Channels are going all out to hype the TV premiere of a film, including roping in the stars, launching games online and staging stunts.
If you see Sridevi enticing you to watch her comeback film English Vinglish now, don’t be surprised. Despite it being a box-office hit, the actress is promoting the film all over again. And this time, it is to coax the audiences to watch the television premiere of her film on Zee Cinema. She has shot three customised promos only for the small-screen. The channel has also launched a portal to teach housewives English, in keeping with the theme of the film.
A couple of weeks ago Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif had shot for special tune-in promos and shared trivia about their film Ek Tha Tiger only for the small-screen audience on Sony. In June, this year when Agneepath was premiered on Zee Cinema, a marketing campaign was launched by the channel across social media, channels and print. So aggressive was the campaign that lead actor Hrithik Roshan tweeted “@iHrithik: Never seen so much news about a movie premiering on TV before! Nervous all over again!!:)”
The film even had a game based on it and so did Agent Vinod, Don 2 and Ek Tha Tiger, to name a few. All these were specially designed to create a buzz for the TV premiere. Unlike in the past where channels sufficed it to advertisements in print and their network, today there’s a 360 degree marketing campaign. As Shailesh Kapoor, CEO, Ormax Media, a leading media planner says, “There’s a lot of clutter of TV — so many properties that it is important to create noise about the film.” Advertisers, he says get associated with films for the buzz and hype that the channels create and not because of the ratings the films might garner. Gaurav Seth, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Communications — MAX, adds that for their premieres they tap a lot of multimedia to communicate, to build the excitement and engage the viewers. “There is just a small fraction of the audience, which goes to the theatre to watch movies. People, especially in the small towns or mid-size towns prefer to watch these movies on television, because watching films in a theatre is costly. Also the repeat value of these movies is high,” he reasons.
From giving away Ajay Devgn’s kurta and Abhishek Bachchan’s colourful shirt, which the actors wore in Bol Bachchan to getting a Akshay Kumar lookalike jump from a height of 40 feet when Rowdy Rathore was premiered, channels are pulling out all stops to grab eyeballs.
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