Understanding the Blueprint of Entertainment Marketing in 2021

In conversation with Social Samosa, brand and agency leaders shed light on the evolving landscape of Entertainment marketing for a plethora of content that includes movies, OTT shows, and more.

The spectrum of entertainment marketing in India has expanded massively over the last five years. As entertainment content across channels vies for the attention of the audiences and their time, Pratik Gupta, Founding Partner, FoxyMoron & Zoo Media, Alisha Khanna, Sr. Marketing Manager, ALTBalaji, Shrenik Gandhi, Chief Executive Officer, White Rivers Media, shed light on what constitutes a blueprint of Entertainment Marketing in today’s day and age.

Entertainment Marketing 101

Entertainment content cohorts include classic Bollywood, OTT shows, Hollywood, music, and the last is GEC. With the dominance of OTT during the pandemic, the audience is spoilt for choices to consume quality content across channels. “As an OTT brand you cannot please everyone, as an entertainment brand, you need to identify your TG first”, explains, Gandhi.

With so many content IPs across innumerable OTT platforms, every content has its flavor, and marketers want their consumers to eventually connect with that content. For this, creators can help build interactions and generate curiosity amongst the users, share the panelists.

“Creators wants to create media properties of their own and want to have a long life with their consumers”, highlights, Gupta. 

The Entertainment marketing strategies could be implemented in various ways. However, Gupta explains that once you know what to talk about, the content distribution becomes seamless. Context, Purpose, and distribution is very important

We also need to understand what drives the love for the brand basis the content offering for a specific TG, quips Khanna.

Entertainment Marketing: Tactics & Trends

With the evolving measurement metrics of social media marketing owing to the pandemic, entertainment marketing initiatives have become digital-first or digitally dominated as per the experts. Eventually, the idea is to increase word-of-mouth and generate conversations around the content, so that the user comes on the platform and consumes the content. 

Creating FOMO and word-of-mouth amongst friends is another way to increase curiosity around the entertainment content across platforms, shares Khanna.

With the creator economy and a plethora of influencers attempting to create quality content for the audiences, experts highlight that influencer collaborations and marketing do help increase word-of-mouth while bringing more consumers to experiment and watch newer shows. Thus, how marketers utilize several mediums along with the third-party associations becomes pertinent in today’s era/period.

For the marketing tactics, it is crucial to understand that the content being put out there is a mix of content + media mix and as a marketer, one can’t look at one without the other, explains Pratik.

To amplify the content as part of the marketing strategy, Shrenik highlights:

• Create content for the highest affinity audience.
• Timing is everything
• Distribution is the key

Also read: Content Marketing Economy: Then v/s Now ft. Devaiah Bopanna

Memes/Moment Marketing

As audiences continue to look for respite with humorous content, memevertising or meme marketing is another essential tactic for recall and visibility. 

Experts re-affirm that memes do provide content recall but here again, consistency and timing is the key that might determine the success/visibility of the meme for marketing purposes.

Khanna highlights that over the years meme marketing is something that has even created influencers who have been able to make a mark through meme content. Meme marketing is an integral part of the brand marketing campaign and if done correctly and consistently at the right time, can have a large impact, she adds.

ROI & Success of Entertainment Marketing Campaigns

Marketers can approach Entertainment marketing in two ways, shares Alisha - one is awareness, creating conversations, and engaging the audience around the content; this can be followed by performance marketing for fulfilling the end goal to achieve the final conversion of the leads for the platforms.

Marketers often create smart links to create a unique consumer journey, quips Shrenik. Further, he concedes that ticket booking or final bookings for the movie or increase in the number of subscribers for the OTT platform is the real ROI for the marketers investing in campaigns.

For the success of any campaign for the content in Entertainment marketing, experts encapsulate:

• Genuinely created content by the influencer will travel/transcend across demographics
• Using IMDB for performance marketing can help build a perception
• Ratings seem to empower the customers. Further, they can be leveraged to create perceptions amongst the audience to watch the content

The speakers shared the Live Stage on Day 2 of Social Samosa’s marque property SM Live.

You can watch the complete event here: