What is the link between a Bollywood film, a top tier B-school and Harvard Business Publishing?
A keen academic interest in the growing use of digital media in movie promotion resulted in the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) writing a case study on the use of digital media in movie promotion. The highlight of the case, written by Professor U Dinesh Kumar, Suhruta Kulkarni and Karthika A S, was the establishment of a relationship between box office collection and social media activity with specific reference to the film '1920 Evil Returns'. The case has been published at Harvard Business Publishing and is being used by students even in USA, Canada, Norway and Slovenia.
Social media marketing is taught as part of the Analytics course at IIMB, and there are electives that talk about social media marketing that target potential digital marketing practitioners.
"As an academic study, the IIMB team focused on movie marketing on the social media. The case study assessed the impact of social media marketing and the relationship between box office collection and social media buzz," said U Dinesh Kumar, Professor, Quantitative Methods & Information Systems, IIMB.
The movie, '1920 Evil Returns', the second film of a franchise, was released in 2012. The third in the series '1920 London' is slated for release later this year.
"Unlike a standalone movie, any successful movie franchise focuses on building brand equity. It's imperative to review each movie released under the franchise to understand user sentiments and promotion strategy. The case study by IIMB reviews the social media strategy and campaign execution at the time when '1920 Evil Returns' was released and combines the finding with changing dynamics of the social media to chalk out a social media strategy for '1920 London'," said Ami Shah, of IntelliAssist, the company that carried out the social media marketing for the film.
Unlike those Hindi movies who are Club 100 crore contenders, '1920 Evil Returns' was a low budget movie. The objective was to market the movie to a targeted community- those who are loyal to the horror genre, those who like watching movies by Vikram Bhatt and those who had liked the first movie in the franchise, '1920'.
"At the time of promoting '1920 Evil Returns', we decided not to focus on using Twitter actively. The decision was taken after a thorough analysis on value v/s investment and the same has been cited in the IIMB case study. Perhaps we could have extended our reach by actively marketing on Twitter and considering a chatting application like WhatsApp in the social media mix," said Ami Shah when asked what the social media marketing firm would have done differently in hindsight. She added that the theatrical trailer of '1920 Evil Returns' had trended on YouTube for two days as a popular video while a song promo especially created for attracting more eyeballs had not performed that well.
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 behavior. 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."
What is the link between a Bollywood film, a top tier B-school and Harvard Business Publishing?
A keen academic interest in the growing use of digital media in movie promotion resulted in the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) writing a case study on the use of digital media in movie promotion. The highlight of the case, written by Professor U Dinesh Kumar, Suhruta Kulkarni and Karthika A S, was the establishment of a relationship between box office collection and social media activity with specific reference to the film '1920 Evil Returns'. The case has been published at Harvard Business Publishing and is being used by students even in USA, Canada, Norway and Slovenia.
Social media marketing is taught as part of the Analytics course at IIMB, and there are electives that talk about social media marketing that target potential digital marketing practitioners.
"As an academic study, the IIMB team focused on movie marketing on the social media. The case study assessed the impact of social media marketing and the relationship between box office collection and social media buzz," said U Dinesh Kumar, Professor, Quantitative Methods & Information Systems, IIMB.
The movie, '1920 Evil Returns', the second film of a franchise, was released in 2012. The third in the series '1920 London' is slated for release later this year.
"Unlike a standalone movie, any successful movie franchise focuses on building brand equity. It's imperative to review each movie released under the franchise to understand user sentiments and promotion strategy. The case study by IIMB reviews the social media strategy and campaign execution at the time when '1920 Evil Returns' was released and combines the finding with changing dynamics of the social media to chalk out a social media strategy for '1920 London'," said Ami Shah, of IntelliAssist, the company that carried out the social media marketing for the film.
Unlike those Hindi movies who are Club 100 crore contenders, '1920 Evil Returns' was a low budget movie. The objective was to market the movie to a targeted community- those who are loyal to the horror genre, those who like watching movies by Vikram Bhatt and those who had liked the first movie in the franchise, '1920'.
"At the time of promoting '1920 Evil Returns', we decided not to focus on using Twitter actively. The decision was taken after a thorough analysis on value v/s investment and the same has been cited in the IIMB case study. Perhaps we could have extended our reach by actively marketing on Twitter and considering a chatting application like WhatsApp in the social media mix," said Ami Shah when asked what the social media marketing firm would have done differently in hindsight. She added that the theatrical trailer of '1920 Evil Returns' had trended on YouTube for two days as a popular video while a song promo especially created for attracting more eyeballs had not performed that well.
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 behavior. 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."