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ShareMumbai: With every college gearing up for their annual fests, the student committees are making the most of their resources to pull in maximum crowds. Promoting a festival is costly business.
Online social networking sites have become too common and are not creating the desired buzz. So, with the aim of getting bigger and better, the students have chosen an online interactive platform to draw crowds.
"We started a portal on ibibo.com called oasis.ibibo.com. It has given us a chance to be a part of an existing popular online platform for youth, which directly gets converted into greater visibility," said Rohan Arora, head, department of sponsorship and marketing, Oasis 2009, BITS Pilani (Rajasthan). "The portal linked us to talented people from the cultural space in India and abroad. We received free web space where over 200 teams registered online, including an Australian band. They uploaded pictures, audio and video files of their past performances and practice sessions at various events like fashion shows, dance and rock music shows to videos on short film making."
With budgets for college fests running as high as Rs50 lakh to Rs80 lakh, online promotions have made it possible to buy aside larger prizes for winners and bring in celebrities and celebrity judges.
Students of theater group at MICA, Ahmedabad, will be hosting Sankalp 2009, their three-day fest, in December. They too have signed up with ibibo.com for their pre-event Nautanki Night on November 20. "All participating teams have to upload five-minute videos based on their final plays, on sankalp.ibibo.com," said Dikshita Shukla, head of marketing, Sankalp 2009. Students of IIT Kharagpur's annual Springfest to be held in January have also approached ibibo.com.
Several Mumbai colleges like KJ Somaiya College of Arts, Science and Commerce have now uploaded their videos on these portals. Students of Bhavan's College are also planning to launch a similar portal for their fest.
