ASA Productions & Enterprises Pvt. Ltd.
ASA Productions and Enterprises Pvt. Ltd company Owned by Vikaram Bhatt is a fast growing entertainment company which was established in 2006 in Andheri, , Maharashtra. In 2009, ASA Productions and Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. launched its own music label called ASA Music and produced classical, devotional, pop, fusion and film songs.
1920: Evil Returns’s social media promotion campaign was studied by Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. Internet activities and campaigns were assessed by the management institute; the connection between box office collections and promotions on social media was finally established by the team . This case study was also published by Harvard Business Publishing and is being used by students in India and abroad.
Business Objectives:
Company was basically into production and distribution of movies. They did not have any online presence until the production house considered digital & social media for movie promotion of Bollywood Horror movie, 1920- A sequel to the first, 1920 Evil Returns. They engaged IntelliAssist for a period of 45 days to manage digital marketing.
1920 Evil Returns’ was a low-budget movie, Unlike few other Hindi movies who come under Club 100 crore contenders. The objective was to market the movie to a targeted community- those who loved and appreciated the horror genre, those who like watching movies by Vikram Bhatt and those who had liked the first movie in the franchise, ‘1920’.
Strategy Adopted:
Since ASA wanted to promote the movie online and launching themselves for the first time online their primary objective was to create maximum number of video views for theatrical trailer and other videos. They also wanted to get their Posters maximum attention and visibility to create an online presence. And to build a community of Horror fans .They wanted to engage the audience to spread a positive word of mouth.
They took help of Social media marketing on Facebook.
- They created Facebook page to grow its fan base ,
- Target audience was between age group of 18-35yrs.So online promotions were started keeping the same in mind
- Three pages were created simultaneously: – ASA Productions & Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. (Company), 1920 Evil Returns (Movie), Vikram Bhatt (Celebrity)
- A brand channel on YouTube was created. Official trailer and other videos were uploaded and promoted there.
- Google Adword where google search &display was used in placing video and Image ads to promote the movie.
- Online Advertising Campaign was done on TOI, Rediff.com, Bollywood Hungama, Hindustan Times, & SantaBanta.com.
- Custom Apps like Exclusive Stills showcase and Top Fan dashboards were used to enhance engagement.
- Motivating other fans to actively participate and contribute was taken care by recognizing and rewarding Active fans
- To create buzz and increase viral reach of the page a picture contest was announced
- Content strategy revolved around announcements (news bytes, video upload etc.), sharing movie stills and creation of interesting polls.
- Several fan-created posters were shared on the page; this helped in increasing the feeling of belongingness and the community appreciated the same.
- One fun picture was created exclusively for Facebook; this featured entire team (cast and crew)
Results Achieved
- Number of likes reached 1,27,482 people on Facebook which made it viral and helped it spreding to several other websites.
- The poster received encouraging feedback; this was eventually used in all print & outdoor media at the time of movie release.
- Facebook promoted posts were used to promote YouTube videos. This trafficking strategy proved beneficial as two videos were meant for adult audiences and YouTube paid advertisement was not possible for the same.• Facebook played a vital role in increasing video views for these videos.
- Youtube delivered impressions were 36,26,718, 12,010 clicks for Standard Banner, Video clicks were 26,508.
- New Channel created, built over 615 Subscribers and 15,00,000 Video Views in 30 days
- Theatrical Trailer was trending for 2 days & received close to 13,30,000 Views in a span of 15 days
- Without any advertising about 1,00,000 views were received for one of the music videos in 7 days
- Animated Banner Ads, Video Ads, Page Push, Expandable Ads were placed on prominent entertainment sites, news sites and general interest portals
- The Ads were eye-catching and hard to be missed• An average CTR of 0.62% was recorded on all sites and portals put together
- For Times of India Gutter Banner: Total Play Hours promised was 60 but delivered 72 hours Bonus Innovation Run – On 2nd November’12 additional 24 hours were managed on the TOI Bollywood Home Page.
- Times of India Impressions Received –14,67,765Clicks Received – 12,842
Learnings:
According to Professor Dinesh Kumar, “Understanding social media tools is important for a social media marketer but more important is to understand consumers and their behaviour. Platforms change but principles of marketing don’t! Keeping pace with consumer trends is as important as keeping pace with technology.” The key to all social media/ digital partnerships, he explained, is making sure they’re connected. “Users should be able to easily discover various programs across digital, mobile, video and social sites. Marketing partnerships that enable a studio to be the first to try a fast growing technology, app or social tool will garner much press coverage and buzz. With increasing movie production cost, it becomes important for all production houses to plan their social media marketing strategy.”
Resources:
Wikipedia, IIMB Research and Publications, Linkedin, Youtube, Facebook
