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My Three Words for 2012

January 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Over the last few years I’ve watched as bloggers (notably Chris Brogan) have pushed the new-year technique of selecting three words that will drive you for the year to come, rather than making resolutions.

Resolutions tend to be limiting and a bit rushed in the making, which is why they have such a reputation for fast failure. Conversely, Three Words are about the direction in which you want to grow and success can be measured in many ways.

The concept of three words also resonates closely with a concept that we teach our film students, which is Theme. Great films have a unifying theme that ties together every camera shot, character, location, dialogue and plot direction.

A way to describe it more succinctly is “theme is what the movie is really about”.

  • What is Godfather really about? “Power Corrupts”.
  • What is Chinatown really about? “Power wins over justice because it is more ruthless and aggressive”.
  • What is Jurassic Park really about? “Man cannot control nature”.

I see the concept of Three Words as a theme for the year. Each day and month, and in each action or project that I undertake, I can ask myself, “is what I am planning to do ‘on theme’?” Rather than fixed new year resolutions that can only be either done or not done, these words are designed to move my life in a particular direction in 2012.

So what are my three words for 2012?

Focus. Create. Measure.

 

Focus.

I’m going to stop trying to do a thousand things at the same time. I’m going to block my calendar throughout the day into chunks and focus on one thing at a time.

I’m going to try to stop jumping ahead into the newer, more exciting projects until I have wrapped up what I am already working on.

I’m going to keep asking myself, “Is this idea/project/activity important, or just fun/easy”.

Create.

2012 will be a year to make things. It is easy to come up with thousands of ideas for how to make my life/work bigger, better, greater. The challenge is making these ideas real. 2012 will be about taking ideas off the drawing board and ‘shipping’ real products.

Measure.

In the standard business learning-loop (plan, do, measure, improve) measurement has always been my weakest area. By measurement, I mean building careful records over time that can be used and shared by other people.

2012 will be a year of making my intrinsic knowledge extrinsic so that I can teach other people what I know. I will stop doing the measure-improve cycle in my head. My ultimate goal for this ‘word’ for the year will be to build a formal marketing model for our school, so our testing and measurement can become focused on refining the model, rather than trying to understand ‘marketing’ in general.

If you want more information on the whole Three Words thing, check out http://www.chrisbrogan.com/3words2012/

Best of luck for your own 2012!

Filed Under: Management, Marketing

Hindi Film and Television: Top Trends of 2010

December 29, 2010 By 1 Comment

Hindi Television Trends of 2010

Yash Raj and Sony tried, and failed, to bring in the future of Hindi television

For me, this was one of the most significant media events of the year. Over the last 5 years I have listened to thousands of people complain about Hindi television, and ask why shows similar to the better western content can’t be made in India. Finally someone tried to do just this, and, despite a huge marketing campaign, it didn’t work.

Maybe the marketing didn’t connect with viewers? Maybe the programming (keeping the timeslots to late nights or weekends) failed, and the shows should have gone head to head with the GEC primetime offerings? Maybe anyone who is interested in high production values and good scripts is already watching English channels. Maybe these shows were just way ahead of their time, and this is exactly what people will be watching 5 years from now?

For now at least, we are stuck with family serials and dancing reality TV

Music videos to promote TV shows

StarPlus and Colours created music videos to promote their shows Masterchef, and Bigg Boss. While such videos can be played on TV, they are most useful as a viral internet marketing tool. Nice to see TV channels looking at new ways to promote their content.

Reality shows kept branching out

StarPlus had Masterchef and Mahayatra – a religious travel show.

Imagine had Desi Girl, Rahul Dulhaniya Le Jayega, Raaz Pichhle Janam Ka.

Bindass had Emotional Atyachar

Sadly, the endless dance and singing shows still seem to rule, with compulsory celebrity hosts, no matter how pointless their presence.

StarPlus took back the number one GEC slot from Colors.

The competitive lead from Colors’ ‘disruptive programming’ approach faded away as the other channels raced to dump their K serials and launch stories set in regional districts or with unusual protagonists.

Bad luck for Colors, but great news for India. Hindi television is in a far better place today than it was two years ago. The old formula for hit TV is gone, and story and character are more important than ever.

Multi-lingual viewers are starting to transition from the Hindi GECs to regional content

Channels in regional languages are blossoming, especially Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, and the four southern languages. The quality of content is improving, which is drawing more advertising money. Ernst and Young estimates that ad spends on regional channels will grow by 25% this year, compared to 16% on Hindi channels.

Broadcasters are taking the view that if they are going to bleed viewers and revenue from their flagship channel, they might as well bleed into other channels that they own. Almost all the big Hindi TV players have either already started launching regional channels or have announced that they will be doing so in the near future.

More regional channels mean more competition to develop great content. This will accelerate the slippage of viewers and ad revenue further.

One potential upside of this that I can see is that as more melodramatic, emotional content shifts to regional channels, the Hindi GECs will start exploring newer formats and narratives.

As a side note – another reason that channels like regional offerings is that the content is cheap. Hindi drama costs 7-10 lakh per episode (on average) compared to 2 Lakh an episode more regional dramas. Reality shows are also cheaper as the local stars charge far less to host the content.

Prime time expanded

From channel to channel, primetime can now cover anything between 6:30pm and 11:30pm.

What does this mean? More people are watching TV, over a wider spread of time. Primetime is all original programming, not repeats, so more primetime means a wider range of content for viewers to choose from.

First web based show – Bol Niti Bol from Balaji

Balaji showed just how flexible its business model is by backflipping from a range of virtually identical K serials, to a variety of significantly different shows. On top of that they have released a couple of great films (including the awesome LSD), started an online community to search for talent, and have launched a film and acting school.

To top it off, in July they released India’s first web based serial. Bol Niti Bol, the life journal of an 18 year old girl making her way through life.

Bol Niti Bol was actually designed as a multi-site web experience. Videos are hosted on YouTube and news/lifestyle sites, plus a Facebook page and a twitter feed. Balaji claims that the 17 episodes received more than 650,000 views in the first month, and they had 10,000 followers across the social media sites.

Why is this important? When families earn more money in developed countries, they buy more TVs. In the US, more than 50% of households have 3 or more televisions. Everyone in the household gets to watch whatever they want, so there is space for a huge variety of channels and content.

In contrast, most Indian families don’t own a TV. Often TVs are shared between families, or within a large extended family. As Indian families become richer, they rarely buy more TVs. This is why the target audience for popular TV channels is SEC BCD women, even though we keep hearing about India’s enormous ‘youth’ population.

Indian families buy computers (for their children’s education), and fancy mobile phones. As the older family members usually control the TV set, there is a huge opportunity to deliver targeted content to the younger family members over the internet.

With 3G just around the corner, and smart phones with big colour screens selling for under Rs.5000, we will shortly see a deluge of short-form web-based content aimed at the 15-25yr old market.

Hindi Film Trends of 2010

For Serious Films, Story Ruled.

Big budget serious films that lacked story, or lacked Indian context struggled at the boxoffice, often flopping. Kites, Ravaan, Veer, Teen Patti, Aisha and Guzaarish for example. Despite beautiful production values, each of these were either poorly written or lacked a connection with Indian life and values.

Big budget serious films with good stories or strong Indian context did well (as long as they were properly marketed). Rajneeti, My Name is Khan, Once Upon A Time In Mumbai.

Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se was possibly the worst marketed film of the year. Someone stuck up a few posters, and the next day it was in cinemas. Although, since Lamhaa and Red Alert also struggled at the box office, despite strong marketing, maybe people just don’t like films about conflict zones this year?

Big-budget, madcap, plotless comedies continued to make as much money as ever. There were some unexplainable flops, but overall this category did well despite atrocious reviews with films such as Golmaal 3, Housefull, and Tees Maar Khan.

Small-Town Stories

Mirroring the trend in TV, stories set in smaller towns were generally successful. Dabaang, Tees Maar Khan, Peepli [Live], Udaan, Aakrosh, Ishqiya, Phas Gaye Re Obama, even featuring small-town attitudes or innocence (Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge, Tere Bin Laden)helped.

Other than in the big-budget comedies, there seemed to be far fewer international locations than in previous years. Possibly this is a hangover from the cash crunch that saw lots of producers slashing their film budgets.

‘Multiplex’ Films

The young, ‘non hero’, multiplex-driven genre continued to grow, generally through the efforts of Ranbir, Imran and Farhaan. I Hate Luv Storys, Karthik Calling Karthik, Anaaja Anjaani, Break Ke Baad.

Lots of 3D films

Indian multiplexes (at least in major cities) have rushed to upgrade their projection technology. Many Hollywood films, which in the US are shown in both 2 and 3D, in India were shown only in 3D

Lots of ‘New’

Lots of debuts. By some estimates there were over 150 new entrants to the industry in either significant acting roles or as writers or directors.

There were some great attempts at doing something different content-wise:

  • First film with gay protagonists – Dunno Y… Na Jaane Kyon
  • First TV show adaptation – Khichdi – The Movie
  • And my favourite risk-taking film of 2010 – Love, Sex and Dhoka
Filed Under: Film, Marketing, Online, Television Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Quick Notes – Music Based Dating Site

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

What do your musical tastes say about the rest of your personality? Can musical tastes be a good basis for a relationship?

Enter http://tastebuds.fm/

This is a dating/matchmaking site based on music. Users enter their favourite bands or artists and the site will find you matches in your area. As a cool bonus, if you are a Last.fm user (the online streaming music site) you can import all your musical tastes directly.

This is a great, and very simple idea!

The site is just getting off the ground (currently, from India, there are 16 men and 1 woman who have registered).

According to Mashable, the online dating industry is worth over $1 billion per year and is bigger then porn. India, with around 15 million users, is the 3rd biggest market for this service, after China and the US. In western countries these services try to match people on the basis of personality, discovered through lengthy (400 question??) forms. In India, the main filter is community/caste (leaving out the regular stuff such as geographical region).

I suspect that in India, for the coming generations, caste/community will decrease in importance, if not for marriage then certainly for dating. Sites like Tastebuds which offer a different method of matchmaking will become very helpful!!

What else could you use? film/TV tastes? literary taste? food preferences?

Outside of matchmaking, how can you use music to create bonds within your community or workplace? At Zappos (the online shoe retailer) when an employee logs into their computer they are shown a photo of another employee and asked to rate how well they know the person. Imagine if it also showed their musical preferences? Over time you could build networks within the company based on these tastes….

Just a thought :-)

Filed Under: Marketing, Music Tagged With: , , ,

Music Themed Hotel–Escaping Blah!

December 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I travel a lot for work, and stay in plenty of very blah hotels, so any cool hotel concept catches my eye.

Obviously concept isn’t everything. The hotel has to be good at the basics. A great mattress and bedding. A soft fluffy towel. A good desk with enough power points. Good food. Quick service etc. But after that, you can layer on a concept to make the hotel unique.

India is years behind developed countries when it comes to hotels. Until a few years ago, the only choice was between great (lovely 5 star hotels) and crappy (old, run-down, usually overpriced).

A new generation of hotels is popping up. The 3 trends are:

  • Cheap ‘business’ hotels. The leading chain in this is the Ginger group. Rs.1000-3000 per night for a basic, but new/clean room with a proper mattress, 24hr hot water, self service pretty much everything, small gym, Wi-Fi etc. It’s a great vision for how to run a hotel – strip out all the non-essentials, make whatever is left work really well. These hotels are aimed at domestic business travellers.
  • Cheaper luxury brand hotels. This are things like Marriott ‘Courtyard’ hotels. They just leave off some of the higher end luxury features, and drop the room rates by about 20-40%
  • Boutique hotels. These are small, luxury, stand-alone hotels, usually opened by someone who has always wanted to run a hotel (or has a great building and doesn’t know what else to do with it :-) these might have 4-12 rooms and offer personalised service. Often the owner lives on-site.
    This first category is the one with the most potential. Ginger is building some pretty big hotels, but some of them are getting 100% occupancy, booked over a week in advance. To be clear, 100% occupancy is not the best thing for a hotel. It means the rooms have no natural down-time for maintenance, so the management has to refuse revenue in order to work on the rooms. That’s turning down short-term profit for long-term value, a trait for which Indian businesses are not famous.

It also means that demand outweighs supply. More people can build similar hotels, and there are enough guests for everyone.

The one thing that I don’t like about these hotels, is that they are bland. There is nothing distinctive or memorable. In these cases that is what they are aiming for, but once the basics are in place, there is plenty of scope for concept to be layered on top.

A great example of a concept hotel is the new Nhow Hotel, in Berlin, Germany.

The theme is music, here’s how they have created it:

  • All rooms with IPod connections and vast entertainment options
  • Guitar hire through room service
  • Top DJs playing in the bar
  • Live music in the hotel’s open spaces
  • 2 professional music studios,
  • Hotel staff include a full-time music manager, and many ex-students of local music colleges
  • Filling out the ‘Lifestyle” offerings are clothing sales from local designers, a headphone and streetwear store, and an art space.
  • The architecture and interior design are both striking and were created by star designers.

This is the sort of place that you could stay in, and would still be telling people about a decade later!

Other than the recording studios, guitar hire, and musical staff, most of this stuff is not uncommon at good hotels around the world. What these guys have done differently is grouped everything together into a THEME. Creating a narrative that weaves around their offerings helps to market the property and help to guide future business decisions regarding services and expansions.

Filed Under: Management, Marketing, Music Tagged With: , , , ,

The First Big-Name Transmedia Company?

December 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This was a very exciting piece of news that i picked up from the NY Times.

“Guillermo del Toro Opening a Boutique ‘Transmedia’ Studio

Transmedia storytelling, according to Wikipedia is “a technique of telling stories across multiple platforms and formats”. From a media and content perspective this can include film, television, online, print, radio etc.

Examples include:

  • the TV series Heroes. It is based on television, but on top of that is a bunch of other stuff such as comics, website and books that cover the same characters and are set in the same universe. Same again for Lost.
  • Almost anything Disney has done lately
  • Isa TKM. This Venezuelan TV serial is about a schoolgirl in love with a musician. the show launched with websites, Facebook and MySpace pages, phone ringtones and downloads, and a music album,

The magic of great transmedia is that a casual fan can enjoy the basic offering (such as the TV show) while a more passionate fan can ‘drill-down’ into the universe and satisfy their desire for more detail.

In the past, these sort of expansions happened organically. A show was successful, so producers started looking for spin-off options. A more modern view, is to plan for these expansions right from the start.

This is the role of Transmedia agencies. They are not necessarily experts at any one media channel, but rather try to coordinate between the different channels, knowing what bits of the story will work best on different platforms.

Personally, I love this stuff and have been reading about it for a while. I don’t write about it much, primarily because it is still a heavily ‘academic’ subject which means that the people who do write about it sound much smarter than me :-)

The reason the article caught my eye was the involvement of Guillermo del Toro the writer, producer, or director of many great films, including Pan’s Labyrinth, Blade 2, and Hellboy.  The company he has partnered in, Mirada, “will house all of the tools that filmmakers need to create entertainment that lives partly on the Web, partly in movie theaters, partly in video games under one roof.”

Awesome!

Filed Under: Film, Marketing, Television, Transmedia Tagged With: , , , , ,

Website Review: Hard Kaur World

December 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

 

7d0c24ec-c15d-45f4-add0-41b09fdee6a7The first thing that strikes you about HardKaurWorld is that this website is unbelievably heavy. The load times are huge, both initially, and when changing sections.

I suspect anyone with a slower internet connection than me would quickly give up. Viewing the site over a mobile device would probably be impossible. A site like this might be feasible in countries with fast broadband, but it feels a little disrespectful of the viewer’s time to use this layout in India, especially when it doesn’t add that much to the information.

Navigation is awkward. There is a school of thought that people ‘want to explore’ a website and ‘discover’ things. I disagree. The purpose of a website is to communicate information. This can be one-way (simply broadcasting the same information to everyone), or two-way (with some level of interaction that either provides feedback, or modifies the information being broadcast according to the viewer’s interests/location etc).

Fulfilling one of these options should be easy – the viewer shouldn’t have to search the screen for different elements, and then figure out what each element means in the navigational system.

This isn’t to say that the navigation system has to be boring or basic. A better example of a ‘fun’ website is www.mtvplay.in

Some of the social media links at the bottom of the page – linkedin, myspace etc just point back to the homepage.

There is a link to a blog page which is completely unfinished – the sample wordpress Blogpost, Comment, and About text are all still there and the sidebar hasn’t been setup with widgets yet

The link to the Hard Kaur Shop (to buy her merchandise) leads to a coming soon page

There s a Downloads page which has a few options on it (wallpapers in different sizes etc) but some sections such as ringtones and itunes, are “coming soon”.

The Bio page is truly awful. Its sad, because I really admire the work that Hard Kaur has put in to drive her career to this point, and she clearly has some serious life experience from which to draw inspiration and strength. This bio, however, is just blah blah blah. It lacks the two things that make for a great bio: a narrative and informative data. This section should have started in narrative form with her back story and finished with filmography, discography etc in a simple table format. She should really get a professional to write this.

There are a few other bits and pieces – some photos and videos. There are lots of spelling mistakes and typos scattered around.

I think the overall feeling you probably get from all this is: the website obviously isn’t finished – why is Chris complaining?

Because I was sent a paid promotional email for this website. So there are two possibilities:

  1. There was a mistake in sending the email. Someone scheduled it for the wrong date and it sent a couple of weeks early. Or,
  2. Someone thought that the website was ready to start promoting, which is a little bit scary.
    The other thing that struck me was – I don’t understand the point of this website. What is it for? Who is it targeting? That is completely unclear. As an informative site, it is too much work to find information. As a fansite, it is too static – no one is going to keep coming back and searching the site to see if anything changed. The feel of the site is too ME! ME! ME! (as if a design agency pitched “why don’t we make a site all about you”.

What would I have done?

  • Personally, I would have made the homepage dynamic – built around a blog – so that every time someone visits there is new information. The blog could be a daily update of: Hard Kaur’s own thoughts, news about her work and performances, links to other media articles. By pushing out lots of interesting updates you encourage repeat visits and can drive email subscriptions. This makes it less mememememe and a bit more youyouyouyou.
  • I don’t see the need to host photo galleries and videos on the site – all these things can be hosted more effectively on youtube, flickr etc etc with connecting links.
  • All the dead links and “coming soon” pages need to go. Including these on a live website is very lazy design and drives away readers.
  • Much lighter/faster design. Minimal or no flash. 953d8848-bc84-4027-ae1d-b6e48e08f503

Anyway, that’s just my thoughts. Would love to hear other people’s opinions?

http://www.hardkaurworld.com/

Filed Under: Marketing, Music, Online Tagged With: ,

Guzaarish: Marketing Campaign

November 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Guzaarish movie posterI saw Guzaarish on the weekend. I don’t really know what all the fuss is about. I found it to be incredibly self indulgent and a confused mess of a story.

So why did I go at all? Bhansali’s films can be good, and the reviews were shining. As much as everyone hates the film critics when their film gets panned, I tend to trust them, at least at a consensus level.

After I saw the film I went back to the reviews to try to understand what they had like so much about it. The answers were pretty random. One critic thought the film was special because Ash and Hrithik were starring together. Most of the other critics were wowed by the production design, or the costumes. Someone said the film deserved ‘its own category’.

Good point actually, and that is what confused me. What was this film? It’s not a love story because he doesn’t love her. Its not a magic related film, its not a legal drama. Maybe a character study?

If you simplify the film to the core story – a quadriplegic fights for the right to euthanasia – then it is quite simple.

But the film morphs into – a (now) quadriplegic ex-greatest-magician-in-the-world fights for theposter guz right to euthanasia because his money is running out, while being fussed over by a stern nurse who is secretly in love with him who also secretly flamenco dances and gets beaten by her estranged husband on their wedding anniversary.

How do you go about marketing something like that?

What struck me with this film was that the marketing of Guzaarish seemed out of control from the start. It all went something like this (the order is a bit jumbled):

  • the film is announced
  • it is rumoured to be a remake of Prestige
  • they announce that the director visited Ajmer Dargh to seek blessings
  • they announce that the director visited Lata Mangeshkar to seek blessings
  • An Indian writer claims the plot is plagiarised from his unpublished novel
  • The plot is announced but for some reason they keep calling the character a paraplegic, rather than quadriplegic, which make the request for euthanasia a bit excessive.
  • the trailer was to be released with We Are Family, but gets pushed to later.
  • they talk about Hrithik learning the difficult dance moves (yup, of course the now-crippled ex-magician has to be able to dance)
  • Hrithik says that he can identify with the quadriplegic character, because he has a knee injury
  • They wanted to promote the film on Bigg Boss but were turned down (very publicly)
  • They talk about Hrithik’s fitness routine to go from fat to fit for different scenes.
  • They release a poster of Aishwarya smoking. This is probably the lowest and most desperate point of the campaign. The poster is visually completely out of sync with the rest of the promotional materials, conveys nothing about the film. The entire point seems to be to stir up controversy about the actor smoking. This works, and doctors call for a ban on the film.
  • Ultimately, the film turns out to be a half remake of The Sea Inside, with bits of Prestige thrown in for good measure (because apparently in India you can’t make films about simple characters)

By ‘out of control’ I mean that much of the publicity was stirred up by people other than the poster guz 3marketing team, which meant they were not controlling the campaign. The story was so convoluted that is was difficult to market on that basis, with much of India not understanding terms such as euthanasia or quadriplegic anyway. Hence, the Guzaarish PR focused on the actors and their experiences rather than the film.

The posters were beautiful, and captured the feel of the film perfectly, however I think they focused too much of the love story angle, which was really a non-event. I know people feel that this attracts lots of viewers, but then why deceive them?

And here is the ‘smoking’ poster. See the difference?

smoking

My personal wish from this film was that Bhansali had dived a little further down the rabbit hole. This was a film in half English about mercy killing. Obviously it would have little appeal beyond the multiplex audience anyway. He could have really explored the world of a character whose life was all about illusion and can now only live that world in his mind. Reality and memory can blur. Anyway, maybe for the sequel…

Filed Under: Film, Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Global Marketing: Smirnoff’s Nightlife Exchange Project

November 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Smirnoff is currently in the midst of its Nightlife Exchange project. This is an ambitious attempt at swapping the best of a country’s nightlife, with other countries around the world. It works a bit like this:

A promotional shipping crate is displayed in the 14 participating countries. It is moved around in prominent places. The public, through parties and social media, can make suggestions regarding the best in music, fashion, food, entertainment etc. that represents their country. A leading DJ/event organiser/TV host etc. is nominated as a Cultural Curator, responsible for selecting the best ideas on offer.

These best ideas are ‘packed’ in the crate (although I’m not sure if the DJ’s will also be there – sounds a bit like illegal immigration) and shipped to a partner country for a whopping great party to be held on November 27th 2010.

Some of the exchanges are: India-Canada, UK-USA, Ireland-Argentina.

In India, the curator is Nikhil Chinapa. He selected ideas from 100,000 participants to construct the India nightlife experience:

A standout feature of India’s party will be a Bollywood-themed tent, where Canadians can dress like their favourite movie stars. Other features include visual projectors that will screen clips representing several common sights from across the country — the traffic, famous monuments, festivals, traditional dances and lots more. Chinapa jokes, “I’m trying to arrange for an elephant that can stand at the entrance with a ‘Horn OK Please’ sign on its head!”  Ref: HT

The funniest PR i have seen about this whole shebang, is from the transport industry, who are very excited about the role of the shipping containers Smile.

Add some branded TV content to the mix:

Running alongside the Nightlife Exchange Project, and further hammering home the Smirnoff-great music connection, is Master of the Mix. This a reality show / hunt for the “hottest DJ in the world” (whatever that means). A bunch of DJs go head-to-head in a weekly TV show format that has serious brand integration from Smirnoff, including a mixologist who will create special cocktails for that week.

Smirnoff is running a double-pronged marketing campaign at present:

The first aim is to associate the brand with the hottest nightlife around the planet, i.e. the Nightlife Exchange Project.

The second aim is a little more subtle, and that is to target marketing at a broader range of audience groups, such as Hispanic, black, Asian, Gay etc. For example, the Master of the Mix TV show will be running in the US on the BET and Centric channels, both of which are particularly strong with African-American audiences.

Here is a video from MTV introducing the NEP:

Here is the official video:

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Media Marketing Bits & Pieces

October 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A couple of neat TV marketing concepts that caught my eye lately:

Disney, promoting their show “Art Attack” ran a campaign entitled “Paint Your World”. Children across India painted globes for submission. 16,000 were selected and assembled into a giant Disney logo at a Mumbai Mall. There were also activities for school groups to promote art.

UTV World Movies TV channel announced that it will begin a series of associations with art related events. Kicking this off was sponsorship of The Art Conspiracy, a two-day festival of art, music and performance, running across 8 venues in Bandra, Mumbai. Its great to see niche TV channels supporting smaller, independent events. The channel has also sponsored live comedy in the past.

Masterchef India recently began on the Star Plus channel. The premiere of the show was held online, on the channel and masterchef websites, as well as through embedded widgets on a host of partner sites, including a major web portal. They ran an interactive promotion throughout the online premiere, giving away blackberry phones. Interesting way to connect with a younger, net-savvy audience.

MTV has launched a new website – MTVPlay.in. The site presents a range of research to help people understand “Generation Me” as they have termed their viewers. The insights are harvested from the channel’s own networks of college students, as well as research agencies

Filed Under: Marketing, Television Tagged With: , , , , ,

Film Previews for Fans as Promotional Strategy

October 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The film Paranormal Activity was one of the biggest low budget hits of the last couple of years. Made for under $15,000, the film had a long journey stuck in distribution hell, and almost got a big budget remake, before being released and making over $100 million worldwide.

One of the promotional tools that they used to hype the film were preview screening. Why do people see a film like this? Because they want to be scared. If lots of people are saying that your film is scary, then it’s pretty attractive to the target audience, so the previews worked well.

For the upcoming sequel, the producers are taking this one step further. Using a website application, fans can “demand” that the film is released in their city. The cities that generate the most requests will get midnight previews the day before the film releases across the country. 250,000 fans have won free tickets to these screenings.

This is a great strategy. A quarter million people, who are already fans, will come out of their free and exclusive screening and rave about the film online and in person. This should give a huge word-of-mouth boost to the ticket sales the next day, which should then flow on to a bigger international release.

That’s the plan anyway. If everyone walks out and says the film sucks, however, it could be a very different story :-)

Filed Under: Film, Marketing Tagged With: , , ,
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