end the official release date of the trailer was displayed with an option to share.

User’s were directed to the microsite through ads on Facebook and through updates on the Facebook page that had fans growing by the second.

This continued till 9^th November as a 3 day build up on the activity post which a Twitter contest was held on the 10^th of November.

This wasn’t a contest as much as a situation based mass-interaction. Pretty Tevar-ific ha?

The followers were asked to tweet what they would do in the following 5 situations which seem to be scenes directly cherry-picked from the movie. Here’s how they looked.

A teaser of the trailer was released on Twitter and the contest continued to create excitement among the audience.

The idea was pinched right out of what the viewers could expect from the movie thereby using this communication in the form of a contest to ensure tweeters remember what they tweeted about and then relate that to the final movie. This was different as it didn’t require answering mundane questions on things that have already happened or questions that require answer to be looked up.

The questions had a behavioural element to it and yet drove home the point the movie is trying to make.

For example: “What will you say if you have to threaten a villain as a hero” is a sure shot scene that will occur in the movie and asking what Tevar the tweeter will use while confronting a similar situation through a Twitter contest followed from that.

After due deliberations the trailer was finally released at 7.30 and here’s how it looked.

The event launch outdoor as well kicked off with a live Kabaddi game and the event was being live tweeted too.

Positives

The 3 day pre-launch through a microsite was unique and never seen before. A flash powered site gave a glimpse of the looks of the leads of the movie and what their Tevars would look like in the movie. The idea of asking online fans to log in to the Tevarbook through Facebook was a great idea, making it a fun activity. It was in deed amusing to see Arjun & Sonakshi right in front standing on your timeline & talking to you. The contest on Twitter wasn’t a contest in the real sense as much as a direct connect to the movies theme, which was another plus point in attaining its objective of brand recall and excitement for the actual movie in January.

Scope for Improvement

One thing that I spotted is that, the same recorded dialogue by Arjun & Sonakshi shows up each time any user logs in on Tevarbook. So be it a male or a female signing in to the Tevarbook, the two actors that appear on a user’s Facebook timeline talk exactly the same thing, hence leaving no scope for something new to see. Either a series of lets say 10 different dialogues could have been pre-recorded, so that each user who checks the fun activity happening on Tevarbook, sees a new message, further leading them to share the special message they received.

Conclusion

All in all the launch created quite a buzz with each major tweet from the movies handle being retweeted over 50 times, not to mention the embedded trailer video tweets.

Analysing the current stage through the flash powered microsite and a situational contest, the movie on the digital space has raised our hopes and it won’t be unfair to expect something way bigger in the months to come.