Category Archives: marketing

The Album Cover

It’s been ages since I bought a film’s audio cd/album but I thought of putting this to an end and bought the album for Anurag Kashyap’s “Dev D”. Expectedly, a lot has changed in the way “Album Covers” are designed now. As I was checking the album cover out, I happened to get my hands on the album cover of recently released Akshay Kumar starer “Chandni Chowk To China”. Lets see how the two covers compare to each other in terms of design and their offerings.

Dev D’s Album Cover

1)  Back(internal) side of the cover

Page One: This page is divided into three parts
1) Ring back/Caller tunes: This part gives you relevant codes for Airtel, Vodafone, Idea,Reliance, Tata Indicom, Virgin and Aircel
2) Ring back tunes(BSNL): This part has relevant codes for BSNL.
3) Theme: This part has the code to download movie theme.

Page Two: This page is divided into seven parts
1) Animations
2) Color Logo
3) Wallpapers
4) Buy songs(hungama mobile)
5) Listen to songs: You can listen to full songs from any of these providers, Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance and Virgin
6) Download Ringtones from Airtel, Reliance, Tata Indicom, Idea, Vodafone, BSNL, wap.hungama.com
7) International Audience: Now people from US, Canada, UAE, Malaysia, UK and Mauritius can also download caller tunes, ring tones etc. This section has country specific details.

Chandni Chowk To China’s Album Cover

Actually this isn’t the album cover but this comes inside the album as a separate brochure.

Part one of the front side:

Part two of the front side: This part has codes to download dialer tunes from Tata Indicom, Airtel, Vodafone, Spice, Reliance, Idea and Aircel

Part one of Back side: This part is divided into four parts
1) Color Logo:
2) Animation
3) Wallpaper
4) Theme

Part two of the Back side: This part is for international audience to download ring tones etc. US, Canada, UAE, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and UK

Though I was never interested in “Chandni Chowk To China” and can’t ever compare it with “Dev D”, I loved their album cover/brochure a lot over the other. Here’s why
1) It’s a five page brochure as compared to two page one of Dev D.
2) It’s separate from the cover and therefore doesn’t need to be discovered by taking the album cover out from the cd case.
3) It’s designed and organized a lot better, thus way easier to read.
4) Also, I like the fact that they’ve made the ring tones available in two more neighboring markets i.e Pakistan and Bangladesh other than supporting an extra provider (Spice).

Though DEV D’s album has a free brochure containing stills of its cast I believe they should’ve used that space better. What do you think ?

5 Lessons in Social Media Marketing from God

In the age of wii, iphone and social media even Gods can’t afford to stay the same. As people start doing more activities online(the ones they used to do offline) they are spending more and more time online.
Lets imagine Gods themselves felt the need to engage with their audience and started using various social media tools to market themselves. Lets see how it plays and what can we learn from this.

It’s much easier for people to stay in touch with each other online as compared to offline. Not only this, it’s also easier for people to stay close to their favorite Gods online. Plus the internet offers some possibilities that were unthinkable before like say “making friends with God”.

With God himself on your friend list, the possibilities are immense. So don’t be surprised if your Facebook feeds reads :
“Matt Jacob and Simon Taylor are now friends with Jesus Christ” or
“Vivek Sharma and Sai Baba are now friends via the People You May Know tool”

Lesson 1: Fish where the fish are. Social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, Myspace etc in this case are better options to connect with their audience than say LinkedIn or Friendfeed.

In case you think, making friends with God might be a bit too much(or you fear you’ll loose your online privacy) , you can simply become a fan of your favorite God.

Lesson 2 : Give your audience various ways to connect with you, depending on the degree to which they would like to get involved/connected.

With about 9200 fans, fan page of Jesus is brewing with activity. While most people show their gratitude and express their love towards the God, some people actually want to chat with the God himself and guess what ? Jesus does not disappoint his followers.

Lesson 3: Interact with your audience and small is big.

Lesson 4: Regularly update your web properties and add relevant content. This gives a reason for your audience to come back.

Lesson 5: Don’t oversell. The ultimate goal of Social Media usage is not to sell but to establish lasting relationships with your audience.

These are some of the simple lessons in social media marketing that I could think of from the above mentioned cases, if there’s something else that you’d like to suggest, just drop a comment 🙂

PS: This post is just meant to be used to learn some lessons in social media usage in a fun way and should not be taken in any other context

Marketing Case Study: Dev D

January and February of this year are particularly important months for Bollywood. With lots of big budget films like “Chandni Chowk to China”, “Delhi 6”, “Dev D” and “Billu Barber” hitting the screen, there’s going to be a lot of competition to seek people’s attention and get noticed. The marketing teams behind each film would try everything they can to spread the buzz and build a sense of urgency to watch the film. Lets see how folks behind “Dev D” are going about marketing.

Lustline:

Before you go any further, pick up your phone and dial 022-61424800. Just dial it for yourself and see what it is, trust me, it will be worth the call charges(if you are dialing from India)

Welcome. To proceed, please certify that you are above 18 by pressing one.
On pressing one, you are greeted by a husky voice that says
“If you want me in English today, press one. Agar hindi mein chahiye toh do dabaiye.”

Though what happens on pressing the next digit maybe disappointing for most callers as instead of talking(or hearing) anything naughty, all they get to hear is “to get an autographed cd of the film visit the website devdthefilm.com” or “to get a movie poster visit the website devdthefilm.com” , it’s a brilliant example of something that has never been tried before. If the lustline ever worked the way it was said to work it’s great but even if it never really worked that way it opens a whole new world of interactive marketing. The possibilities of using phone and sms lines for involving masses are immense and hopefully, we would soon be seeing more being done on these lines.

Website:

You have to certify that you are above 18 to view the site, interesting.
The lustline is also available on film’s website, where again you need to certify  that you are above 18 by and select a language to get going. Though I couldn’t really get past this stage all thanks to the awfully slow site. I still don’t get why all the film websites are made in flash, other than poor SEO they all take ages to load, spoiling the whole experience but alas no one really takes note of what people are saying about these things online( see month old rants here).

Though only a few sections are working, the all red site looks intriguing just like its trailers. I liked the community links section and the fact that it has links to 10 external web properties but the site could have been a lot better and engaging(engagement is almost zero).

Videos:

I am not really a TV person, so I rely on the web for updates on what’s new on the idiot box but if you are not like me chances are that must have come across

This song was uploaded on YouTube under the official UTVMotionPictures channel three weeks back and has got about 25,000 views while the official trailer uploaded two months back has been seen more than 59,000 times and has got about 117 comments, not bad at all.Not only this, UTV folks have been regularly uploading a minute long videos of the film songs every 7-10 days with the last one uploaded yesterday. Since the movie contains 18 songs, they can easily upload 10 songs without worrying too much. These videos have got almost 1,00,000 hits in total.

Abhay Deol gets tattooed

Audio:
The films music is also available via streaming at BollywoodHungama. Anyone who listens to the songs of the film will definitely talk about it and thus spread the word. Some like me, may decide to buy the audio cd too. These songs have been listened more than 25,000 times already.

(M)TV:

After reading this nicely written piece on passionforcinema I tuned to MTV and as mentioned their tickr is full of “atyachar”. What happens if you are pretending to be working in office when you are actually playing games ? Professional atyachaar etc etc. It’s another nice way to spread the word(like I just did). There are film promos playing every 5 minutes across the news channels, even if you want you cannot miss them.

Facebook:
An active official group with 920 members as of now, 7 videos, 86 stills from the film. The good thing about the group is that it’s regularly updated and admins are also participating in it.
An active  fan page which is also heavy on content. The film has 686 fans already.
There’s also an event about Dev D’s tattoo launch. This is an interesting way of involving online audience into offline activities.
Translate the lyrics contest: There’s also a contest to translate emosanal atyachar into English & get an autographed CD

Things definitely seem to be in the right direction as far as facebook is concerned.

Other social networks(Fishing where the fish are):
Not on facebook but want to join the film group, no problem. The film has official groups/communities on orkut (176 members), perfspot (137 members), hi5 (30 members), fropper (26 members), 
bigadda
(16 members) and goyaar (10 members).

It’s worth mentioning that despite the size of the group/community the information and content is same across all these groups and apparently there are profiles of some of the cast and team members also on most of the platforms covered.

PFC:
passionforcinema is the biggest platform for Hindi film buffs and lots of experts in the field blog there. Anurag being an active blogger at PFC has written a lot of the film and engaged with his readers. There are lots of other posts written by other folks about the film.These posts must have easily got more than 10,000 views. There’s also a deleted scene video from the film exclusively for PFC which is certainly a great idea.

Controversy:
Nothing works better for making noise than a planned or accidental controversy. Dev D also has its share of controversy in the claims the film has reignited the infamous DPS mms scandal.

Merchandise:
Not sure if it’s the right category but if news sources are to be believed there are plans to launch
“Dev D Condoms”. If they pull of this one, it will be an historic(not necessarily successful) tactic, which will create a lot of buzz and be a remarkable event in marketing of bollywood films.

The marketing strategy for the film includes both offline and online activities, while Ghajini’s online marketing was more focused on stand alone sites, it’s focused more on social networks in the case of Dev D and apparently it has got to do with the fact that the producer of the film is UTVSpotboy. Apparently, they have a platform and a methodology which is used to promote their films. Given the rate at which buzz is spreading for the film and the fact that its release is about three weeks away chances are it will see a grand opening. Lets see if they come up with something else till the release date and how the movie performs.

Update: You can also download the case study in pdf format here

Social Media Marketing Case Study: The President is Coming

Social media marketing suits the needs for film makers pretty well, especially for low budget films. Social media marketing works for numerous reasons including wide reach(sans borders) and better ROI, owing to lower costs. While Ghajini saw a slew of online marketing activities, bollywood is yet to see an extensive online marketing campaign. Lets see how the guys behind “The President is Coming” have used social media tools for marketing.

Facebook
It was an ad on Facebook that caught my attention. On being clicked the ad leads to the group “The President is Coming- The Movie

Given the fact that this group is advertised(someone is paying for it) its safe to assume that its an official one. It has about 850 members, one discussion and 45 wall posts. There are a few pictures from the film and some videos(trailers, interviews etc) added by the group owners.

Facebook is slowly picking up as a platform for marketing Indian films but there seems to be a lack of clear strategy(or focus) on how to leverage the platform better. The film’s facebook campaign is top down, like in most cases and has been used just to push content, not to interact or anything else.

The least that could have been done was talking to interested people instead of just broadcasting the content. The content and the information that’s shared could have been a bit more interesting and a fan page would have been nice too.

Website: Apparently there isn’t a website built for the film, or if there is one, its not at all discoverable, which is equivalent to it not being there.

A website though simple, is a must have to share content, build a community and involve/engage the audience.

Blog: No blog either.

MySpace: Myspace has also been used to spread  the word. In place of a website, the main placeholder is the films myspace page

Few things worth noticing about the myspace part of the campaign.
1) “Friend us and write a comment about why you should be a part of the film. If we like it, we’ll contact you directly. Good Luck” reads the profile. This means for one that they started this profile a decent while before the film was expected to hit the screens and secondly it shows an attempt to involve audience.
2) Since the profile’s main page still shows November 28th as the release date, its easy to make out that nobody is really looking after the profile.
3) Content wise the profile is decent, it has a few stills, an audio clip and a video trailer of the film.
4) The profile has been befriended by 175 people so far(though there’s nothing more to it) and the public wall has managed some 14 comments. Once again no involvement from any team member or cast.

Just like it was with Facebook, the attempts at Myspace are either half-baked or poorly executed.

The least that could have been done was to keep the profile regularly updated, interact with audience and share some more information about the film. If this page is used as the main web property for the site, it should have links to other web properties like facebook etc

YouTube:
There are around a dozen different videos on YouTube for the film, ranging from “film trailers” to “behind the scenes” to “press launch” to even “post production problems”. Once again some work has been done in creating and uploading these videos but not much thinking seems to have been done to get the most out of it. Chances of you bumping into these videos are as rare as chances of you bumping into their myspace page, which are to be honest, quite bleak.

The least that could have been done was to make a channel,upload all videos from that account and cross link the channels URL to other web properties.

Imdb: Un-official page without much information and the default poster picture.

The least that could have been done was to create an official page,upload the movie poster and fill in more details.

All in all it seems like a volunteer(and informal) effort by the team members involved with the project, especially the more net savvy ones and thus you can find their imprints across various platforms discussed.

Only if there was a sound strategy in place, things could have been better and effective.

Here’s a nice trailer, apparently made by a fan(as claimed)

You can also download the case study here

Internet campaign of BJP’s L.K Advani

Blogosphere and Twitterville are abuzz with the news of recently launched blog of  prime ministerial candidate Mr L.K Advani of the India’s opposition party, BJP.  Be it the Obama effect or something else, it’s good to see Indian politicians starting to use Internet actively.  Clearly, BJP is coming out stronger and smarter when it comes to making their presence felt on the web as compared to the Congress.  Also, there seem to be an aggressive effort in marketing Mr Advani on the internet too. Lets see how Mr Advani and team are using various social media tools and services to spread the word.

1) Personal Web Site: The website http://www.lkadvani.in/ as Gaurav Mishra notes, was launched on November 8, 2008.  The site is much better than the kind of sites we’ve seen in the past . Not only does it look better, it is also well conceptualized(though there’s nothing out of the box yet).
Things worth noting about the site are
a)  Comprehensive about and background page(s): This is very important for those who want to know more about the leader and/or the party. That said, the site offers a lot of relevant information.

b) Forum: The site also has an active in house forum, with a couple of threads having more than 100 posts. Having a forum is very important to organize a loyal community around the social media object in question. If handled properly a forum like this could grow really big and attract lots of politics enthusiasts engaged in various sorts of discussions. What remains to be seen is if Mr Advani, himself takes part in this forum.

c)  Blog: A blog in another way to share your views/opinions and engage the community. A few questions that comes to one’s mind immediately are,  who writes the content ?  how open are they to feedback/criticism ? and who replies to the comments i.e engages in conversations ?
Since the blog is just a few days old, its difficult to answer these questions now.

d) Recent activities: It’s good to see, details about his standing and statements on currently relevant issues on the home page of the site.

e) Open to suggestions/feedback: There’s good enough and visible focus on asking for user feedback and suggestions. How they are dealt with it however is a separate issue.

f) Alerts: Email and SMS alerts about breaking news. Sharing things first with the community is a great thing to do and it gives people enough incentive to subscribe for these alerts.

g) Share with friends: The site also lets you invite your address book contacts and contacts from various social networks like Facebook, Orkut and LinkedIn.

2) Google Adwords Campaign: Though this doesn’t come under social media per se but there is also an active Google adwords campaign, not just for keyword search but also contextual advertising. Smartly enough they’ve even bought ads for keyword “congress”. So if someone searches Google for “congress” they’ll be seeing an ad like this

Some other keywords and phrases bought are “l k advani”, “lk advani” and bjp. Incidentally SBI folks are even smarter for they too bought ads for the keyword “l k advani”. Here’s what their contextual ad looks like


Apart from the above mentioned there also some properties on the web some of which might be official, like the Facebook fan page.

These are some of the aspects of Mr Advani’s internet campaign that I could discover. The campaign is focussed more on depth than on width for now and that’s the reason there’s a lot of focus on the website and almost zero focus on other social media tools. A couple of interesting and simple things they can do are

1) have videos of his speeches uploaded under an official youtube channel, so that more people can see them and know more about him and his viewss.
2) Have an option to vote for or against his stands on various issues. This could help them understand what’s the popular opinion for netizens about his stands.

Even if they decide to focus on just the site without doing anything fancy, they can get a lot of attention and earn goodwill by just spending more time conversing with the users/visitors.

Mr Advani’s experiments with the internet should serve as an example for other politicians from India, especially the younger ones and hopefully 2009 will see more politicos finding their way to the internet.

Marketing Case Study: Ghajini


Aamir Khan as most of us as Bollywood Fans know is not only a brilliant actor but also an intelligent marketer. In times like these when the success of a film hugely depends on the business it does in the first two weeks the marketing genius leaves no stone unturned to spread the word for his films and create a sense of rush among his fans to watch the film asap. Ghajini is the latest offering from Aamir’s stable and needless to say he’s all over the place promoting it and pulling off acts that’ll put most marketers to shame.
Also what’s noteworthy is the fact that Internet Marketing for Ghajini has been a very significant chunk of the overall marketing strategy. Hungama is the brain behind the Internet Marketing for Ghajini.
In this post lets try to find out various tactics that went into marketing Ghajini and how they were executed.

1) The Look(Online & Offline):
Think Ghajini, Think Aamir khan’s new and conspicuous hair cut and all those tattoos. That hair cut is the latest rage in country. Huge and never thought of before efforts have been made to imprint his hairdo into audience’s mind.

Online Tactics:
a) Aamir’s blog carries a full screen sized picture as on the film posters.
b) Two of the three websites related to the film also have a big bare chested picture of his on their homepage to reaffirm the associations ( http://www.wallofsuspects.com/ and http://www.rememberghajini.com/ )

Offline Tactics:
1) First and Foremost Aamir Khan still has the same haircut.

2) Aamir and his producers tied up with leading multiplexes(PVR, BIG, Cinemax) across the country to give all the ushers, ticket-sellers the distinctive “Buzz-cut” that Aamir sports in the film.
3)Aamir personally gave the ‘buzz cut’ — the hairstyle the actor sports in Ghajini to his fans in Delhi

2) Getting fans Involved(Online):
Aamir & co have got another important bit right i.e “Interactive promotion”. Rather than doing one way communication/broadcast through the film site or simply sharing content they’ve involved his fans in the film’s promotion.

wallofsuspects: A supporting viral website for the film aims to replicate a similar concept from the film. To checkout the wallofsuspects one needs to have a code which can be obtained by uploading your or your friends images. One can also provide their mobile number which can be used to intimate if they win some prize.

findghajini : Another viral website built around the film. It’s a viral gaming application where the users can play the role of Aamir’s character in the film and try to find Ghajini through the clues provided.

3D PC Games: 25th Dec will see the release of the film and also India’s first 3D PC Game built around a movie. This is the first time there will be a complete game built around a movie. Lots of people are looking forward to it, lets see how this one goes. Here’s the video for the making of this game.

3) Getting Media Involved(Online):
Now that he’s got his fans involved what’s left ? Yes, The Media.  Aamir & co have tried to engage media persons and add a level of personal touch to the whole affair. http://www.rememberghajini.com/media/
is the place where media people can upload their pictures to which Aamir can add notes based on their previous interaction(s) with him. This repository will help him in remembering those media people more vividely and the those who register will in turn get information kit on Ghajini along with Aamir’s personal note about them.

As reported in one of the comments here Ghajini’s marketing team shared movie stills with their site so that they could be used for promotion.

4) Maintain Suspense and Throw Hooks(Online):
Unlike other film sites the sites for Ghajini are not focusing much on the synopsis of the film or the main plot(Which is out in open) they are instead focused on certain events of the film(finding the killers etc) and are leveraging them. In addition to this there are some hooks which are meant to form certain associations and build mind maps. Extending the theme from film after every 15 minutes the user gets redirected(forget everything) to the home page no matter what page they were at. Remembering the date(Remember Dec 25) on which the film will be released is another one, quite prominent and common through the sites.

5) Associations/Collaborations:
The idea for this post started when while starting my Tata Sky  I saw a Tata Sky ad featuring Aamir n Gul Panag. I mistook Gul Panag for the new actress and thought that its a great way to promote the film. Every time Tata Sky starts the viewers get to see the new ad, awesome. While Gul Panag maybe not be related to Ghajini’s Asin but as per the developments here starting tomorrow all the Tata Sky viewers should be seeing this new ad with Asin opposite Aamir khan.

Tata Sky also has a contest specifically for the film and has chosen Asin as their new brand ambassador. Not only this there’s a splurge of videos about making of Aamir’s body for the film. First time I saw the footage taken though out the course of his body building on Tata Sky and later it was all over the news channels. Giving people more and more reasons to talk about the film I say.

Van Heusen has launched a similarly-named collection for today’s uber-confident young men that is inspired by the movie. Van Heusen to promote the new range also organized a fashion show in which models sported Khan’s clothing style from the film, but also his hairstyle.

Then there’s “Tata Indicom‘s outbound dialer service with Khan’s pre-recorded voice. In this a Tata Indicom service user will get a call in Khan’s voice, asking the caller whether he is Ghajini and will tell the caller that the film is releasing on 25 December. Tata Indicom plans to reach out to 10 million customers with these outbound dialer calls. Tata Indicom is also advertising on TV for mobile downloads of Ghajini songs.” – businessofcinema.com

Samsung will be launching special Ghajini edition of models L700 and M200 of its mobile phones of L700 and M200 models. These handsets will be pre-loaded with ringtones, pictures and songs from Ghajini. Ghajini is the first Indian film to release a handset as part of the film’s content.

Aamir has also tied-up with some leading sculptors who are creating replicas of Khan’s Ghajini look. These sculptures would be installed at various multiplexes in the country.

The first phase of Ghajini’s marketing life cycle has been quite active and promising lets see how the second phase of Ghajini’s marketing life cycle fares. Made with a budget of around 50 Crore and with marketing expenses of about 14 Crore Ghajini doesn’t really need a long run to pull things off monetarily.

Irrespective of how the film fares it sure has some important lessons for all of us.

You can also download the case study in pdf format here

Find ’em and Engage ’em

The first step in engaging customers online is to know where to find them. Unless you know where to find whom, your social media strategy cannot be effective. I’ve tried to collate a list of various site/services that can be used to engage customers or spread the buzz.

Social Networks:
Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Hi5, Friendster are one of the biggest hangout places on the planet and if your customers access the web, the chances of finding them in one of these networks are pretty high. If you are looking for young mainstream audience these are the places you can find them.

Microblogging Networks:
Microblogging platforms offer a good mix of community size and ability to hold conversations. They are probably the most effective and quickest way to connect with an existing or potential customer. Twitter, Plurk, Kwippy, Identica, Rejaw et all are some of the microblogging networks worth having your presence on. From my observation majority of the users of these networks are older than 25, are working and are there to explore and learn more(other than having fun). The audience is far from mainstream by most standards.

Social Aggregators:
Social aggregators are currently underdogs when it comes for brands to engage with customers. Despite the fact that aggregators can ease out the effort spent in tracking the buzz and conversing with customers their usage for these purposes is yet to pick steam.  Friendfeed, Social Thing, Profilactic, Flock, Strands and Plaxo Pulse are some of the popular tools. An even more niche audience, the  majority users of aggregators are again older than 25, working and more active on the web.

Since there are lots & lots of popular sharing sites I have split them according to the content/social object shared.

Video Sharing Sites: Youtube is by far the most popular video sharing site and offers a great platform to share promotional content & build relationships with your customers. The demographics here are quite widespread with a lot of young/teenage users. Lots of families &  artists use youtube to store and share their videos with families and fans. Checkout this for more.

Photo Sharing Sites: Flickr, picasaweb, photobucket and smugmug are some of the more popular sites which can be used to engage customer or just spreading the word. Majority Flickr users are above age 35 and have finished high school.

Presentation Sharing Sites: Another underdog when it comes to online marketing and creating a buzz presentation sharing sites can prove to be a nice hunting ground to engage with a niche and a bit more savvy netizens. Slideshare appears to be the only site which offers presentation sharing capabilities and has a good user community. Given the fact that most people don’t have a rendezvous with presentations until a certain age  the majority users here would also be beyond their teenage years and would have finished education upto a certain level.

LinkedIn is another potential tool to connect and form relationships with people. I strongly think it should  be an important part of one’s social media strategy.

I am sure I must have missed some sites/services, if you know of any please drop a note and I’ll include them

Obama’s campaign and the power of email

Email is not one of the things that comes to one’s mind when it comes to social media marketing. A world where shiny web 2.0 objects like facebook and twitter are at the center stage most people tend to think a bit too less of the classic email and the possibilities it offers. Lets see how Obama and his team leveraged the power or email to the hilt.”

Here’s a post I wrote on the appadom blog, read the full post here