Bollywood takes digital route to blockbuster destination

Revolver Rani, the first film produced by the former Viacom 18 Motion Pictures COO, Vikram Malhotra, under his own banner, Abunduntia Entertainment, will hit the screens this Friday. Apart from the usual advertising and promotional activities on various traditional media platforms such as TV, print and outdoor, the company has invested a fair bit on promotional activities on various digital platforms to get the younger audience to watch the film.

Weeks before the release of the film, the studio created an animated video of the lead song of the film and put it on YouTube. Alongside, it kicked off Twitter conversations on various aspects of the film, such as the lead actor, Kangana Ranaut's costumes. Even before the film has hit the screen, it has managed to get over 35,000 conversations of audiences between the age group of 15-30, claims the marketing head of Abunduntia Entertainment, Prerna Singh.

"With 50 to 60 per cent of the film-watching audience being young people who are online all the time, digital has become an integral part of the marketing mix," says Singh.

From a mere one to two per cent of movie marketing spends dedicated to online as recently as a year ago, movie marketers, today, are spending anywhere between 10 to 20 per cent of their movie marketing budget on various digital platforms. "Studios are spending up to Rs 60 to Rs 70 lakh for digital marketing. This is quite big considering that digital marketing spends were negligible even a year ago," says Ashvini Yardi, Co-Founder, Grazing Goats.

Yardi who is launching her film, Fugli in June, has recently kicked off a Twitter conversation on Fugli lingo. The film's dialogue has a lot of Haryanvi expressions which her production house, is trying to market on Twitter.

"Digital is fast gaining critical importance in the movie marketing mix . High engagement and social sharing become important tools to drive word of mouth on films," points out Rudrarup Dutta, Head, Marketing, Viacom 18 Motion Pictures.

Though movie makers are increasingly spending more on the digital media, Disney India's studio business (UTV Motion Pictures), last year, promoted Anand Gandhi's award winning film Ship Of Thesus entirely on the social media. While the studio decided to release the film only in the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore, since it appealed to a metro audience, it created a Facebook application, 'Vote For Your City', that enable people to vote for the movie to be released in their cities. The film was released in 24 cities, instead of the original plan to release it in the five metros.