Mirzapur 2 Brand Associations: OTT marketing gets more mainstream

We take a look at how OTT apps now approach branded associations for new content like movies once did before theater release, in light of the Mirzapur 2 brand extensions.

Before the pandemic hit the country, theater releases made for an important milestone - both from a box office and marketing perspective. In fact movie marketing, became a medium in itself, no longer restricted to increasing the shelf life of the film or driving footfalls. It became about merchandise, about driving brand associations through lead characters, about integrating products and services into the storyline, and a lot more. In fact actors like Shahrukh Khan and Salman Khan are known to recover a certain part of their movie's expenses through pre-release marketing alone. With Mirzapur Brand Associations being announced, we see what this trend means for the current situation.

With theater releases paused for nearly 6 months, OTT releases began gaining much more importance; this combined with the spike in OTT viewership in the last few months has seen OTT players treat brand associations like movie marketing integrations.

Nykaa signed an elaborate deal with Netflix which included some of their women oriented content like Gunjan Saxena, Masaba Masaba, and Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare. Center Fresh had associated with the lead couple of Prime Video India's Bandish Bandits to up their reach among the youth. Prime Video similarly has bagged various brand deals for almost all of their recent releases with Mirzapur 2 joining the roster now.

For Mirzapur, we could see brand associations come alive with vivo (an unboxing video), Zomato (service promotion) and Bondtite (brand values). This list might grow with the release of the show.

vivo

Also Read: OTT Advertising: Supporting star of media mix set to take a bigger role?

Zomato

Bondtite

While the phenomenon is clearly not a new one, it is interesting to see it bloom in the OTT space, which is comparatively much younger than it's counterparts. In the case of Mirzapur, it speaks of the efforts put in by Amazon Prime Video to create anticipation for the new season of the show as well as the fanbase that exists for it.