Seeing the current trend, Cine-Marketing definition may easily be related to Consumer Intense and Novel Engagement Marketing. Consumers today relate with brands in essentially innovative ways, often through communication channels that are beyond traditional product/service providers’ control. This article would revolve around the digitalization and marketing in context to cine-Business.
As with most of the business, during the early PLC phase, there is an enormous need of promotions and advertisement campaigns even beyond the expense limit. In case of marketing of movies, it is more reasonable as PLC becomes Movie Release-to-Revenue Cycle, and hence increasing revenues as early as possible turn out to be must need for creating buzz in the market. Conventionally, the promotions and advertising used to be handled by the distributors and exhibitors only but with the digitalization, the need to marketing has been extensively realized.
The golden strategies of promotions including but not restricted to TV, Radio, Print, Live-shows, Theatres & Shopping Malls, Internet, do sufficiently good to achieving the objective of increasing revenue. But the question arises –“What makes it different?” The differentiation - when all among one’s competitors are duplicating the process in fraction of seconds. Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar (Starring- Ranbir Kapoor, Nargis Fakhri) – A perfect example of Cine-marketing describes how marketing should not be restricted only to promotions but must be extended to building relationships. The concept of creative strategies of marketing makes a film rightly targeted to its audience. Soon after releasing website, rockstar joined facebook. Well, it had to come on facebook because of its targeted audience residing there.
Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/rockstarthefilm) first started talking about Ranbir to increase the like count on the page, seeing Ranbir’s fan-following on internet. I call it perfect marketing as the consumer engagement was kept on building by the series of uploaded pictures and corresponding likes & comments. The page started with status like – “Amazing guys....We have reached the 1000 landmark....we are awaiting this movie.....Cummon people spread the word....there are still many Ranbir Kapoor and Rockstar fans....who are unaware of the movie ....suggest to your friends....soon we will hear out from Ranbir Kapoor himself...stay tuned for more ROCKSTAR updates!” Besides, the rockstar team was doing many other things like meeting fans in cities, coming to live shows, etc and finally integrating all the events at social networking sites.
The page also talked about story of the movie in short statements and created the buzz asking audience about their expectations and queries on story lines. It started sharing original video links on the page and made fans felt valued. On 20 September, 2011, it posted – “Hey DELHI walooo..Imtiaz ali meets Facebook Fans in Waves cafe at Great Indian Mall...in 1hour :-)...So...how many coming??” And the discussion carried on with series of the movie yatra. What could be better strategy of marketing than this?
Surely not a viral culprit as Ra.One - 52 crore being spent for promotion but apart from the promotion nothing has been done right by the film makers. To continue with the Differentiation, it came up with rockstar diary, where movie team goes to different locations and captures the moments for its audience. With one month before the launch of the movie, they started spending on various competitions - participating people in different quizzes, making them follow twitter page, selecting random fans for free cds etc. As a result, it shares today more than 4, 00,000 fans on facebook and equally engaged other social media consumers, including twitter.
The recommendation is not only social marketing but is capturing your targeted audience. When it caters to Youth, the choice of facebook engagement seems apt. Decision of spending unnecessary huge amount on promotions without having consumer-connection may work, but spending comparatively less and letting your audience decide is a better way ahead. Be it viral, event / sponsored or media marketing, cinema requires equal, rather more of meaningful marketing. This kind of CINE- marketing refers not only to the top-line but also to the bottom-line of the production business.
