[Campaign Face Off] Raees v/s Kaabil

Now, bringing in the box office war in the digital sphere, Shah Rukh Khan’s Raees and Hritik Roshan’s Kaabil have rolled up their social media sleeves and how.

The need to craft a digital presence for films to reflect their successes strongly at the box office has given a prosperous dimension to the concept of movie marketing. Evolving the business for a base of movie fanatics, the digital practices have gotten rigorous, further elevating with the competition.

The Khan’s Raees

He’s known as the marketing genius and rightly so. Once he quoted, “I’m a pioneer in marketing films, not myself,” and affirming that quote further through their social media channels, which attempted to build up on the character and not the personality who already possesses a huge fan base.

Giving out bits and pieces of the movie, through hashtags, videos, and GIFs the film's page tried to build an intimate relationship with their viewers, getting them pumped up, more like accustomed to the movie. For starters, the brand introduced us to an audio poster.

Emphasizing on the visual aspect, the film shared photos and creatives which were split up systematically in albums; one of the album was titled ‘Be Raees’ where offline photos were shared of movie poster booths installed at various cinema halls. These booths enabled people to re-create the poster look with their image and upon sharing these images with #BeRaees some lucky folks got the opportunity to meet the man himself. This offline activity was imbibed coherently with their social media promotional activities.

The entire timeline of this film gave glimpses of Raees, where they engrossed fans and got them excited about the trailer first, with #ApnaTimeShuru. Post the trailer release, they shared the views of film critics praising the film thus tapping on to influencer marketing.

After the first look and trailer, it was time to release elements of the film, Sunny Leone being next. The contemporary remake of the song Laila Mein Laila was released and simultaneously to embellish this aspect, #TalkToLaila was the hashtag that began doing rounds, "Laila" further leveraged Facebook Live to interact; following that were yet again the reviews.

After opening the marketing with these two aspects, we noticed how the character traits were portrayed by the use of colors where Shah Rukh Khan remained rustic and raw, while Sunny was bling and pink, this also gave our striking visuals and a healthy contrast.

Two way interactions were seen as the primary content hooks where every new release was followed by a contest. After the release of the romantic song Zaalima, the page asked viewers to share a picture of their #Zaalima. The marketing of this film was not messy but followed a directed path.

The content that was shared took a dip inside the film introducing us to the dialogue - Battery Nahi Bolneka. After all, one liner’s do wonders as classics have taught us over the years.

Through this, the campaign tells us that the film uses an Indian slang where a person with specs is teased as ‘battery’ which clearly Shah Rukh Khan's character  dislikes. Around this dialogue, the page produced playful illustrations; describing the character’s peculiarity in depth.

The brand introduced us to the third character of Nawazudhin Siddhique who is playing the role of an inspector through audio posters.

People poured their love within 140 characters when numerous trends were observed for the release, right from #AmmiJaanKehtiThi which is one of the focal dialogues of the movie, #RaeesKoNahiChhodungaMain too became one of the trends a day before the release.

Hrithik Roshan’s Kaabil

Another movie alongside Raees is all set to hit the theatres - Kaabil. A Hrithik Roshan and Yami Gupta starrer too pulled up their sleeves to interact with their social media audience giving volume to their movie.

Kaabil stuck to the basics by repeatedly sharing the poster and creatives of the movie since last March.

The movie shared offline promotional activities for their fans to view and it moments from the film that clearly signaled towards the story-line, where the protagonist is visually impaired.

Structuring their film in a rather monotonous and mechanical manner, Kaabil shared posters and like most films bagged on influencer marketing through illustrations where they shared the review of the film by leading publication houses.

To get closer to the fans, the leading pair leveraged Facebook Live to interact and make their presence felt a day before the release, garnering 442,563 views.

Kaabil too had a motion poster, alongside other short videos which became the core content dissemination for their movie marketing.

The brand shared their social media digits success through their handle itself where this movie too had the modern version of the old song ‘Sara Zamana Haseeno ka Diwana’ as they celebrated the benchmark of million views.

The brand banked on the countdown to build the stimulation around various elements of the film, where short videos were shared, stirring conversations around their song Mon Amour which garnered 35,835 views two days before the release and 188,996 views. Clearly this countdown managed to grab a wider audience and that reflected in the digits.

Finally, the day of the song release received 3,561,532 views which clearly portrayed an upward graph. Giving attention to Hrithik Roshan’s recognition as one of the finest dancer in the industry this song was followed by a contest where the best dancing videos would be featured on their page.

January 10 social media celebrated Hrithik Roshan’s birthday where the brand got an opportunity to gauge attention through sneak peak visuals of the film.

Keeping the love story at the crux of their marketing strategy, the film emphasized on the love songs that ignited conversations around the chemistry of this new pair. ‘Kisi Se Pyar Ho Jaye’ was the second song that revolved around the idea of love where short videos were visualized through doodles.

Making viewers a part of the entire procedure of film production may create an intimate bond and banking on this, the brand released short making videos of the film for all the behind the scenes action. These making videos were well thought of, as the first one highlighted the chemistry scene between the on screen pair, the second was of the action scene while the third one was of connecting to the character.

Finally, #WhatMakesYouKaabil was the hashtag that trended and the brand became a bridge of interaction between the stars and their fans.

Kaabil v/s Raees

Raees and Kaabil, both starring Bollywood biggies crashed the theaters on the same day. With movie marketing rising with each movie, the film industry of India has got a hang of this and making the best use to interact, promote and satisfy the movie buffs.

Movies of different genres, gave us an opportunity to draw a qualitative comparison of their content. Where, understandably a Shah Rukh Khan prominently seemed more mature and wise, Kaabil managed to leverage on their strengths.

Considering the trends of movie marketing this year, it seems that the era of GIFs has finally passed where both films did not utilize on this feature, but introduced us to a digital poster. Quick to consume and a step ahead of still posters, these motion posters were backed with a decent background score.

Raees on social media were comparatively more active, frequent and creative with their activities while Kaabil used the same old methods of standard-creative-sharing marketing.

Emphasizing on their strengths appropriately, Raees rode on powerful dialogues, innovative illustrations, and played around with the hues and the traits of the character to make them seem more realistic. Whereas, Kaabil played along the lines of the love story in the film and the dancing, thus banking on the popular trait of the actor himself and not his character.

Contests were held from both ends to build interactions; Live was utilized by both, but clearly with 310,354 likes for Raees and 137,880 likes for Kaabil, the first one managed to gather more attention with their marketing strategies and content variety.

To compare directly, Raees had a profound social media handle with a clear perspective in mind, Kaabil on the other hand, was ordinary in their digital practices and failed in comparison to yield better, considering the tight competition on the box-office.