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

1) Social Marketing Metrics: A list of metrics to measure Social Media Marketing.

2) Why Crunch Mode Does not Work

3) The Monster in the Mirror – Arundhati Roy

4) kwippy Link: If you had one wish, what would you use it on and why?

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

1) A Common Misconception about Social Media Marketing
2) Could VC be a casualty of the recession
3) Divorce
4) Kwippy Link: Corporate Work Life

1) Cafe shaped Conversations
2) The ClueTrain Manifesto
3) Kwippy Link: Terrorism is a global problem

Whether you are own a company or love a product. Tracking what’s being said about your company, that product or even yourself on the web is quintessential. Quintessential because listening is the first step when it comes to  using social media. Listening to what people(both users and nonusers) are saying about you amongst themselves is one of the most important ways to get feedback for improvement and this feedback is mostly genuine and frank and thus critical.

Here’s a list of tools/services that I use to track the buzz for kwippy

1) Google Alerts:
Google alerts offer an easy and simple way to track what’s being said about something. To create an alert
a) Provide your search term.
b) Choose a type. You can choose from web, news, blogs, groups, videos and comprehensive. Comprehensive includes web, news and blogs.
c) Choose how do you want the alerts, via email or feed.
d) Choose how often do you want the alerts, as it happens, once a day or once a week.

Checkout Google alerts help page here

2) Friendfeed Search:
Friendfeed is an aggregator which supports more than 35 services including Flickr, Google Reader, del.icio.us and GetSatisfaction. A search on FriendFeed can tell if someone shared/bookmarked a blog post about your company or product or asked a question on GetSatisfaction and much more. Here’s a sample search query for FriendFeed search.

3) Twitter Search:
Twitter’s search is a great way to checkout what’s being said about your company/product in the twitter world REAL TIME. What’s even good is the fact the they also offer atom feeds for the search results which you can take home and play with. Friendfeed search and Twitter search will give you some repeats as some people integrate their Twitter account with their FriendFeed account. Here’s a sample search query for Twitter search.

4) Kwippy Search:
Using Kwippy’s search you can track the buzz around you company/product on kwippy. Friendfeed search and Kwippy search will give you some repeats as some people integrate their Kwippy account with their FriendFeed account. Here’s a sample search query for Kwippy search.

5) BackType Alerts:
Backtype is a service that helps you organize your comments that are scattered across the web. Using BackType alerts you can track what’s being said about your company/product in the form of comments. Checkout the alerts page here. Thanks louis for sharing this

We’ve covered tools for web, blogs, news, aggregators, twitter, kwippy and comments. These should be enough to keep you busy but if you still get time and want to go deeper you can try searching other platforms like rejaw, lifestream.fm , identi.ca and more.

This is not it, the sweet part is that you can use these tools in a myriad of ways. For example you can
1) Integrate atom feed of your Twitter search results to kwippy and follow them over your gtalk as mentioned here
2) Integrate your Google alert feeds with kwippy and follow them over your gtalk as mentioned here
3) Get your twitter search results emailed by using tweetbeep

If you’ve been using any/all of these tools, would love to know your experiences.

1) Marketing your application inside facebook

2) Kwippy Link: on thank-you notes

Delhi’s Radio space has become quite hot these days with more than 10 FM channels vying for a bigger chunk of the pie. Leaving aside a couple most of these channels are alike(at least to me) and unless you are an avid listener chances are you too won’t be able to tell X from Y.

What really comes out as being Remarkable in this chaos is 104.8 FM or better known as “Meow FM“. Talking about being remarkable, Meow(India’s first just for women radio station) that came to life in June 07 is easily the most unique one. I listen to it every once in a while and what follows are a few things that make “Meow” Remarkable.

Niche Target Audience:
Instead of targeting everyone(which actually means targeting “no one”) they have focussed on Women folk, which is their biggest and probably best differentiator. This is a big plus as now they can mostly focus on airing programs that strike a chord with women without worrying much about the other gender. So now they can host a show like “Mama Meow” and even ask audience to tell “five innovative ways to break news about their pregnancy to their families” without thinking twice.

Different Ball Game:
While other FM channels are busy being better DJ’s(playing music) Meow has ventured into a different league all together. Rather than being just another music station they’ve come out as a talk based radio station which instead of RJ’s has what they call “On Air Hosts“. “Empathetic Interactivity” being one of their core value propositions this makes a lot of sense(even more for a women focussed channel) as
1) Talking/Sharing is one of the basic human necessities/traits.
2) It’s informative(knowledge sharing, listening and learning from other’s experiences and so on).
3) It has a HUGE audience(how else can you explain, people calling even before the host has finished telling the topic of conversation or people trying to call for days till they get to talk ?).

Client Relationship:
Another thing that impressed me about Meow was the way almost all their hosts talk to their callers and build relationships with them. Be it addressing some callers by adjectives like “Darling” or “Sweetheart” or asking someone who called after a hiatus “Why are you calling us after a long time ? Don’t you love us ?”.The way they handle and treat their callers is simply amazing, it works great(especially with women) and am sure they must have made some real(off the phone) relationships with some callers.To summarize in one line “try to make each customer feel special”.
I guess that’s what they are doing and doing it quite well.

Some other things that click are:
1) Good content with a variety to target various sections of women folk.
2) Great marketing(by making a noteworthy statement with the usage/symbolism of word “Meow” and other things).
3) Roping in different people with public appeal like Dr Kiran Bedi and regularly having guest hosts.
4) Anil Srivatsa(those who’ve listened to his show know what I mean).

These are some of things that I think make “Meow 104.8 FM” click, not sure about the RAM stats.They might make things a bit more cheesy from here and attract more earlobes by adding more girlie features on say shopping(discuss things like what you shop, where you shop or reviewing some shops etc) or better a gossip section(share the latest gossip in your office,college etc or in bollywood).

“Women carry the reputation of being talkative, hence Meow. Through Meow FM, we are letting women do what they do best – talk ” – Anil Srivatsa, COO, Radio Today